IN WHICH I TEACH MY FIRST SOLO FILMMAKING FOR PHOTOGRAPHERS WORKSHOPS, CLIMB A VOLCANO ABOVE THE CLOUDS AND THE YEAR COMES TO A CLOSE
It's 2018! How the heck did that happen. I'll have more things to say on the subject of New Year and what's to come in my end of year round-up post, which is coming soon! But for now it's my final instalment of 2017's Derbyshire Diaries! November and December... they were gosh darned quick but rather action packed!
TAKING CARE OF BUSINESS
November was a wedding-free month. Such a strange feeling after a packed wedding season, but it's always good to get a chance to focus on some other aspects of my business... particularly the challenge of taking on my first solo workshops!
burn baby burn
Every so often, when we have the time to do something really special the awesome Jo from The Couture Company and I get together to make a little magic. Over the years we have created a kawaii explosion and intergalactic themed styled shoot. This time we wanted to create something disco-inspired.
You can find out more about this shoot and the inspiration behind it over on one of my favourite sources of wedding inspiration, Mr & Mrs Unique!
Dresses & Jackets: The Couture Company
Models: Lillith-Vindictive La'Farce, Stephanie May , Holly Alana Williams
Hair and Make up: Nicola Honey
Make up and glitter: Wish Upon a Sparkle
Props: Grande Luxe Co
Hair accessories: Crown and Glory
Hair accessories and jewellery: Jane Bowler
Jewellery: Working clasp jewellery
Lighting/photography assistant: Kate Jackson
filmmaking for photographers
Behind the scenes photos by the wonderful Veronika Ward.
Over the past few years since I started developing my technique of blending filmmaking and photography I've been lucky enough to be invited to share my skills at conferences, workshops and photography festivals. It wasn't until November that I finally began to teach my own independent workshops, organised completely by myself. It was a huge amount of pressure, and honestly... I made myself a little sick with stress in the run-up. I've been to a couple of workshops in the past where I didn't really feel like the focus was on the attendees getting the best experience and value from the day, more about getting bums on seats and then out the door again at the end. My approach to speaking at events is always led by a desire to be as open and sharing as possible, bearing my soul in some ways in order to create a connection with the people I'm teaching and give them the best. I want to tell them about the challenges and anxieties that I experience as well as the joy, the mistakes as well as the good bits. It was hard work to pull it all together on this new and grander scale but oh. my. goodness. so worthwhile. So far I've run sold-out workshops in London and Sheffield with more to come in the next few weeks.
cosy club brunching with photographers
I've written about my love of Derby's Cosy Club before... with its ridiculously lovely window light and rich decor. It was about time I shared the love with some of my photographer pals, and ate some tasty brunch food at the same time. We chatted work and plenty of non-work related things, caught up and then did a spot of shooting. I took my 35mm film camera along, in order to challenge myself not to overshoot and to just enjoy creating without the pressure of looking back over what I was doing... just setting up the shot, slowing down for a moment, taking just one frame and then letting go and moving on. It's so therapeutic shooting film, and every time I get scans back I always tell myself I must do it more often. Maybe one day I will shoot a whole wedding on film if someone will let me...
november/december WORK
Seeing as I've not done as much in the way of shooting I've decided to combine the weddings and shoots I've done into one section for this round-up! Over November/December I shot three weddings, a family shoot and two engagement shoots.
photos
WIZARD PHOTOS (VIDEO)
Turn up the volume and grab some popcorn, here's my December wedding films! First off Lucy and William's festive wedding and then my lovely friend and real-life mermaid Rachel's wedding to her awesome fella Nick. To find out more about my video work click here.
LIFE, THE UNIVERSE AND EVERYTHING
It's a cliche but the festive period seems to come around faster every year. I'm no Scrooge though so I always look forward to being able to deck those halls, eat all the cheese and more than anything get that quality time with my family and friends. This year I got it into my head that heading on holiday just before Christmas was a good idea. It turns out that going away for five days and coming back and having to get all the food shopping and final prep done on Christmas Eve was a bit harder and more stressful than I anticipated but... my goodness was our holiday lovely. We headed out on a super cheap flight to La Palma, one of the Canary Islands. The island was absolutely magical, it's the least touristy of the islands and largely unspoiled, we found a wonderful Airbnb right by the sea and explored the volcanic landscape and black sand beaches. My highlight was driving way up the island's peaks, to where you can break through the line of the clouds... because it's so incredibly high up and because of the lack of light pollution on the island it's famed for its night skies and so the highest points are dotted with observatories. I've never seen anything quite like it!
THINGS I HAVE BEEN WATCHING
- Star Wars I really wish I'd loved The Last Jedi... or even liked it very much.
- Doctor Who A perfect ending for Capaldi - so excited for the new doctor now.
- Paddington 2 Even more charming and lovely than the first film.
- Elf Essential Christmas viewing!
- A Very Murray Christmas See above.
- All the Christmas episodes of Community See above
- Muppet Christmas Carol You get the idea.
- Basically all the Christmas things. Yes.
THINGS I HAVE BEEN LISTENING TO
If you've got Spotify, click the picture below to listen to my playlist of recent releases.
Featuring: Sufjan Stevens, Belle and Sebastian, The Spook School and Martha.
So there we have it... the last two months of 2017. Come back soon to read a bumper, 12 month edition about the whole year with heaps of photos, all the films, personal work and my playlist of the year!