Hello, I am Samantha. I would like to welcome you into my beautiful home and my world of newborn baby photography. 

Bringing your tiny precious little newborn baby into my home is a perfect relaxing experience for all of us. I want you to feel at ease here, as you would in your own home. This is my main reason for choosing my home as my "studio" space rather than a purpose built studio which can sometimes be a bit daunting to brand new parents. Let me make you a hot drink for you to enjoy as I settle you and your baby in.

My lovely open plan space has a full kitchen should you need to warm up any bottles, and I can even provide you with a tub of cotton wool and water which to clean your baby if we need to, sometimes newborns have gacky eyes so a quick wipe now saves me lots of editing time and helps your beautiful photographs stay natural. My bathroom is just the other side of the wall where the photography session will take place, so you will never be far away from your baby should you need to use it whilst you are here, please don't feel you need to wait until you get home!

If you haven't already given me your "wish list" of photos we will sit down together to discuss which props and colours you would like me to use.  I focus on this more than which "poses" you would like, as every single baby is different, some like to go in certain positions, some not so much. You can expect to spend 2-3 hours with me, and I spend all this time getting to know what your baby likes and what soothes them, making your baby led experience with me as enjoyable and relaxing as possible. I have years of experience on hand, but your baby is always in charge. Quite often they will not want to sleep as it is a new environment for them, but please do not worry , I have lots of ways of photographing awake babies, and I absolutely love to see their eyes open in some of the photographs. 

Most parents to be / new parents have lots of questions when they get in touch to book, so I have recently created a new page of FAQs to read. If you would like to read more about your newborn photography experience with Samantha Prewett Photography, I have another useful blog I wrote a couple of years ago but it is still applicable. This goes into more detail about what to expect when you come to me. I hope you have enjoyed reading this little insight into my world of newborn photography, and please do get in touch if you are interested in booking your newborn photography session with me. 

Can you believe its not long until the next half term holidays, AGAIN! Last summer I wrote a blog about free activities and events and it went down so well I decided to repeat it for October and Christmas half terms too, and so here we are again! I absolutely love the school holidays, I work hard all year and really look forward to spending quality time with my beautiful children. It can get expensive though, so I always make a note of all the FREE things going on locally in Dorset and we use that as a guide. I have done all the hard work for you and decided to share its once again. I hope you enjoy it and find some fun things to do that will save you some money! 

Graffiti fun at Meet and Sip Bournemouth on Tuesday 19th February 2019

A 45-minute workshop for children aged 7 - 11 where you will create your own Graffiti -Style picture. You will learn how to create your own Graffiti tag and design your own Banksy-style image.  You can get FREE tickets by clicking here. 

Rossmore Lesiure centre is the place to be on Sunday 24th February. Poole Bumps, Babies and Beyond are holding a FREE social event / fun day for all its members. There will be many local baby related businesses attending including me to showcase their products and services, and a FREE boucy castle! For more up to date information please visit their facebook page.

On Thursday 21st February, Dorset Scrap Store in Poole are holding a FREE fun day with free children's craft activities. You can visit their facebook event for times and more information. 

Poole Museum is always free to enter to it is a great option to fill a few hours during half term, especially on a rainy day. They have an art detective exhibition trail on between January and April too, don't forget to ask for your trail sheet on the way in.

Castlepoint shopping park are holding a knights and princesses academy between 19th - 21st February where your little ones can make puppets, decorate a treasure chest or tiara, dress up and make a shield! You do need to pre register for this event, you can do this on their website. 

​Light up Poole is happening again this year. We went last year and it was a fun evening, something different. They have lots of mini light exhibitions set up around the town and you can collect a map to follow it. You can find out more by visiting their website.

The Red House Museum in Christchurch is also free to enter, so a good choice for a rainy day. Every day during half term (apart from Monday) they are running a family pirate treasure trail too. Find all the treasure boxes on the map and receive a FREE chocolate prize!

As this blog post is all about saving you some money during the holidays, I thought I would share a helpful article written by my friend and fellow small business owner Joanne Dewberry. You can find lots of money saving tips in her article. 
I hope you have enjoyed reading my round up of FREE events and activities in Dorset. If you know of any I have missed please feel free to share them in a comment below for others to benefit from. I hope you all have a fantastic half term.

A couple of weeks ago I ventured out into one of my favourite outdoor Autumn locations to capture some beautiful natural maternity photographs for this lovely family. 
I don't usually book in outdoor sessions between November and March as the weather can be somewhat unpredictable. But then again we are in the UK, and even in the height of summer we don't know what to expect, so when they got in touch a few months ago to book we scheduled a date in. 

On the day of the session we were very lucky with the weather, it was very mild for January. We met at Wareham forest and found some fun places to stop for photographs. 

