3 Photographers, 3 Countries, 3 Weeks - Week 3

So our phone project came to an end - and here are our final week's images.  It was lovely to spend time with Emma and Rachel again, albeit in the ether.  You can read about how the project started here, along with our first week's photos, and look at our second week here.

Our third week's words were long, joy, odd, fly, beyond, hide & discover.....

3 Photographers, 3 Countries, 3 Weeks - Week 2.

Yesterday I wrote about the phone photo project I've just completed with 2 photographer friends Rachel Hein & Emma Godfrey, and shared our photographs from week one.  You can read about it here.  Looking at all our photos from the first couple of weeks, they definitely reflect the beginning of spring and the start of a new season.  I think if we were doing it this week, at least mine and Rachel's shots would be a bit misty and smoggy.

I've really enjoyed putting our different combinations of photos together.  Sometimes we interpreted the word very differently, other times we'd choose a very similar colour scheme, or use a lot of space in our images.  The week's words were:  New, Forever, Point, Almost, Green, Dream & Made.

We were obviously all feeling a bit hungry on the last day!  I'll post week 3 of our project early next week.  Have a great weekend x

3 Photographers, 3 Countries, 3 Weeks.

I like to find time for new projects.  Lately some of you will know I've been experimenting with time lapse photography and filming, which I'm really enjoying - you can see the latest experiment here.  A couple of years ago, I set myself a 365 challenge, which involved taking a photo everyday for a year.  Some days were definitely easier than others.  I know I'm often out and about taking pictures for other folk, but it became a challenge in itself taking one a day for myself.  I felt a massive sense of achievement when I finished!

I'd been thinking about ideas for another project, and I thought it would be good fun to do this with a couple of photographer friends.  I met Rachel & Emma 3 years ago on a fantastic A-Z of Photography & Business course run by Aspire.  Nestled in their Cumbrian retreat, these folk really know how to get you on track, and it came at exactly the right time for my re-brand.  So with the 3 of us meeting 3 years ago, and with us living in 3 different countries (Rachel is based in Edinburgh, and Emma in Chesières, Switzerland), the project idea came about.  I've been using my iPhone more and more when I'm out walking, and I'd noticed that Rachel & Emma were doing the same.  Instead of just randomly taking photos of anything, which could have been interesting too, I thought it might be a good idea to have words for each day, and then see how we interpreted them.  We did it for 3 weeks, each taking the lead on a week, and choosing the words of the day.  I'll do a couple more blog posts for week 2 & 3, but here are the photos from our first week.  The words were:  Light, Wild, Tree, Sky, Lines, Eat & Cosy.

I've also posted these photos on my Facebook Page with different layouts to see how the images could look together on the pages of a book.  Maybe this is another project!

Kate Bush - Before The Dawn

You've probably all heard by now, as the news seems to be everywhere, from national headlines to social media feeds.  I was having a bit of a lie in, thinking about breakfast before a Friday morning walk, when I looked at my Facebook feed.  There it was on the official Kate Bush Facebook page - playing live in August & September!  The first time playing live in 35 years.  I do apologise to any non Kate converts, but this is BIG news, and it found me leaping out of bed to grab my wallet to try and secure a ticket!  If I'd read the post in full I'd have seen that these are not on sale until Friday.

From the first time I saw her on Top Of The Pops performing Wuthering Heights, I was sold.  Smash Hits posters of Kate were blu-tacked between Blondie, Depeche Mode, and a few Athena numbers in my room. She's always been around.  Although favourite albums sometimes jostle for places in my top ten list, Hounds Of Love is always right up there.  There were lots of things going on in my life when this album was released, and it became a significant soundtrack to those times.  Listening to certain tracks from it can take me right back there.  I was the first one in my class to buy it, and everyone was handing me blank tapes to record it!

I have a dream list of people I'd like to photograph, and Kate is right at the top of it.  I can't see that this will ever happen, and I think I might be too excited, scared, flummoxed that I'd have stage shutter fright anyway. But maybe I might just get to see her play live..

