After Elmer is in bed, these nights I work on my new website. I'm really excited about it going live soon, but in the meantime I still have a few pages to adjust.... and some pages to start from scratch. I found this image that I'll use on there. It's my cousin's daughter on the beach last (UK) summer.

One of the nice things about my job is that when I photograph clients more than once, I can see how their lives have changed. Engagements, weddings, babies... and careers. Kim married Steve in March 2009, and I photographed her last week for a magazine article on a new aspect of their business, Raw Design. Kim is a New Zealand agent for ZWCAD - if you are after CAD software without the standard CAD price tag, Kim is the lady to speak to...

I've made a guest appearance on Studio Home Creative, a fabulous blog written by Julia Atkinson who runs a boutique interior design agency in Queenstown. Julia blogs about any creative talent in Australia and New Zealand that takes her fancy. I thought I would post up the link here so others can visit. I spent ages on her blog looking at all the really nice STUFF that all of a sudden I need in my house.....



Visit the site HERE

I have a list of things to do before the baby arrives, and to my satisfaction I'm actually getting through it. I've done all the nice things on there - photograph editing, organising baby clothes (some baby clothes are so small you can only fold them in half! Not quarters like you would an adult tee-shirt!), buying photograph frames.. etc etc. and now I'm getting to the end of the list. Lurking down there are items like "finish tax spreadsheet" (UUGGGH), and other banking/admin type tasks. Hence, here I am on my blog! I really dislike admin, and when I am rich and famous I'll have P.A. who does that for me.

These are some shots I did for Joseph Jones Designer Florist in Dunedin. They saw the photographs I did for Rebecca and Sam's wedding in April (Rebecca's bouquet below) and got me in to do some modern shots for their website.





Joseph Jones are the people you go to if you want a really classy, cutting edge bouquet. I love all the cute, trendy papers and ribbons they work with, and the fact that they get their flowers fresh, everyday (which means when you buy a bouquet it lasts for ages). I don't have any arrangement to plug them at all, I was just really impressed with the work they do... Since this is a wedding/portrait based blog I will post up some of the arrangements geared towards weddings:













And a standard bouquet that I really like..







These are yet to be uploaded to the website (incase you visit for a look). Actually, what I must do is some organising of my own website. That definitely takes precedence over the tax spreadsheet. And then I'm sure the dogs need to be brushed too.......

I knew when I came to Dunedin it would take a while to get my wedding and portrait business up and running, partly because in a small city like this you rely on word of mouth to get things going. So part of my plan was to be open to lots of different photography opportunities - in order to get my name out and network with people - and like the Jim Carrey film pretty much say "Yes!" to whatever came along. This winter I've been doing a few different things and really enjoying it. One of these jobs was working with Bede Beaumont Catering who wanted some foody images for their new website. They catered for a wedding I photographed at the beginning of the year so thats where we met. Organising and photographing all this food was fantastic for me because when I grow up I want to be a food photographer and create a recipe book - wouldn't that be cool?!

 

We weren't working with any fancy studio lighting for these, and I wanted a more natural look to the shots anyhow...

 

 

 

A big philosophy behind Bede Beaumont Catering is sourcing really high quality fresh ingredients, so they wanted shots of them actually meeting their suppliers and picking out the tastiest morsels...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A few on site catering images...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I love my food, so working with a company that takes it very seriously is nice - and the end result is tasty (one of the perks!). The guys are happy to create unique menus for clients, so you can just say to them "oh I really like blue cheese, and steak, and plums..." and they'll come up with a bespoke menu for you! Also, the gourmet ice-cream company they work with - www.gourmeticecream.co.nz make the NICEST ic-cream, and they also do flavours on request - whatever flavour you come up with! Me and Steven went through their Brandysnap ice-cream in record time. Its the kind of thing you need to eat in complete silence. In your pygamas.