I recently had the pleasure of shooting lifestyle family portraits of a family who are very close to my heart. They have four children, three of which are triplets! Two of the triplets has special needs, Autism and Aspergers. Hats off to their mum and dad for raising four beautiful, well mannered and intelligent children.

I find that when photographing children with special needs it helps to do the shoot at an outdoor location where the children feel most comfortable playing. In this case it was at a local park and I think you can tell from the pictures above that all four children love playing there.

When photographing children with autism it’s often best to take a lifestyle approach, shooting from a distance and capturing them while they’re playing. Forcing them to stand infront of the camera and pose for shots, especially in a studio is a nigh on impossible task and will end up with unwanted shots and melt downs all round. In this case, the child with autism will not make eye contact with people and will get very stressed if forced to stand still and look at a camera. His mum was extremely pleased with the shots I took and also said that one of the shots of him playing was her favourite shot of him ever as it captured him naturally playing and having fun.