Aisling ByrnePhotography, Galway

Silver Strand · February

The Lanigans

A family session on a cold Saturday. No outfits laid out, no looking at the camera, one small girl who wanted to be left alone with the stones.

01Fergal and Orla asked for a session that did not involve anybody being told to smile. Their daughter Sadhbh is two and would have refused anyway.

02We met at Silver Strand at half two, which in February is the whole of the good light.

03Ninety minutes, most of it spent following a toddler along the tideline at her own speed.

04Forty images, no group shot, and the one they printed big is the one where nobody is looking.

A father in a sheepskin coat walking hand in hand with a toddler along a pebble shore, calm water behind
14:40. Down to the water at her speed, not ours.
Seen from above, a father crouching on wet sand while a small child in a bobble hat digs beside him
Fifteen minutes on one stone.
A small child in a fleece coat crouched at the water edge on a pebble beach, hills across the bay behind
The one they printed at sixteen by twenty.

The other days.

Every story here is one wedding or one session, start to finish.

A grey limestone church with a bell tower and a rose window under a flat wet sky, a guest under an umbrella at the doorAoife and CathalMoycullen, then the lake road · OctoberA bride in a robe lifting her wedding dress down from a hanger in front of a bright windowNiamh and RuairíOranmore, then Salthill · May
Check your dateSee what a day costs