New Year Cathedral. 31st December.

Every year, on New Years Eve I go to the Cathedral, hundreds of people from churches across the city gather for a service looking forward into the next year. It has developed into a tradition for me, it's a great service and I absolutely love the building. Peterborough Cathedral is definitely the most grand and beautiful building in the City, and possibly the whole of Cambridgeshire. 

Happy New Year, lets make 2013 a year to remember!  

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Candle and Saucer. 29th December.

Candles remind me of the winter; I guess it's because the nights are longer, the weather is colder, and candles are christmassey things. 

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Eddie & Betsy - Street portraits. 28th December.

I met Eddie and his dog Betsy on the streets of Peterborough today, Eddie had his guitar and was strumming around some chords so that he could earn some money from people passing buy doing their sales shopping. His little dog, Betsy sat by him, just watching people walk by them..... both of them were a pleasure to photograph. 

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Twas the night before Christmas and the Robins were sitting on the tree... 24th December.

Hope you all have an amazing Christmas day tomorrow, full of Celebration, fun, festivity... don't forget to spend a moment thinking about why Christmas exists though.. the celebration of the greatest saviour, Jesus, coming to earth 2000 years ago. 

MERRY CHRISTMAS

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The Icing on the Cake. 23rd December.

The Brass Band Christmas Carols. 22nd December.

You know it's nearly Christmas when the Salvation Army come out into the high streets with their brass instruments and start playing Christmas Carols. It just really gives towns and cities across England that "Christmas Feeling"

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Santa's House. 21st December.

So the world's existence didn't come to an end.. so you get to see another one of my daily photographs. Today I bring to you Santa's house. I love Christmas houses, from houses with hints of Christmas, to large displays which light the whole street up! 

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I'm Dreaming of a White Christmas..Portraits. 20th December.

I had a little portrait session today, I wanted it to feel wintery... hence the hat and scarf.. but during the shoot I discovered how different two photos can be, despite the fact that nothing in the photo has changed except a pose. I love photography and I love working with people.. people are the best, and most versatile subjects to work with.

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A question of Instagram. 18th December.

I am a big Instagram fan; I use it to capture behind the scenes of shoots, travel snaps, the little things in life, and everything inbetween. Now Instagram have changed their policy, they are claiming the rights to sell photographs which belong to the photographer. 

It's not like you are uploading high-resolution medium format images, most photographs on Instagram are under 1MB...so it'at highly unlikely they'll be used on a billboard. 

Anyway we are using this service for free... what in this world is actually free and with no ulterior motive behind it? Users get to use the great Instagram service, but their payment is the content they upload.

I can't claim to be a genius on the subject, but I have read up the new policies and checked out the Instagram Blog... and I don't think I'll be leaving Instagram anytime soon, I'm not completely happy with it... but we all like to believe that we can get things for free without any catches... it looks like the catch has now risen, but it is not as bad as it could be.

A couple of blogs which can help you understand this Instagram issue a lot more:

http://blog.instagram.com/

http://mobile.theverge.com/2012/12/18/3780158/instagrams-new-terms-of-service-what-they-really-mean

Anyway, I will get back to my Christmas photographs tomorrow!!

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Christmas House 2. 17th December.

Christmas is nearly here and houses are cluttered with lights, especially this one. This house down a small lane in a fenland town has been filled with lights every christmas for many years; through these lights the owners have raised thousands of pounds to give to charities which support children with Leukaemia and Cancer. It is great to see how people are using simple things such as christmas lights and the christmas season to make such a positive impact.

To learn more about this house visit: http://www.childrenwithcancer.org.uk/Blog/christmas-lights

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Christmas House 1 - A seasonal photo-documentary. 14th December.

If you haven't guessed by now, I like Christmas.. the lights, the smells, the celebration.. it's a great time of year! So I started working on a seasonal photo-documentary without realising it, most of my daily photos are going to be Christmas themed and the film in my analogue cameras is going to be thoroughly Christmas-ified during this glorious season. So, keep watching my blog, facebook and twitter to seem my updates.

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Christmas Window. 12th December.

It's this time of year... the time when dreary, drab and dark windows get replaced with a hint of light... Christmas light. The attics have been opened, the old bag of decorations has been dragged downstairs, and once again houses across the world have been given that hint of Christmas.

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Cocktails and Interiors. 8th December.

The thing with being a freelance photographer is, you never know what your next job will be... today's job was photographing a new premium bar... I've done interior shoots before, and I've done food & drink shots, but this was my first bar shoot! It was good fun actually, Interior architecture and Drink shoots are so completely different.. one is a wide angle lens job with small apertures and long shutter speeds, the other is completely opposite. Merging them together in one shoot is great fun. 

It's also odd not photographing anything living, most of my jobs and commissions include people, animals, or nature... instead of me having to capture what was happening in a scene, I had to replace action and movement with a great composition. Loved it!

The Blank Page. 4th December.

Oh the irony.

A Simple Portrait. 2nd December.

The Cathedral. 31st December.

This evening I was at Peterborough Cathedral for a new years eve service, it was a great service in a really stunning building. I love Cathedrals and I think that it is amazing how so many people spent years working on a stunning piece of architecture to glorify God, this was before days of electricity and motor engines. 

It is simply stunning.

Rockingham Rapper Dancers. 30th December.

Today was my brother's 21st birthday, he decided to celebrate this by having a party! He is part of a rapper sword dance team (rockingham rapper), this dance style is commonly seen at folk festivals across the uk. He did a couple of dances with the team during the night and I think that the motion of the dance is something which is so hard to capture in just a photograph. 

Eloise. 28th December.

This is Elouise, one of my ferrets! She is such a sweet little animal. Some people seem to think that ferrets are dirty or full of disease, but they really aren't, they're clean and very hygenic! I love having them as pets!

I am visiting the city of Lincoln tomorrow, I have a few photographic projects which I shall work on whilst in Lincoln. It's a great city and has quite an old-fashioned feel to it which I love. It's also quite good for shopping and I have to say that the shops shall tempt me, haha! There are loads of little individual shops and there are a couple which I am going to use for my portrait documentary, The Forgotten Shops. I think Lincoln is a great place to shoot on bits of the documentary as it shows how individual businesses can live next to multi-store businesses. 

The Robin. 27th December.

This little robin was sitting on the tree at my Boyfriend's house, I had to photograph him as I thought he was ever so cute!

I am hopefully getting back to shooting for a couple of projects over the next few days and I shall be blogging about the progress of them on here, as I've previously said I am currently coming out of relaxation mode, it's not the nicest, but Photography is the best kind of work which I can do, so I am happy with it! 

I highly reccomend Michael Kenna's book, images of the seventh day, I was given it for christmas and the print reproductions in the book are beautiful! He is a photographer that has really impacted and inspired me, I really reccomend looking at his work.

Going Back to Work. 26th December.

So, It's boxing day... the aftermath of Christmas Day.. and also the day which I realise that I should start working soon! I'm starting so sort everything out, start organizing shoots and start working on projects again. Christmas isn't fully over yet, there are still many festivities, but it's time to start preparing for working again.

Boxing Day by Relient K popped up on my facebook newsfeed today and it fits my feelings about this day very well: