Welcome back & Paris

 

I have certainly neglected this space over the past year, which I'm sad about, but at this stage in life I've not yet learnt how to focus on lots of things all at once. I want to use this space, to have a way of processing and sharing life, rather than photos staying imprisoned in hard drives and stories kept to ourselves.

A few big things have happened this year, we did our first peak season of wedding photography, moved churches, moved houses, joined churches, both started school, new jobs, new community. We've spent a lot of great time with our families and had the chance to travel to sunnier shores. 

At this moment in time I'm not running craft workshops, actually all my craft things are in storage in a friends attic (hopefully not for too long!). So the focus of this blog will change accordingly. It'll be more photos and more personal, illustrating this season.

I thought I'd start by backtracking to last April when we took a trip to Paris, the first time I'd ever been. It was my Christmas present from Matt. The trip happened at the end of one of the busiest seasons of our marriage, we were really tired and spent the first afternoon feeling a bit guilty about being asleep in our hotel room. I had just started reading Hemingway's 'A movable feast' it's all about his time in Paris in the 20's. So everything we saw had a slightly nostalgic shine.

Life Update & California Pictures

Hello readers, hullooooo.

I've had a bit of a break from blogging recently, things have been a'happening and I wanted to fill you in. If your here for craft tutorials this isn't the one for you. 

This academic year started with a lot of uncertainty. In July Matt left his job and I finished Uni, so we started with no jobs and feeling unsure whether or not we should renew our flats contract for the year. The possibility of having over a £12000 deficit was a scary one. 

I did a marketing internship September to November and then in November both of us got temp jobs. Matt as a delivery driver and me as a Bridal stylist. We see these jobs as absolute provision. It's certainly been challenging on the days when we only briefly see each other as our shifts are at different times and then I work all weekend. But we have learnt a lot, I think mostly we have seen all the things we take for granted. Our compassion for the families who do this constantly, and our frustration at how big businesses justify exploiting their workforce has definitely stirred up something within us. We are privileged to know it has an end date.

This brings me to the next stage of this year. We knew our jobs would only be until April so we planned ahead and have been living on 50% of our budget (if you know Matt you know he's a pro at these spreadsheet things). This means by April we will no longer have a rent and bills deficit, in fact, by the end of April we will have saved enough to pay all our bills until September. 

Which brings us to the exciting part, from May to September we will be doing photography full time, self employed and working to our own schedule. We are so so excited, we can see friends and family we haven't seen for ages, travel a bit and be FREEEE. In September Matt will start training for Ordination and I will take over the day to day runnings of the business.

We are both really looking forward to this time, meeting new people in new places, getting to capture life changing moments and then only needing our laptops to finish the job, from say, the south of France or somewhere equally warm and beautiful. 

We are hoping to travel around lots and fill our summer with beautiful weddings. If you know someone getting married who wants their wedding photographed in a beautiful natural way, let us know. It's soon to be officially what we do ;)

Anyway, we recently came back from California. We had an absolutely brilliant time preparing for Matt's sisters wedding and then doing some roadtrippin' on our own. We want to go back ASAP <3 comment-3--="" nbsp="">

A year on: Review of Jo Totes camera bag

I've not blogged for a while, but whilst Christmas trees are still allowed in photos I wanted to share a review of the Siena bag by Jo Totes which I've now owned for a year.

Last christmas I was given the Siena camera bag made by Jo Totes. It was a surprise gift from Matt and an investment into future photography. At first I was worried about also using it as my day to day handbag as every other bag of this style I had owned broke after a few months, but it was too pretty to only use for shooting weddings. I'm really pleased to say it's held up amazingly.

After a year it is certainly the best camera, and everyday, bag I’ve ever owned. When I first heard of Jo Totes bags I couldn’t find a review for Siena anywhere. It’s hard to tell from photos alone how much you can practically fit in a bag. I’ve taken some photos to show how much kit you can fit in the bag and it still close. After nearly a year of everyday use the signs of wear are the most obvious in the corners, but even that is negligible. This bag is brilliant and perfect for carrying around a camera for everyday life, filling it with kit or just taking your books to uni. 

The adjustable felt sections velcro to anywhere inside the bag, including a big ipad section at the front. 

This is what fits in the bag, when photographing somewhere the camera stays around my neck freeing up space for another lens in my bag.

This post was in no way sponsored by Jo Totes, I just reaaaaallyy love this bag!

If you are looking for a camera bag I would highly recommend this, you can find it here. They offer international shipping :)

Happy New Year!