Over the summer i decided to take a break from the business side of my photography. One - when the kids are around it makes it harder to find the time. Two - I really wanted to give them a fun summer and spend as much time with them. This was my youngest childs last summer before he started school and felt like it was something that I had to do, and hey it was only 6 weeks left to freedom (well 3 days anyway) Three - I really just wanted to find my voice in my photography and not be shooting what I thought I needed to do for clients. This was resulting in an inconsistency in my work, mostly in my editing.

I haven't included all the images I took over the summer, just my favourites from each session. This was such a freeing project and I learnt a lot about myself. There is so much to think about while taking a photo, the direction and quality of light, the composition, the focal length, aperture, shutter speed, movement of the subject and so on.  Putting these things all together that creates a perfect image.  It is the emotion, the beauty of the image that makes the perfection piece,  do you embrace imperfections of, noise, blur, lens flare, composition that cuts part of the subject out of the frame, over-exposure or under-exposure, and other flaws or does moment trump all?

I ended up picking up my camera a lot more  and have a great creative documentation of our summer and I have found a editing style that I love, not what I think people will want, but what I want.

Follow the link to my Shooting for myself summer project here

As a result I also discovered that ultimately I just want to document my family and wouldn't it be fun to help others learn how to do this. People who want to capture their family creatively. I think we have got lost with cameras being on our phones and the selfie world. Our pictures are lacking meaning and soul. Your phone is not a camera. Print your photos. Eventually those digitals will be gone forever.

I want to help people learn how to do this. Because I'm sure you have realise its not as easy as going out and buying a good camera and miraculously your pictures are better. It takes time and a lot of practice.

Its hard to learn how to use that big fancy camera and find local photography workshops. So with the help of a photographer friend we have developed our first basic photography workshop. Hopefully this will be the first of many.

Check out the link here to find out more about my basic photography workshop. Stories through your lens, documenting your family through photography.