A motherhood session at the horse farm
Motherhood · Waterdown · Summer 2026
She wanted the horses in it — her boy turns one next week, and she wanted proof he'd met them.
The session
Nataliya & Matthew
Nataliya booked the farm for Matthew, who turns one next week and won't remember a minute of it — which is exactly why she wanted it photographed. She'd dressed them for the part — a floral dress and a pair of worn cowboy boots for her, a little denim romper for him, and a wide-brim hat that kept sliding down over his eyes. She had one request, and it was the horses. She wanted them in every frame we could manage.
We shot in the flat middle of the afternoon — three o'clock sun, the kind most photographers wait out — but the open paddock threw the light back up soft and even, and it turned into some of the cleanest, warmest work I've made all summer. Matthew had no fear of the animals at all. He'd push a whole arm through the fence rail and a big chestnut mare would lower her head to meet him, gentle as anything. I mostly stayed back and let the horses decide the timing.
Somewhere in the middle Nataliya stepped up to the fence on her own — hat tipped back, one hand flat on a pale horse's face — and for a few frames it stopped being a motherhood session and became a portrait of her, which she hadn't asked for and completely deserved. But the one she printed is quieter than any of it. Her cheek against Matthew's hair, the pair of them lit right up in the afternoon sun, a horse gone soft at the edge of the frame. A whole first year, held for a second before it was gone.
She'd told me he loved animals more than people. The horses seemed to know it.
It was the hottest, highest light of the day. It had no business being this soft.
The Green Acres, near Waterdown
A working horse ranch out past Waterdown, about an hour from the studio — a couple of hundred acres of split-rail paddocks and long grass, with horses well used to visitors. We shot in the flat middle of the afternoon, usually the hardest light there is, but the open paddock and a high thin haze did the work for us, softening the sun instead of fighting it. If you're planning a session here, come in closed-toe boots, bring bug spray for the flies, and let the owners introduce you to the horses first — they set the pace of the shoot, not us.