September has rolled around and autumn is nipping slightly at the days beginnings and ends, whilst the glow of August lingers a little.

I gleefully always seem to be on catch up, on the back foot when it comes to sharing and posting photo work and jobs and berating myself for not posting in a timely manner or at all.

Its not that i dont want to, often i am caught between waiting for clients to post first then i share OR another reality which happened last night. I got home from a fabulous full days shoot, downloaded my images, checked them over, imported them to Lightroom and fell into bed. Knowing I had to drive 3 hours to a glorious destination today for a photo session tomorrow.

I'd love to pretend I have all these people, all these teams doing all the things that ensure smooth sailing of a small business but it's not, it's all me and if I'm knackered and dribbling then it's best I step away from a screen, put myself to bed and gear up for the next day. I'm certain you understand and it really helps saying it out loud.

So a snippet, shared from the gram of a recent epic 2.5 hour session in London with wonderful Lisa Berkovitz. Finding the light, the joy and the moments, laughter, positivity and connection….more on the gram, or here or both. Here's to a happy September x

Celebrating ‘Friendship’

March 2020

I couldn’t let this year pass without celebrating - every year I capture portraits of women which then become an exhibition with the idea of inspiring younger generations.

This year the arts project in Croydon is taking a break + I thought it would be great to do something a little more casual with the end results being shared online during the day of International Women’s Day. I set about thinking of friends who work in central London so I could be in one spot and it wouldn’t be too tricky for them to come to me with the theme ‘friendship’ + ask them for their own interpretation, feeling, word, colour - whatever it was that resonates with them.

so Friday 6th these gorgeous ladies below swung by for chatter, tea, pictures + let me take their photo.

I also had in my mind that I’m trying something new….challenging myself + stepping out of my comfort zone to shoot in a different way, to step back slightly, to allow the images to sit together, to continue for the month of March, to include portraits where the sitter isn’t smiling - I CANNOT even BEGIN to tell you HOW HARD that was!!! + produce a lovely project + as it turned out, was a very poignant theme.

Above a screen shot of my final selection of images, Below the final cut (or so I thought!)

I loved how everyone’s response was very different.

I wanted to bring people together with this project, to share their individual interpretation of “friendship” + to create portraits where I challenged myself in the image making. I am really good at getting right up close to people and in to their space to capture their essence + to be honest this has turned in to a process of challenging normality for me, for sitting on my own hands when I wanted to move in closer or select the happiest photo in the selection + publish on socials only my finely curated selection of happy.

What transpired was me forcing myself to choose images I loved but were perhaps a little more sullen than my usual work. Not soley to challenge myself but to look at the images with a different perspective, a different vantage point. That in itself challenged me to let go and reconnect to being happy with the images myself, whichever ones I chose + trusting the ‘process’.

It’s also been about a conversation Tanya and I had about the viewers experience and ‘seeing’ as the artist or photographer was at the precise moment in time and layering on top of that what we bring in the form of our own interpretation/feelings/emotions/life events to any art at any given moment.

My normal way of working is interacting, observing, creating ease between me, my camera and my sitter, recording just the right representation that I see in any given moment that I feel is an accurate representation of them - on Friday, I stepped back, I deliberately created space to see if it impacted the images I created, if it brought something else forward. So a project based on friendship and exploring how we see.

It’s interesting that looking through the selected images of each of my friends , the versatility of their emotions and our conversation serves as a great mixture to capture slightly different feelings in each picture + the selections below are to appease my controlling mind and show the fun we had!! :-) They also work really nicely as a set of images.

I’m continuing this project and excited to capture more friends through March - over on instagram you can also hear everyone’s interpretation of ‘friendship’ . Have a fab March + enjoy x