This lovely family were amazing during their session, and we had a lovely time and I was really excited about sharing their beautiful photographs. I can't wait to see them again really soon with their new addition. It is such a privilege to be able to capture families journeys for them.

If you are looking for some beautiful natural maternity photographs, I would love to capture this special time for you. You can involve your children as you see here, or if this pregnancy marks the start of your family,  I capture that for you too. If you would like to find out more you can visit the maternity photography section of my website here where you can find prices and then choose to get in touch to book in. 

Christmas is the most expensive time of the year. Whilst I have never been one to spend what I haven't got but I still need to save up to pay for it. Which is why I am helping you out again by sharing lots of FREE events and activities you can do with your Children over the festive season. I have done all the hard work for you by compiling a list in date order of what is going on for FREE across the area. Enjoy!

The Christmas tree wonderland in Bournemouth is now in full swing. There has been so much amazing feedback from this already, people are saying it is the best Bournemouth have done for many many years! I can't wait to take my children down really soon, but we try to hold of with Christmas until December. I am not sure how much longer I can wait though, it looks absolutely fantastic! The event is so big they even have their own website, and best of all its FREE! It takes place between the 16th November 2018 and January 2019. See over 100 magical trees all decorated to resemble Christmas all around the world.

Celebrate Christmas in Wimborne on 24th November. Live entertainment from 10am. Lights switch on at 430pm.

Escape the Christmas crazyness for a few hours at this unique event at Lodmoor County Park in Weymouth, Dorset. You can find out more here.

Once again the Dolphin Centre are putting on a FREE Christmas event for children where you can take part in activities and meet Santa at the end of the Nordic Trail! The event is different each year, but they usually have free craft activities and a free visit to Santa. Again, not one to be missed! This takes place on certain dates through out December. I am yet to see this event publicised online so I haven't provided a link, but I saw this up when I went into the shopping centre this week.

The iconic Coca-Cola truck is coming to town again this year! on 1st and 2nd December 2018, you can see the stunning truck in Bournemouth. This year the truck will be coming to Pier Approach, and you can see it on either day between 10am - 10pm. This is definitely something not to be missed!

On Saturday 1st December you can celebrate Christmas in Southbourne from 10am. Meet Santa and watch the lights switch on. You can find out more on the Christmas Wonderland website.

On 1st December the Sovereign shopping centre in Boscombe are welcoming Santa with a grand parade, free arts &crafts, face painting, singers, dancers are more! This event is completely FREE! You can find out more by visiting their facebook page.

 On Sunday 2nd December, step back in time at Scaplens Court museum in Poole. Soak up the festive atmosphere of days gone by, explore the building and take part in some Christmas crafts. You can find out more and join their facebook event here.

Also on 2nd December in Poole you can see the Santa parade! At 11am Santa arrives on Poole Quay then travels through town to Falkland Square. Their is a full programme of entertainment in Falkland Square from 12pm. You can take a photo in their giant Christmas snow globe too and take part in a fancy dress competition! You can find out more and join their facebook event here.

Starting on the 6th December, you can watch Christmas movies for FREE in Poole at their outdoor cinema! They have a great line up this year, we are really looking forward to going to some of these.

On 13th December 2018 you can join in the Poole lantern parade, starting from Falkland Square at 6pm then walking through the town to the guildhall to end with carols and mince pies. You can keep up to date and join their facebook event here.

As you can see , there is so much going on that need not cost you a penny over the Christmas season. I am sure I will find more to add to here as time goes on, and please do let me know if you know of any FREE events in Dorset that I could add to my list. 
I hope you enjoyed reading this and have found things you can do. 
I hope you all have a wonderful Christmas and new year, and remember its not about how much you spend over Christmas its just about those wonderful memories that you will create and remember for many years to come.

It is a true privilege being invited into clients homes to capture their new arrivals in their own surroundings and to be able to give them such beautiful photographs that they will treasure forever. 
The majority of newborn photography sessions I do are at mine, but I wanted to share this session to let everyone know that they have this option aswell, should they prefer this. So with the kind permission of this lovely family, I have compiled this beautiful collection of just a few of the photographs from their session to share their story with you.

I visited this lovely family when their new arrival was 4 weeks old. We had "planned" for me to come sooner, but it can often take a while to adjust to life with a new baby and unfortunately Mum was a bit poorly too, so baby was 4 weeks by the time I got to them. With a lifestyle session, there is no "posing" so it really does not matter how old your baby is. I can come over and photograph absolutely any age, and I have done this in the past varying from 3 days up to 8 months and beyond. At 4 weeks though, he was still very new and it was lovely to be able to come and capture some of their story with their new baby and their gorgeous toddler too!

