If you're never in the family portraits, it's not because you don't photograph well. It's because you're the one holding the phone, wrangling the kids into place, and pressing the button. Every family has someone who does this, and in most households it's the mum, so the portraits exist. You're just not in any of them.
You've become the family's photographer, not a member of the family in the picture
Think about your camera roll. School concerts, birthday cakes, the kids at the beach, all beautifully documented, all missing one person. You're the one who remembers to bring the camera, who says "get in close, everyone", who takes six shots so there's a good one. Somewhere in doing that job well, you stopped being someone who gets photographed at all. It happens gradually, and most mums don't notice until years have passed and someone asks where all the pictures of her are.
It's rarely a conscious choice. Nobody decides one day to stop appearing in family photos. It builds up out of a hundred small moments, handing your phone to a partner and having them forget, saying "you take this one, I look terrible today" and meaning it as a throwaway line, being the one who's always slightly out of frame because you're the one steadying everyone else into it. Add years of that together and the gap becomes obvious only in hindsight, usually when you go looking for a photo of yourself with a child who's now grown and can't find one from when they were small.
Your children will want you in the frame
This is the part that's easy to miss in the moment. Children won't think to ask for a portrait with their mother; they're children. It's only later, sometimes decades later, that a person goes looking for a picture of themselves with their mum at four, or at eight, or at fifteen, and finds nothing. The people who love you are not judging how you look in a photo. They want the person, not the pose, and they want proof that she was there.
A directed session means you don't have to perform
If the thought of standing in front of a photographer and smiling on command makes you want to cancel before you've even booked, you're not alone, and it's not how a proper session works. Arek directs sessions rather than posing them. That means you're given something to actually do together, walk, hold your child, laugh at something real, and the portraits come out of that interaction rather than out of everyone freezing for the count of three. You're not performing for the camera. You're just being with your family while someone with a trained eye is nearby.
The three meetings make the whole thing feel manageable
The process starts with a one-hour consultation at the Belgrave gallery, where you see the finished artwork on the walls and the prices upfront, so there are no surprises later. From there, the session itself is timed around either sunrise or sunset and built around your children's age and routine, not squeezed into whatever slot is left in a diary. Within a week of the session, you come back for a viewing and design appointment, where you sit down and choose the images that will actually go on your wall. Knowing the shape of the whole thing in advance takes the pressure off any single moment.
There's also something in the fact that it happens one family at a time. Arek isn't working through a queue of bookings back to back, so nobody's rushed, and nobody's watching. It's just you, your family, and one person whose job for that hour is paying attention to how you actually are together, not how you look holding a pose.
What to wear when you'd rather not think about it
Clothing is where a lot of the anxiety lives for mums who've avoided cameras for years. If you're not sure what to wear or how to feel comfortable in it, the guide on what to wear for family portraits walks through colour, fit and layering in plain terms, so you can turn up feeling like yourself rather than like you're dressed for someone else's portrait. The short version: wear what makes you feel like you, not what you think a "family photo mum" is supposed to wear.
If you're pregnant, postpartum, or somewhere in between
A lot of mums who've never been in a family photo are also carrying a complicated relationship with how their body looks right now, especially during pregnancy or in the months after having a baby. That's a real and common feeling, and it doesn't need to be resolved before you book a session. The pregnancy portraits guide covers timing and what to expect if that's where you are.
What you're actually left with
The point of a portrait session isn't a flattering picture of you. It's a piece that exists because you were there, displayed somewhere your family sees it every day, not filed away on a phone. Finished pieces are artisan printed and hand-finished, ready for collection within three weeks of your design appointment, so what you end up with is something on the wall rather than a folder you never open. If you're the sort of person who values a printed piece over another file, the guide on why printed portraits matter explains why a wall art collection outlasts a camera roll.
You don't need to lose weight first, get your hair done differently, or wait until things feel more settled. You need to be in the room when it happens. Everything else is Arek's job.
Every portrait begins with a conversation at the Belgrave gallery.