Falling Back In Love

I remember the day a few years ago, I woke up and realised the business was causing more angst than joy. I’d fallen out of love. Not with the taking photographs side of it, but the stresses of running a small business were keeping me awake at night. I felt I’d let it down, that I’d ignored some niggles I’d had. I was trying to do too much, and trying to be too much to too many people. Something had to give.

We’ve talked about it before on our blog, about our business being our first baby before Olive. I don’t want that to sound overly dramatic, but it can really feel like that as a small business owner can’t it? These businesses we’ve grown and nurtured over the years. Those all consuming first few months. You might hit the terrible twos, I know I did when I was running the business by myself before Suzi joined, and I really wasn’t sure what direction to take. I know for us, that we’ve taken a few ‘wrong’ parental decisions along the way, but it’s a learning curve. And a few years ago we had to make a difficult decision about not doing weddings anymore, but we knew we wanted to grow the family photography, retreats and the working with brands side to Sarah Mason Photography. We looked at what we could/should be doing to feed this little business, and it can be quite a scary proposition going it alone, believing in it, and doing what’s right for you. They need nurturing, care, and good old TLC. I still have the odd broken night’s sleep worrying about the first baby. It had been pulling me in so many different directions. But when I woke up the other morning, I realised that, over a period of time, I had fallen back in love.

There have been a few things that have been helping. I’ve realised I need quite a lot of structure to my days (as much as I may have fought this feeling).

Morning Walks.

Monthly, weekly , and daily planning in my Ponderlily Planner (I love the layout).

Making space for cooking good food, and actually building it into my planner.

Trying not to fall into the comparison trap, which can be hard I know!

Doing projects and creating something daily (I’m going to write a blog about this over the next couple of weeks with some ideas you might like to try).

I feel like I’m feeding this baby again, and giving it some heart and soul food!

I guess it’s all stuff I already knew, but it’s been about allowing myself to do them. Even my Frazzle intake is down (my go to stress crisp!)

This year, our word to work towards is CLARITY. Clarity in what we’re offering as a business. 2019 is all about building on our Filmmaking and our Family Photography work, and growing our Retreats and community. And leaving space for experimenting, project work, and writing our book! But more importantly, above all this, is making time for adventures with Olive.

It’s good to talk business. It can sometimes feel lonely out there, but having fellow small business owners to chat to can really help. I know it’s helped us. Just the other day we were sat running some photography retreat ideas by our friend Hannah as we had a cup of tea. We chatted about her business. She said something that really resonated with me ‘I look after it, and it looks after me’.

So we’ve had an idea brewing for a while, we’re going to launch a new retreat - The Business Of Photography. We’ll take you through what we’ve learnt over these last ten years, how to find, and then work with your ideal clients. Finding clarity in where you are right now, where you’d like to be, and how to get there. The 3 P’s - Portfolios, Pricing, Products. This is for you if you’re just on the cusp, or thinking about setting up your portrait photography business. Or maybe you’ve been running your business for a while, but feel you need to give it some of your attention, a warm hug, so you can fall back in love.

Does this sound like something you’d be interested in? We’d love to hear your thoughts. You can email us here if you want any more information before we launch the retreat. And if you think anyone could benefit from this, please do feel free to share the post.

Ethel & Mabel

Ethel and her sister Mabel, have such a sense of old world charm and style. I started documenting their life, (well actually at the time it was just Ethel), back in early 2015. I’d heard Ethel liked a cup of tea, and I wanted to record a Saturday morning with her at her house. If you’ve been following my new project on Instagram, I guess she was my first Tea For Two! And then, a year later, Mabel came into the world. Spending a morning with them was the first step into filmmaking for me, and the film I made still has such a special place in my heart. Roll on three years, and I went back up to document their morning together recently. I hope they’ll cherish these photos of them in their childhood home as much as I’ve loved documenting their life there. My style and edit choices might have changed a bit, but the sentiment remains the same. Here’s Ethel and Mabel, a story in mornings, so far.

It starts with Ethel. When I first arrived at her house, she took me by the hand, sat me down, and started to recount stories about her summer holiday. Her morning unfolded - reading books, dunking buttery biscuits into steaming cups of tea, all to the soundtrack of Saturday morning tunes on the record player.  

And then, along came Mabel….

And our latest shoot together…

This is what we love about our portrait shoots, documenting these moments in life that may feel insignificant at the time, but looking back, are so poignant.  Beauty in the small things, beauty in the everyday.

If you’d like us to document your family life, we’ve just added some new packages. If you’d like to take a look, just click on the photo link below. We’d love to tell your story.

Stories Of The Everyday - Frames

For us, in our photographs, we’re always tying to create a feeling of depth. We’re taking images in 2D of a 3D scene, and using various compositional elements in photos can really help to recreate this. So we thought it would be great to experiment with one of these elements for our next Stories Of The Everyday monthly theme.

You have the frame of your actual image, but we wanted to explore FRAMES within that frame. We’re thinking trees, windows, mirrors, shooting through objects, using people in the foreground, doorways, curtains. Once you start seeing frames around you, both indoors and out, it can really help bring your images to life. We wanted to share a few examples that you might like to try. We hope it gives you a bit of inspiration to go out there and try your own frame shots. We’d love to see your photos this month using the hashtag #storiesoftheeveryday_frames

Thanks to our friend Dean for braving the cold so I could take the following shots, using the frame of the car windscreen.

And switched focus between the two for a different feel.

I used the frame of the doorway into Olive’s room to take a before and after shot…

You will often see this technique below on TV or in films. When 2 people are having a conversation, the camera position is often over the shoulder of one of the characters. When the conversation shifts, the shot changes to over the shoulder of the other character. It’s a great technique to lead your eye in, frame, and create depth. I framed over Suzi’s shoulder with the washing clothes horse blurred out in the background left.

Framing can be coupled with other compositional elements, for example, leading lines…

And I love how you can subtly frame a subject by shooting through something. More often than not for me, this is leaves. I have the leaves pretty much touching the lens, get right in there!

There’s nothing subtle about this frame, those silver birch trees made the perfect window.

If you’ve just got your phone, try it there too. I held my phone right up to this wooden post to shoot through to the view on the opposite side of the valley.

We went for a little walk around our village looking for different frames. We knew there were some strong stone frames at the church, but I found this frame of light too.

Once you start seeing frames, it can really lift your photography. You’ve probably already been using them, but maybe this post will whet your appetite for trying a few more! We hope you find it useful, we’d love to hear your thoughts, and of course, see your photos! The hashtag to use on Instagram is #storiesoftheeveryday_frames. We’ll do a round up of all our shots at the end of the month.