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Afternoon portraits - Learning to shoot portraits with the sony A7iii

Oct 16, 2018

Afternoon portraits - Learning to shoot portraits with the sony A7iii

Oct 16, 2018

Oct 16, 2018

Living a more sustainable life.

Oct 9, 2018

Living a more sustainable life.

Oct 9, 2018

Oct 9, 2018

How to photograph children in a natural way.

Sep 27, 2018

How to photograph children in a natural way.

Sep 27, 2018

Sep 27, 2018

We're going to Brighton to meet some farmers

Sep 20, 2018

We're going to Brighton to meet some farmers

Sep 20, 2018

Sep 20, 2018

How to create a cohesive colour palette for Instagram

Sep 18, 2018

How to create a cohesive colour palette for Instagram

Sep 18, 2018

Sep 18, 2018

Winter hashtag project

Sep 16, 2018

Winter hashtag project

Sep 16, 2018

Sep 16, 2018

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It's James, I know sometimes it's hard to tell who it is but most of the time it's Jo because she's amazing at writing and I'm not. ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
Anyway I wanted to write as we're a little bit broken at the moment but oh so grateful. Mainly because Margot has been sleeping on and off and sometimes sleeping in our bed. #badback
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We've been working all hours on the course that starts next week and we're so grateful for the people that have signed up, we can't wait to get stuck in. ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
In the middle of all this our middle boy Logan has started to struggle with anxiety. He’s only 10 and has this year been diagnosed with a processing disorder and dysgraphia to name a few. The combination of which are really upsetting his emotional balance. To us this looks like an upset, anxious boy most days after school and reluctance in the mornings. He needs lots of care and attention and even more careful treading. We’re working with him on it and learning everyday.
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Lots of balancing going on round here at the moment, lots of thinking and writing. ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
It’s all good though, slowly slowly. ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
Gratitude is so useful right now.

Best bit of advice that I could give anyone for photography is learning light, it's such a simple thing but the power it has in an image, can really affect the viewer emotionally! How amazing is that? ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
Here’s one I made earlier. ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
Pearl. She’s ace.

Chick chick chick chick chicken
Lay a little egg for me
Chick chick chick..... ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
Okay, I won’t bore you with the rest of the song. 🙄 just made me giggle that James suggested some song lyrics for a beautifully meaningful post tonight, but let’s face it.. they’re chickens, great chickens and right now.. our heads are permanently filled with either nursery rhymes, Disney or Mr Tumble 🤷🏼‍♀️ ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
Why do they stick so much? ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
We have this thing in our house where if you’re the first one up (usually james) you have to pick a good song to play through @sonos to wake the rest of the house up! ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
This past week has been quite the eclectic mix up. ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
Lion king - circle of life (very loud)
I’ve had the time of my life - dirty dancing (this morning’s choice)
Back for good -take that (always a favourite!) ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
You know, all the classics! ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
Which sound would you prefer to be woken up to in the morning? I’m guessing none of those, you’re all far too cool! ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
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A lot of this weekend has been spent slowing things the heck down. After a few ‘spinny’ weeks I feel like we needed time to relax, time to review and recollect ourselves a little bit. ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
Who’s betting we get colds now we’ve had chance to calm things down? 🤧 Always the case! ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
James has really spent a lot of time reflecting. Historically, at this time of year, we would start to look over the years work and almost always, his sensitive soul would feel as though we could’ve done better, or didn’t try hard enough? Why do we do that to ourselves so naturally? ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
This year has been full of changes for us, we hired a super star mentor (kayte from @simpleandseason ) and with her help, got our sh*t together and have started to move forwards more than ever before. ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
So this October, rather than fearing the usual feelings taking over, he’s enjoyed rediscovering his film Work from the past 4 years. ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
You can see it here @meliamelia.film
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And do you know what, it’s so blooming good and I’m so very very proud of him, I think he may have even said he thought it was ‘quite good’ 🙀
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Kindness is harder to bring to yourself than others. ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
But starting with kindness will ALWAYS lead to good things, stronger, more genuine things.
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Thanks to all of you who have shown us kindness this year, it means such a lot.

