In the past 10 days I have shot a wedding, a couples shoot, several commercial shoots ranging from accessories to entire building development sites, a party, a museum, several cars, ladies fashions over the past 200 years and a boudoir shoot. This has all taken me from Norfolk to Hampshire, to Wiltshire, Yorkshire and Scotland. Weirdly, at one point I had to collect some keys from someone – who turned out to be the lady I’d bought my house from! A good friend of mine, Matt Hart, remarked that;
 “Funny thing is people want this for a life but don’t realise how full on it can be ! Ha ha have fun”.

I think he added the last bit because he knows how much editing there is to do now! Some of my journeys across the UK I drove myself and others I was lucky enough to have a driver – although that was essential, because in between using my camera, I had several interviews to carry out. Some beds were really comfortable, with a great view; others were really cosy and warm. Some were spartan, and I’d wake up with an ache in my side. But it all really opened my eyes to how lucky I am. Once I went to work at the same place, after taking the same journey, day after day. Now I see different people and different views, sometimes with very little notice at all! Although I’m exhausted, its a good exhaustion, resulting from a hard but physically and creatively satisfying day. Consequently and ironically, I don;t have many pictures to share with you today as the majority are still sitting patiently on my hard drive waiting to be edited! But I will share a few from the Wiltshire couple shoot.

Which leads me on to a thought. Every single photo for that shoot was taken in the one barn (which had a roof and 2 walls. That wasn’t choice, we were forced to take shelter as within minutes of us all arriving, torrential rain slammed down – and continued to slam down for the remainder of the day, There was truly no hope that it would pass. And yet I found the forced static nature of the shoot to be challenging in a truly creative way. I’m really pleased with the results and I’m told my lovely couple are too (well, from the sneak peeks that they’ve seen). A while ago, the very lovely Tamara Peel told me it was a good exercise to shoot as many different photos as you could without moving your subject. Ok, the barn was just about large enough to move around – (you did have to jump over giant straw bales to do it, but it was possible) – but it still provided a great opportunity to see how I, the photographer, could move – instead of that easy to fall back option of moving your subject to a different space. It’s something I have been meaning to try – so although this ended up happening on a real shoot rather than a personal one, I have no doubt that working through the difficulties helped contribute to what really are, a lovely and natural set of photographs. Oh and so did cutie Bill the Dog, who was a gorgeous gooseberry on the couple shoot!

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