Meet Valentina: Your Maternity and Newborn Photographer

After 15 years, so much of what I do is on autopilot.

I look for the gorgeous light and read the baby. I know when to wait and when to act. And I do it without thinking.

But the moment someone is beside me, watching, learning, everything slows down. I have to find words for things I stopped noticing years ago. And in doing that, I remember how it felt at the beginning. The insecurities. The fear of getting it wrong. The weight of feeling like you should already know. The comparison with others.

Teaching reminds me how much courage it takes to learn something new and how gently we should treat ourselves while we do.

If you are starting out, in any field, well done. Truly. I know how hard and lonely those first steps can be. But you don’t have to take them alone.

And if you are a photographer thinking about a one to one newborn training day in my Twickenham studio,I would love to be part of your journey.
Link in bio.

Six weeks ago I shared a glimpse behind the scenes of this session. Today, you get to see what we made.

She arrived with her props already chosen.

Nude stockings. The kind her mother wore. The ones women mended rather than replaced.

She knew exactly what she wanted to say.
My job was simply to hold the space and let her say it.

This is what a portrait session can be.
Not a makeover or a way to fit an idea of beauty. But a conversation between a woman and her own story, made visible.

Dyana is an artist, activist and doula. She explores identity, the body, and everything that lives between and beyond definition.

I am grateful I had the chance to photograph her.

Tomorrow I have a newborn session and a 1:1 training day with a photographer travelling from Switzerland to spend the day with me.

But before any of that, the work had already started.
It starts with a conversation. Learning about your birth, your family, how things have been since you came home. Then comes the studio prep, making sure the space is warm, clean and ready for someone very new to the world, with attention to every small thing that makes a family feel safe and held.

After 15 years, this is still how I do it. Every time.
That same care is what I pass on when I teach.

If you are a parent looking for a photographer who takes this seriously, or a photographer thinking about training, this is what I stand for.

📩 Links in bio for both.

She almost didn’t come.

She told me she wasn’t feeling confident.
That she didn’t know how to pose.
That maybe I should photograph someone else.

I hear this more than you’d think. From women who are more reserved and introvert but also the ones who are funny and so alive in person. Women who have simply spent too long seeing themselves in a fixed way.

We spent a morning together. Just her, the light, and a space where nothing needed to be fixed or hidden.

The woman in these photos? She was there all along.

If you’ve been telling yourself a similar story, I’d gently ask you this: what if you’re wrong too?

This is the part that gets me every time.

Seeing the images inside the album, in print, held in your hands, is completely different to seeing them on a screen.

They become real in a way a digital file never quite manages.

This little one will grow so fast.

But these pages will stay exactly as they are.

Newborn photography in Richmond and Twickenham.