Wilkinson Family

Robert and Rebecca wanted to capture two year old Wilhem with all his heavenly curiosity and playfulness. When I suggested the nooks and crannies around Somerset as a location, Rebecca was thrilled. Not only is Wilhem is a real nature boy and loves to explore new places, but Robert grew up in this part of the Island, and so it was lovely for him to walk the same steps with his little boy. Robert and Rebecca have been together six years and just adore spending time with their son and seeing the world through his eyes.



And speaking of eyes, can you believe the eyes of this child - I was mesmerised.





























As you can imagine, I was mortified when I went shoot a classic portrait of Wilhem on his own and he simply took a handful of dirt and flung it over his head to settle in his hair, but according to Rebecca, this made the shoot a huge success and captured Wilhem's essence and saw him in his natural environment.



His parents were so wonderfully laid back and just laughed as he repeated this muck chucking over and over. They say he is always digging in the dirt, finding creepy crawlies and getting nice and grubby. I have to admit, I do love to capture those moments, but usually at the end of a shoot after all the key framers are out of the way, but this happened in the middle and I didn't imagine Wilhem's glorious curls would recover from the abuse.



Wilhem's filthifying (yes, I made that up!) of himself happened at the same time the sky went from heavily overcast to depressingly dark and I wondered if there would be enough light left at all for the remainder of the shoot. I just kept changing my settings on my camera in the hopes that there was enough light to at least capture sweet Wilhem's beautiful eye colour.





















Wilhem spends a lot of time in the garden with his dad and the dog, Bingo, in tow. Rebecca is typically looking on in despair at the mess and trail of dirt that follows her beautiful boy, so when he was into everything like the curious investigator he always is, Robert and Rebecca were excited that these were the types of memories I was capturing with my camera and they will treasure in the years to come.





As you can imagine, Robert and Rebecca want to savour those curls forever, and the thought of having to cut his hair eventually must be awful, but at least his ringlets are now immortalised here on my blog for all to admire and enjoy (can you tell I have never had curls but long long long for them oh so much!).