New Beginnings, Family Photos and Reminiscing.

I've just spent a couple of days in the Dales at my parents' house, enjoying Mum's homecooked food and walks around Grassington.  It's been good to have a bit of time to reflect and to think about the coming year.  I'm really excited about new beginnings in 2012 with the launch of Sarah Mason Photography, lots of lovely weddings and photographing families through the seasons. 


Over the past couple of days, we've been reminiscing and looking back at our old family photographs that Mum and Dad keep in an old Quality Street tin.  It brought back a lot of childhood memories of family holidays, summer picnics by the river and building igloos in the depths of winter.  But the majority of the photographs taken of me and my sister, Katy, are in the woods.

My Dad's a lumberjack - he's worked outdoors since he was 16.  At this point in my ramblings, I'd just like to point out that he has planted many more trees than he has felled! 

Dad getting a little bit of tractor help from my Grandad.

My love of the great outdoors has definitely been inherited from Dad.  In the summer holidays, me and Katy would often go and join him in the woods for the day.  We'd help by dragging the brash to the fire and collecting smaller twigs for kindling to take home.

 

Mum would have packed us potatoes in foil to put in the fire and we'd smother them in butter and salt and eat them for lunch.  For the rest of the time, we'd build dens, climb trees and depending on the season, Dad would take us foraging and we'd take a stash of blackberries, hazelnuts and sloe berries home.  We didn't sample the fruits of our labour on the latter for a few more years to come though!

 

  Me and Mum

A love of  the great outdoors and adventure, sprinkled with the magic of nature and the seasons are the qualities I want to achieve in my portrait photographs. 
I'm now planning going 'back to work' with my Dad to take a series of new images before he retires next year.  Bring on those fire baked potatoes!!