The beauty of me coming to you for your photography session, is that you do not need to prepare at all, you don't need to tidy up, and you don't even need to get out of your house in the morning to come to me. When I arrived they were just finishing up their breakfast and baby was in the living room so I went through and took some photos of him to start with. When I come to you I like to have a little look around to find the best place to take photographs, they had an amazing huge window with a lovely bench seat which was absolutely perfect! I loved the cards in the background too, it is so nice to be able to capture things how they were in that moment in time. The new baby cards won't stay up forever, but hopefully some of these photographs will. 
Once I had taken some photographs of baby on his own, I popped in to see if big brother wanted to join us. He was only to happy to come over, I was very impressed! He was absolutely amazing, and I could really see the love between them, I was so happy to have been able to capture this, what a fantastic start to our session!

During my time with them we took lots of lovely family photos of them all snuggled up together both on their bed and on the sofa. I love being able to capture these precious natural moments, especially feeding time, and even nappy change time which I think is even a beautiful memory. These every day moments will become wonderful memories when you look back on them in years to come.

We then tried a few set up photos of the boys together , I managed to get a few but big brother was starting to get a little bit fed up at this point, so I took some time to do some more photos of baby on his own.

At the end of their session, we popped outside to the lovely woodland walk that they are lucky enough to have on their doorstep and took a few natural family photographs outdoors too! 
I hope you have enjoyed reading about this beautiful photography session, if you would like to find out more about me coming to you to photograph your own family you might like to visit the newborn photography section of my website. 

Following the success of my previous canvas product review, I was approached by Tesco and asked if I would like to test and review some photo calendars for them. Naturally I jumped at the chance as I love being able to show clients affordable and easy ways to use their beautiful photographs. 

I got asked to choose two calendar styles so I picked a desktop one as I thought this makes the ideal gift for Dads (or Mums!) who work at a desk all day, and an A3 one which has plenty of space to write those important dates on. They also offer A4 and slimline calendars.

There are lots of different styles to choose from when you pick which size calendar you would like. You can opt for a full page photo with small dates printed on top of the photo, or something more traditional like the one I picked above, or you can even choose to have multiple photos on one page! I was very impressed by the options available, and the ease of creating the calendar. If anything it was a little to automated (and being a creative person I prefer a little more control myself!) but these are most definitely a fantastic idea for a beautiful quick and simple gift idea. 

I opted for home delivery again as I was not in an immediate rush for these, but I was very impressed when then arrived the very next day!! and in lovely packaging too, which I now want to use for my own photographs! Tesco have told me its unusual for the calendars to arrive the day after as there delivery time is usually 8 days, but they are told that calendars usually arrive to clients within a few days of ordering which I think is very fast. If you need you calendar even quicker, you can also choose to collect it from you local Tesco store, this way you save on postage costs too!

If you would like to find out more about Tesco Photo Calendars and the options available, you can visit their photo website.

The school holidays can be an expensive time for us all. Especially when the weather is not so good and you can't spend the day at the park or beach. There are LOTS of fantastic events going on across Dorset for the October half term holidays, and I expect you have already booked some Halloween events into your calendars. However, I am sure that you still have days  you need to fill, so I have compiled this awesome list of completely FREE things you can do in Dorset during this October half term holidays, enjoy!

On 25th October between 1-4pm, Scaplen's Court have their annual free Halloween event on for children. Meet their resident witch and explore some spooky museum objects. They usually have crafts and other activities for the children to take part in during this event too. It's worth popping next door to the Poole Museum too as they usually have a spider trail on during half term too. 

Hobbycraft have FREE slime making workshops on again during the school holidays. We did this in the summer and the slime has kept really well all this time so its really worth going if you children are into messy play. We have kept ours in a pot in the fridge and its still as good as the day we made it.

There are lots of free events at your local library over the half term holidays. You can find out what is going on on different dates by visiting their website. 

Other FREE things to do:Some of the best things to do for free when you are stuck for ideas

1. Go for a lovely Autumn walk and collect some leaves and conkers. You could extend this activity by bringing leaves home to make some arty pictures.
2. GeoCaching
3. Paint some rocks and hide them for others to find. There are lots of local facebook groups for this, some local ones are "Poole Rocks" and "BH Rocks"
4. Get baking! Its the perfect time of the year to stay indoors and do some baking together. Why not try some Halloween themed cookies or cakes?
​

If you have heard about any other FREE events in Dorset over the October holidays please do let me know I would love to add them to my list. 
I hope you all have a fantastic half term with your little ones.

