Kula's Family. A Very Special Family Portrait Session.

I have been wanting to do this blog post for so long, because it really makes me smile.

Kula is one of the girls who works at Tomlus, and one night when I was there, I was chatting with her about her young family. She has four kids, the youngest was just a bub at three months old.

I told her that I love to photograph babies (and kids, and families), and asked her if she had any photos of her kids. She didn't. She didn't have any photos of anything, not even her wedding day.

I have always trawled through my parent's photo albums. I got my first camera when I was about 8 years old, and I have been taking photos ever since (copy paste in every photographer's bio, but it is true). I really love photos. Even as a kid, I never threw any out. If they were out of focus, badly lit, not flattering, they are still kept, not on display, but there because they are still a document of a time and a reminder of people, places, things.

I peer into the sepia and scratched faces of older relatives in the photos that are handed down to me. I wonder how their lives were. I seek out our physical similarities, and feel connected with them so much more than I could without that visual cue.

So photos are really important to me, and I wanted Kula to have some of her family.

The instructions for me were to go past the school, and to the new wooden house next to the mango tree.

It is idyllic as it sounds, and it is not. Kula, her husband Meli, and their four kids live in their house of one room and no electricity. It is a beautiful place to live, but I am sure it is not easy.

There are so may smiles, though.

The village voice signaled my arrival well before I reached the house lugging my camera gear on my back, and I arrived in time for little Tupa's bath. Unlike most babes here in Australia, Tupa gets bathed twice a day. He gets a coconut oil massage after his bath, and a teaspoonful of mushed up leaves from a plant that I didn't recognise, but he (and other Fiji babies) has had it since birth, for his good health.

If anyone knows this leaf, I am curious....

Now, tickle Mummy...

Teenage boys are so sweet, but they don't love having their photo taken and it seems to be a worldwide phenomenon...

Dad, Meli, is a farmer. He's one of the many guys who walk along Cuvu back road, and I'm sure hundreds of other roads in Fiji, with a whopping great machete. The kids fetched him from his work when we were ready for his photo.

Never even had a wedding photo....

I loved doing this photo session.

Really loved it!

Kula and her family now have a full set of prints, and a USB of our little afternoon together, and it makes me so happy that I can do that.

As I left, I saw some kids playing in the school yard (where the kindy that I visited with the kids is now located too). Their toys and games were recycling genius with beautiful cooperation and sharing.