Hello!
If you'd like the read the ramblings of a photographer on the go you're in the right place..... I'll try and devote as much time to it as Bridget did to her diary.... watch this space!
I love I love I love my calendar girls…..
Well done to the first volunteers for my charity calendar for braving it and coming into the studio last week to get their photographs taken. Stella (www.beautybystella.co.uk) and Kat (www.jubileeteam.com) - you were great fun and we got some fantastic images.
I started putting the feelers out early last year about us all getting together to raise some money for a local charity in the style of the original Rylstone Women’s Institute calendar of 1999. And although I initially had a bit of a job persuading the girls they really wanted to remove items of their clothing (in the best possible taste!) for the shoot I now seem to be inundated with people willing to take part – so much so that the calendar will now feature girls on one side and boys on the other.
The calendar will be on sale from October and all proceeds will be going to the Bosom Pals Appeal, run by the Southend Hospital Charitable Foundation. You can read more about the tremendous work they’re doing here http://www.sh-cf.org .
Submitted: 24/06/2010
No time for jetlag!
Back from a month away in Australia and it seems the best cure for jetlag is to shoot four weddings in nine days.... and boy did the body clock spring right back into action! So, congratulations to Maggie and Paul, Gemma and Charlie, Lyndsey and Mark and Sally and Paul. The sun shone and the rain poured in equal measures and you were all gorgeous! Thank you for keeping me busy so I didn't miss the Ozzie rellies too much! I'll be posting some photos soon of the new addition to our family, baby Grace, but in the meantime take a look at my Facebook page for some images from the last two weeks.
Submitted: 12/06/2010
Congratulations….
.... to Kate and Stuart who beat off competition at the Cliffs Pavilion Wedding Fair on Sunday to win a wedding, all expenses paid, thanks to the Cliffs Pavilion and Southend Radio. The lucky couple, along with the other five finalists, took part in a series of challenges culminating in a 'Mr & Mrs' style quiz to battle it out for the prize which included, venue hire and wedding breakfast, wedding dress, suit hire, chair covers, invitations, engraved wedding rings, flowers for the ceremony, wedding cake, a luxury wedding car, outfits for the mothers of the bride and groom, and last but not least wedding photography by yours truly.
Submitted: 27/04/2010
My latest adventure…..
When my friend and I chose Budapest as a destination for a quick getaway we were looking forward to going somewhere completely different outside the usual Euro zone. What we didn’t know was that an Icelandic volcano near Eyjafjallajoekull, which had been dormant for 200 years, had other plans for us and our 3 day break ended with a 5 day hike across 6 countries to get back to the UK.
I think we were sitting on the banks of the Danube having a beer on Friday lunchtime last week (the second day of our trip) when it dawned on us that we had better start making alternative plans to get home rather than risk turning up at the airport on Saturday for the Easyjet flight which was scheduled to leave that evening.
So we joined an ever increasing queue at the train station and felt quite pleased with ourselves that it only took a couple of hours to get booked on a train the next morning to Verona in Italy, via Austria and Germany, where we’d pick up an overnight connection to Paris. All in all about a 28 hour train journey. Piece of cake right? Problem solved right? No.
The first leg of the journey to Verona was reassuringly straightforward and we heard of fellow passengers’ similar plights. But our luck was about to run out as we had no seat reservations for the overnight Verona to Paris sleeper train and no amount of pleading could stop us being ordered off the train late at night, with the prospect of no accommodation booked, and the ticket inspector clearly not interested in helping us out. That was probably the lowest point in the trip as we struggled to comprehend how someone could have been so unhelpful in what was now becoming an international crisis – a jobsworth who we think added another 2 days to our travels.
Fortunately, we eventually found some accommodation and gained a friend that evening, a girl who was travelling on her own from Bucharest and was trying to get back to Dublin. So now there were three of us and we thought we’d hire a car and drive to Calais to take our chances of a crossing there. But there were no hire cars available and the websites kept crashing and we were running out of ideas. That evening was a bit of a turning point as we realised that we just weren’t going to be able to move on the next day and so we resolved to stay another night and enjoy the sights of Verona which is such a beautiful place. And we actually relaxed and had some fun, almost forgetting that we were stranded as we strolled around the city.
Onwards and upwards the next stage of the journey was mapped out by available trains rather than geographical planning and we left Verona on Monday afternoon for an overnight stop in Zurich, and seats booked for Zurich to Paris, via Milan, on Tuesday, and a Eurostar service back to London on Thursday evening.
But the best news was yet to come as my husband had been able to get a return ticket on Le Shuttle with the car and picked us up on our arrival in Paris on Tuesday night, driving us to Arras which is about one hour from Calais for the last overnight stay before making our crossing from Calais to Folkestone on Wednesday morning. Celebration beers were cracked open that night as we reminisced about the events of the previous days.
Looking back now there were loads of high points and only a couple of low ones. We were fortunate enough to have enough funds to repatriate ourselves and family and friends back home who helped out with arranging accommodation from a distance, but I know there are people who have been stuck at airports with no choice other than to stay put and wait for flights to resume.
We were able to get enough information about what was going on by watching BBC World and from people back home but had to make decisions based on what was available at the time rather than the most cost-effective or logical route home.
It’s been an incredible journey, quite literally. We’re all so relieved to be home but in a strange way glad to have had the experience.
Submitted: 24/04/2010
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