If you follow me or any other newborn photographers on social media, you will notice we are often going about "booking" in whilst you are pregnant, not waiting until your baby arrives to get in touch. But how do we "book" you in when we don't know when your baby is going to arrive? Unlike some other photographers, I do not give you provisional dates  (which will undoubtedly need to be re arranged) I simply make sure I have some times around your due date kept available for you, then once you get in touch to let me know your baby has arrived, we arrange a mutually convenient time for your newborn photography session. As you can understand I need to be quite flexible with my time, hence I can only book in a certain amount of babies per month. Babies are often early or late, which sometimes leads to me having a few last minute spaces available, so I sometimes can accommodate clients who get in touch after their baby arrives. But I can not guarantee space, and I often have to say that I am unfortunately fulled booked.  If this does happen, I will never turn you away but simply say we might need to wait a few weeks. I photograph all ages up to 5 months in a "newborn style" but as you can imagine they grow really quickly and a 4/5 week old baby will not be as curled up as a 7 day old. You can read more about my "older newborn" photography sessions in another blog post that I have written.

There are other reasons and benefits to booking in before your due month. It is easier for you to find and book a photographer when you are expecting as you will have more time, and once you have "booked in" you don't need to do anything else until your session apart from a simple message to let me know your little one has arrived. We can spend time talking about your session and what you would like, and it gives me chance to post out your lovely booking form and if you are local get a Little Pack of Love goody bag over to you, which contains lots of fantastic freebies and vouchers. 

Also by booking  in early you get the chance to get a free beautiful wooden photo block as a thank you from me for being super organised (as it helps me to be more organised too!) and if you are booking a maternity photography session too, you can get a £25 discount (terms and condition apply, please message me for more information) and a further £25 discount off any future family photography sessions.

 

You can find out lots more information on newborn photography sessions in Poole with me under my newborn photography section or read more newborn photography articles on my blog. If you would like any further information or would like to book in, please contact me.

Last week I came across something very special at exactly the right time.

If you have been to mine for your photography session you will have noticed all the photographs I have up of my children, but I often say that a family photograph is well overdue. So this summer I made it my mission to do this, and I was very pleased with the result, it was exactly what I wanted and exactly how I wanted my family to be captured. Anyway, now came the hard part, getting that image on the wall! Of course, being a professional photographer I have a list of suppliers. If you know how my business works, I mainly sell digital images as these are part of the package you choose. I like to remain affordable by allowing clients to get their own products printed elsewhere. Whilst I always recommend getting products through me so I can ensure the best quality and colours, I understand not everyone can afford professional quality products so I thought I should test some high street brands to see which were good enough to "recommend" to my clients. 

This is when this fantastic opportunity came up for me to review a Tesco canvas! The timing couldn't have been better. I already had my favourite image picked ready to order and the process was super easy. 

What amazed me the most was that if you order your Tesco canvas before 12pm you can collect after 3pm the SAME day! I was in no immediate rush for mine so I opted for the home delivery option, but it still arrived in less than a week, which is also an amazing turnaround time. Now I have done something similar before, you have probably seen those little places in shopping centers that do you a canvas in an hour, we have had these done in the past and the colours have been awful. As a professional photographer I am extra picky about colour balance, but Tesco came out very close to the colours I see on my screen so I was very impressed with this also! 

It was very easy to order my canvas online. I simply selected the size required, then chose the type of side style. I was very impressed that ALL options were available and done automatically for you; mirror, image stretch, block colour, or image wrap. It also showed you which part of the photo would be wrapped around the outside so you could choose the best option. I personally like the image wrap, but for this and the mirror option you need to ensure you have plenty of background otherwise you will end up cutting bits of your photo off or having a shoe or someone's foot or whatever is on the outside of the image mirrored, which looks terrible! But fear not as you can clearly see what your image will look like before you order. 

The only thing I would do differently if I ordered again, is order a bigger one! Canvas definitely look better the bigger you get!

Thank you Tesco, I will definitely be recommending your canvas' to my clients! 

During the summer holidays we were given the fantastic opportunity for my children to attend some biscuit decorating and craft classes at Lollipops play cafe in Bournemouth whilst I took some promotional photographs for the lovely Sarah from Biscuits by Sarah B and Lexy from Made by Me Craft Parties. 

I decided to bring my husband along to look after the children at the class, so I could concentrate on my purpose for being there; to take photographs. But he was not needed at all! Sarah and Lexy were amazing with all of the children and each class provided a full hours entertainment for the children whilst the adults could enjoy a hot drink in the cafe and a much needed break during the summer holidays. 

During these classes the children got to make a spell book with invisible ink and secret pockets and tabs ( I wanted to make one myself!) and decorate five yummy Harry Potter themed biscuits. I have even booked myself onto an adult biscuit decorating class because it looked so fun. 

Needless to say, I got some great photographs which show how involved the children were with what they were doing, they all had a great time and as well as being entertained for a hour or two they got to take some fantastic creations home with them! 

If you would like more information on upcoming classes you can visit the Mini makes and bakes facebook page. Or if you run classes and would like me to take some photos for you please do get in touch I would love to hear from you, I love doing something a little different.