The studio in Ferreiras: why a prepared space changes the session

For a long time I photographed in families' homes. I learned a lot that way and I still take some of those sessions, but I also learned where the limits are. In a house, the light is whatever you have. The heating is whatever exists. And there is always a doorbell, a dog, a drying rack or a sofa you can't get out of the frame. Building my own studio in Ferreiras solved all of that at once.

The first thing I notice families feel when they walk in is the warmth. The studio is heated steadily, well above what is comfortable for a dressed adult — and that isn't comfort, it is technique. A newborn only relaxes and sleeps deeply when they are warm. A cold baby wakes, cries and curls up tense. Half the success of a newborn session is decided by the thermostat, long before I pick up the camera.

Then there is the quiet. No doorbell, no neighbours, no television in the next room. There is soft music and white noise when it helps. In a space like that a baby can move from one pose to the next without startling, and the parents settle too — and calm parents are a genuine part of the result.

Light is the third reason, and probably the most important one for me. In the studio the light is always the same: the light I choose. That means a session at nine in the morning in January looks like a session at four in the afternoon in August, and a rainy day changes nothing. No studio session has ever been rescheduled because of weather. For a family with a twelve-day-old baby and one possible window, that predictability is worth a great deal.

There is a practical side that saves families work, too: the wardrobe. I keep blankets, bonnets, babygrows, little outfits, crowns, baskets, chairs, backdrops in several tones and maternity dresses in a range of sizes. Nobody coming to a maternity session needs to buy anything or agonise over what to wear — we try things on and choose together. If you bring something of your own, a blanket knitted by a grandmother or the babygrow dad wore, we work it in, and it usually becomes the favourite photograph of the set.

The space is designed for waiting, as well. There is a sofa, water, somewhere to change a nappy and somewhere to feed in privacy. That reads like a footnote, but when a session runs three or four hours it is the difference between a calm afternoon and an afternoon of logistics. Siblings have somewhere to sit and play, and they don't have to stay still and silent for hours.

The studio is in Ferreiras, in the Space Beautiful building, Loja G, just off Avenida 25 de Abril — minutes from Albufeira, easy to reach from the A22, with parking at the door. I welcome families from all over the Algarve and from further afield, often people on holiday nearby, and the location was chosen for exactly that reason: getting here shouldn't be the hard part of your day.

I still photograph outdoors, and some sessions only make sense on a beach or in the countryside. But when it comes to a baby in their first fourteen days, a maternity session in the middle of winter, or a smash the cake with a cake, a set and a child deciding what happens next, the studio wins every time. Not because it is prettier — because it is predictable. And predictability is what frees me to pay attention to what actually matters: the people inside the frame.