#whpkindness

Just as we sat down to start work today the power was cut off to our house. Felt a little bit like some kind of universal sign that maybe we should take some time out for ourselves (or that’s what we said to ease the guilt 🤫) ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
Spent four long hours listening to the driving rain outside and the cosy fire lit inside and slowly felt our muscles relaxing and our minds opening. ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
James brought out a book which he’d kindly been given when he started out as a photographer and felt kind of worthwhile to look through it today.
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The book was one of Don MCcullins books ‘in England’ ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
A great quote I read today from him was -
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‘I have more of a relationship with the subject than I do with my camera equipment. To me, camera equipment is like a tin of shoe polish and a brush - I use that as a tool, but my basic camera is my emotion and my eyes. It's not anything to do with the wonderful cameras I use’ ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
He knows his stuff that Don. ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
If you love portraiture with grit and which shows real life and times, I’d definitely look him up. ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
Not such a bad surprise day off after All! ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀

We’ve been talking a lot this week about the bigger kids growing up and dreaming up what that could look like. ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
It’s all a little bit blurry at the moment.. ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
With it being mental health day yesterday it seemed as good a time as any to make sure our eldest knows that we will always do our best to guide him through these next unknown teen years so we made some promises to each other to stay open. ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
As a child I struggled a lot with low self esteem and without placing too much blame, often felt as though I wasn’t good enough. It’s taken a lot of years to shake off those childhood presets and I’m determined I won’t have the same effect on my sensitive sons.
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Getting the balance right is always such a delicate process with our kids. I do hope he can trust me when I say I’m going to do everything I can to support him and give him the skills he needs to trust in his own choices and be accepting and kind to himself, regardless of other people’s judgements. ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
Because these kids of ours are small miracles, our next generations and they deserve to be given the kind of self belief that allows them to care for others and to lead us all to more open and genuine relationships.

Here is Emilene. She’s a special human inside and out.

‘As a child my dreams ran wild
Through fields of disobey
Wandering, wandering
Wanting it all
A curious soul astray’
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When we met Emily we just knew she was something special. As free as a whisp in the wind, she wanders through, brushing past you with her engaging smile. She’s wiser than her years and carries grace in her heart. Think you’ll be seeing more of Emily here over time. ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
I may or may not have mentioned today 🤷🏼‍♀️ that we were interviewed for a podcast last week while we were in Brighton by the wonderful humans at @shoot.edit.chat.repeat ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
I’ve only half listened to it back ( Margot’s wasn’t keen on hearing and not seeing us 🙄) but would love it if you have a listen and see what you think? The link is in our stories 👆🏻
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And if you didn’t see it, we sent out answers in a newsletter to most of your questions from Monday about photography frustrations. Thanks so much to all of you who asked something. I hope our answers were helpful to you. 👍🏻

Having spent most of the day sat by the fire, writing words and then more words for different work related things, I realised something.
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I’m no longer sat in a box working for people who don’t give a crap about me.
I can choose my hours and even if I often feel the guilt, I can work around our kids.
I’m here with the dog and a cup of tea and It’s totally up to us what happens with our life and our business. ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
Yes at times it’s kick you in the stomach scary. ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
And No I still don’t like doing our tax return and want to hide under a table when the accountant calls ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
But on the whole we are able to work as hard as we like, for us. For our family and for the people that want us to work for them. ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
It’s hard and relentless and often comes mixed with a sense of ‘Are we sure about this?’ ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
But what I can say is that whenever that imposter feeling comes to play I can tell it to ‘feck right off!’ ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
We’re doing the best we can. ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
As I’m sure so many of you are. Doing your best and actually giving a shit about HOW you do it and WHO you do it for matters so much. ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
Here’s to more days writing by the fire and remembering to feel gratitude for being able to make our own choices. ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