Just A Family Portrait at Sheen Falls Lodge
I remember most of our family portrait sessions – we’ve done nearly 200 over the past 12 years at Sheen Falls. Obviously all are important – but I wouldn’t be one for dwelling on them much afterwards. Those images mean more to the family than they do to me. That said, there’s usually some kind of identifier in my head, that helps me remember them all.
This time it was the hotel’s vintage Buick year of registration – 1936.
The story begins in 2019, when we met a family who’d come to Sheen Falls Lodge to celebrate “Dad’s retirement”.
After a few emails back and forth across the Atlantic, we’d planned what we normally do – some family time around the Falls with smaller group portraits in the grounds before dinner. But one of my trademark shots is the whole family gathered around the Sheen Falls vintage Buick.
Three generations of a family marking a special moment with the Buick keeping them all together. You can ask anyone at the hotel, I love that car – I really love it – so when I can get an opportunity to create an image like this I will.
I remember ‘Dad’ was immediately taken with it. “We were both registered in 1936,” he said. Brilliant.
I didn’t know then that ‘Dad’ happened to be Justice Anthony M. Kennedy — Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court for over thirty years. Or that his retirement was a global news story.
It didn’t – and shouldn’t ever – matter. My brief is the same for every family portrait, however well known they might be: find the connection and create something the family will love.
They did. And six years later I was made up to receive an email asking permission to put it in print. It’s now published in Life, Law & Liberty — Justice Kennedy’s memoir, Simon & Schuster, 2025.
I don’t do awards or name drops. Photography is for the client.
I wince at the “ooh look at me, I covered Cinderella’s wedding” culture.
There’s a reason photographers choose a career behind the camera – we’ve no need for the recognition.
Apart from this one time.
Look Ma… I’m in the Library of Congress.!
