(photo taken by Martin as a lighting test while photographing an event this month)
I’m trying to keep my new years promise, to get back to documenting my life through this blog again. It’s morphed into many different forms over it’s 7 years of existence – from Fashion shoots to photo diary to travel diary and now a bit of a mixed bunch of all of it thrown together – adding in now my professional career as a full-time photographer. A sort of documentation of how I’ve changed and evolved over the years. I read this blog like I would read an old journal, fondly remembering a different me in a different time. So I write again, for the future me, in 2 years, 5 years 10 years, so I can remember what it was like being in the thick of building a business and hustling my way through my mid twenties.
February, oh February. Madness, stupidity, achievements, whirlwind, exciting, exhausting February.
Just to give you an idea – in February we shot three weddings, and eleven miscellaneous shoots (a mixture of portraits for Cast in Colour and branding sessions for small businesses for incolour.co).
When I started to put this blogpost together, and I opened our calendar and scrolled back to February – I almost fell out of my chair realising just how busy we really were… although the burnout exhaustion I felt throughout March as I tried to stay afloat and play editing catchup makes a lot more sense now. It also makes sense to me that I didn’t pull my camera out of its case even once to take any photo diary pictures. So this post is entirely documenting the photographs we captured for our two businesses over the month. I say we, because Martin is well and truly a photographer in his own right now. In both our wedding photography business (just quietly, I’m fairly sure he took a Brides favourite photograph at a wedding a few months ago!), and in this post a few photographs are his own too. I honestly couldn’t be prouder, and I love secretly side-eye watching him when we’re on a job – experimenting with his composition, vantage point, and just getting creative.
In the spirit of mindfullness – I’m trying to take a step back, a deep breath and acknowledge how insane it is that I now not only make money from photography, I do it entirely full-time, and with Martin full-time alongside me. While it’s shatteringly exhausting (on a mind, body, and spirit level) and somedays I break under the pressure, those days make way for days when I feel this immense proud, warm feeling well up inside of me. I wish I could time travel back to that fifteen year old girl who saved up for her first (secondhand) camera and thought how on earth will I make this passion my job one day. I look over the photographs we made this month and I’m so excited at what we achieved and created for our clients. I don’t know what I did to somehow be living out my dream, but I’m so freaking thankful for this little life we’re living. And on nights I feel anxious about how on earth we’ll ever afford buy a house one day (do we even need to?), if we can ever retire (um, we have to pay our own superannuation at some point?), taxes, taxes taxes etc etc – I remind myself never in my wildest dreams did I think I could actually afford to do this photography thing as my real job – so who knows what possibilities the future holds.
I’ve split this post into two sections – what we photographed for our Wedding and Family photography businesses, followed by what we photographed in our commercial photography business.
Cast in Colour
Weddings & Families
Carly & Justin – Surprise Wedding!
Carly and Justin Wedding was disguised as an engagement party – and they pulled it off without a hitch!
Millie’s First Birthday & Family Shoot
Airleigh & Joseph
A beautiful outdoor wedding in the countryside – equipped with ice cream van and dining out under the stars.
Family shoot with little cutie Asher!
Craig & Nicola
A romantic barefoot ceremony on the sand at St Kilda, a storm that managed to behave and a beautiful sunset.
incolour.co
Small businesses & Creatives
Tamper Trap Cafe
We had two social content sessions with Brighton based cafe The Tamper Trap this month – and trust us, the food is soooo good!
The Hattie and Bairn Tribe
Beautifully styled event for Harriet from The Hattie and Bairn Tribe – this wonderland first birthday theme was just so gorgeous!
AASO Branding session
A super fun branding and headshot session with not for profit group The AASO in the heart of Footscray!
Tegan Iversen – Artist
A portrait session with super lovely Tegan at her exhibition A Flower Each Month at Monsalvat Arts Centre.
Wanderlust Creative
Capturing the magical wedding styled by Laura from Wanderlust Creative was a highlight for us this month! All those gorgeous blooms!
Bhang Restaurant
Bhang is a little bit of a challenge for us with its minimal lighting – so this time around we brought a softbox and speed light along and loved the results!
Heart of Hall Cafe
Heart of Hall has the dreamiest softest light – it’s basically a natural light studio in there! We had so much fun playing with their beautiful sweet treats.
Bass and Flinders
And we finished off the month with something very different for us! A home studio shoot for boutique Gin distillery Bass & Flinders. We shot these all over the house, utilising different backdrops, materials, props and lighting. It was a challenge I LOVED! Especially after not being much of a fan of studio work when I did my short stint at university. I never much loved a boring white cyc (backdrop) and plain box to work in. Give me some wooden textures and soft light and I was feeling the creativity flow. I also love that we get to style these shots, and have creative control over the whole process.
Looking back over the vast variety of shoots we did this month is pretty freaking awesome. Even with bags under my eyes and a few extra stress-induced wrinkles, I’m feeling pretty psyched that I get to call this my day job. From capturing love, some super cute little ones, and working alongside some killer businesses to bring their vision to life – it’s been a pretty darn good start to 2018. New goal: Balance work and rest more responsibly – and continue to stop, take a breath and feel grateful ❤
