Here’s the thing about being a wedding photographer – you are busy as a beaver for half the year and then the other half (once you’ve cleared your backlog of editing) you’re largely left to your own devices.
So here’s what I’ve been up to since I shot my last wedding.
I started going to a strength class and have rediscovered all these muscles that I’d forgotten about (or maybe never even knew about??). I spend a least half of the week aching but it’s that smug kind of ache, you know? And I’ve started playing padel. (Who else has jumped on the bandwagon?) What I lack in skill I make up in enthusiasm. The first time I actually played a shot off the back glass, I was so excited I shouted, ‘PADEL!!’ and threw my arms and racket into the air. And now I do that every time anyone I’m playing with does the same thing. It was funny actually, a few weeks ago we were playing with someone we didn’t know and who hadn’t played much padel. When she hit a shot of the glass and I did my usual, ‘PADEL!’ she stopped playing to ask if that was part of the game. Nope, just something I now can’t help but do. I’ve just started going to bootcamp too, but I don’t have much positive to say about that yet because I mostly hate every second because there’s clearly a lot of room for improvement when it comes to my cardio fitness.
I’ve watched everything there is to watch across various streaming platforms but somehow still have not seen a single episode of Bridgerton. I’m rewatching Motherland at the moment and it makes me cringe, feel seen and laugh in equal measure. The writing is so brilliant. In an episode I watched last week someone asked, ‘Has anyone seen Kevin? He looks like a vegetarian but he’s not,’ and I laughed so much at that. SO good.
I’ve also read loads. You know, because reading is necessary to keep me from feeling too guilty about spending too long looking at a screen. Also, I do enjoy it. Not to be dramatic about it but I have had at least two thousand people recommend the ACOTAR series to me. But what can I say other than I’m absolutely not at all interested in the slightest. Would probably love it if I read it, though. Recently read favourites include The Wedding People and The Names. Both brilliant.
I have also been doing work, promise. Lots of back end jobs like website and brochure work and posting regularly on Pinterest. I largely don’t know if I’m doing the right thing with Pinterest but I’m operating under the belief that something is better than nothing. (Right??) There’s also been discovery calls & getting new couples booked in, catching up with my couples already booked and getting my head in the game for my first weddings of the year. I’ve bought myself three new lenses and taken them for a spin doing various newborn & family shoots, second shooting jobs and photography workshops. So far so good. Will report back once my weddings muscles are warmed up again.
There’s been a writing class that I’ve been doing for the last few weeks but calling it a class is not really a good explanation of what it is. It’s more a place to find my words and develop a writing practice. Surely someone with a writing practice is sitting in coffee shops, writing in notebooks and looking out of steamed up windows onto rainy high streets but it’s been more like typing a sentence, deleting a sentence, thinking about it for ten minutes and then typing it again. But it has resulted in this blog post, and that’s not nothing.
I’m mostly fine with staying at home but there have been lots of lovely meet-ups with friends. Lunches and brunches and dinners and drinks. Lots of chatty walks both of the face to face kind and the rambling voice note kind. Trips to galleries (The Taylor Wessing Portrait Prize exhibition is well worth a visit, fyi), trips to the cinema (what did we think of Wuthering Heights? I thought visually beautiful but hard to get behind two main characters who are very unlikeable) and trips to the spa. The latter was actually as part of a work trip with my friend Chloe but when your hotel has a pool, a sauna and a snow room (!!) you make the most of it. It was also on that trip that Chloe & I momentarily lost the ability to speak when Pierce Brosnan walked over to the same breakfast buffet and made himself a yogurt bowl. Jaws were really and truly on the floor.
Anyways, now I’m ready to be back being with people on their best days and chatting with strangers and laughing along with the speeches and capturing it all. Hoping to keep up with the writing and working out and being social but we’ll see.