A wedding stationery shoot with Julia Ogden

A little while ago, I had the pleasure of working with local artist Julia Ogden.  I've long been an admirer of her work and we have a couple of her prints in the house, so when she asked me to take images of her new wedding stationery, I immediately knew it would be a beautiful shoot.

Julia is a fellow nature lover, and she's really inspired by the changing seasons and woodland.  There's a real joy and serenity to her work as you can see from these beautiful birdies. I was really excited when she said she was about to start offering a bespoke wedding stationery service, as I knew how beautiful and unique it would be.  Her stationery is a combination of hand drawn illustrations and text.  Julia then hand silk screen prints the wedding stationery.  Save the date, invites, bunting, order of service, place names, thank you cards, you name it!

I'll shut up and let Julia's work do the talking - starting with that gorgeous bunting!

And here's just a small selection of Julia's other work....

I thought I'd just share this new piece of work too.  I commissioned Julia to make a sign for some upcoming wedding exhibitions, and she came up with this gorgeous design, printed onto wood...

If you'd like to see more of Julia's work or wedding stationery collections - here's her website.  She also teaches other people how to draw.  I'm going to be taking the plunge next week when Julia runs a painting and drawing workshop in our studio on the 19th March - really looking forward to hopefully finding my inner painter.  You can find out more information here.  Maybe see you there!

A Walk To Start The Week

Before I started work yesterday, I took a little trip up to Nutclough Woods.  However many times I go, there will always be new things to see.  It's the type of place you can sit and ponder for a while with a cup of tea.  All the birds were flitting around, and it was a good feeling to see so many buds on the trees, and green shoots finding their way through the undergrowth.

If anyone recognises the hat I found, it's waiting for you in the woods!

Addicted to Pinterest!

Morning all, Suzi here! 

For my very first blog post, I'm going to talk about my love of Pinterest which has really captured my imagination and taken over my life a little lately.

I have had a personal Pinterest account for a while now but it's only in the past few months that I've really caught the Pinterest bug and I have to say I'm a little bit addicted!  What a great place it is - such a hub of inspiration and so many beautiful things to see and pin.  I started using it properly in the run up to Christmas to look for ideas on how to package my Christmas presents and also for some ideas of gifts I could make.   There were just so many great projects on there so I started a 'Christmas' and a 'To Make' board.  These are some beautiful images of gingersnap cookies taken from the Always with Butter blog for Kinfolk magazine - gorgeous!

Gingersnaps - from Always with Butter blog

It was in November when I was getting ready for a 'Styled Shoots' training course with Aspire Photography Training in the Lake District that Sarah and I started exploring the possibilities for using Pinterest for Sarah Mason Photography.  Prior to the course the trainers created a shared 'styled shoots' board where the students could pin up images for particular shoots they had in mind.  Such a good idea so we now have an inspiration board for Sarah's 'Dream for Life' shoots. 

Amy's Teddy Bears' Picnic shoot

There's also a 'Portraits of Little Ones' board with photographs from previous shoots and a few others we just love.  We've also started to create a 'Displaying your photographs' board with fun and different ideas on how to showcase your images whatever the space.

Displaying images - via Mandy Beck on Pinterest

We're going to be launching some new exciting products in the future so keep an eye out!

As the wedding season is fast approaching, we've been busy organising our Pinterest boards, creating new ones and re-pinning lots of fab stuff.  We have boards with beautiful wedding dresses, wedding styling ideas, wedding flowers, wedding cakes, even wedding feet!  We're just starting out with this so there are lots more pins to come.  Please check them out if you're planning a wedding and looking for some inspiration or if you're just interested in having a peek.  And feel free to re-pin.

Sara & Jimi's beautiful spring wedding

It's not just wedding boards, there are also boards for 'By the sea', 'Seasons', 'Home', 'Flowers', 'It's in the trees', 'Nature's Beauty', 'Art & Illustration' and many more beautiful things we just love.  Lots of fun stuff to see and pin so come and follow us at  Sarah Mason Photography on Pinterest and pin away to your heart's content!

I'm off now for a bit of 'pinterest' time before work.  Happy pinning and happy Wednesday :-)