How is half a year gone?

Well wow.. How did we get to mid summer, over half a year gone. Let's be honest, the blogs have not been as frequent as I'd like, but I'm going to be better in the second half of the year (well that is the intention.

I'm sat starting to write this blog multitasking while sitting at the side of a swimming pool half way through the year planning the next six months... I'm now on a plane at 35000 feet in the air still writing the same blog on my way to Gent (it was two weeks later and I had written 5 lines), and now finally sat at my desk. Its taken me over a month to carve out enough time for me to sit, read and edit a blog. Yes I could say that I should put this higher up the priority list, but I put customer deliveries and sticking to my promises above writing a blog.

St Nicholas church Gent, taken on my old Sony A57

I alluded to the point above, that life is becoming busy, I think insane is a better description. With two little people, two jobs, a house (trying to build an extension) and date nights (you've always got to get those in), life is a bit busy. I'm finding myself being more meticulously organised than normal, yes that does mean I'm planning weddings until November 2020 at present, which means planning the time out for holidays and recuperation a long time in advance and around schools is interesting, all I can say is thank god for online calendars.

Are you on Instagram? This is the best place to keep up with me, Click here to follow me @rennisonraephotography . I'm finding myself posting quite a bit to the IG stories. So you get sneak peeks from behind the scenes to finished stuff. The last six months has been a whirl from taking photos: of families, brides, dancers, strong people, headshots, cakes, to happy couples for upcoming wedding to more dancers. I've attended a bunch of wedding open days, (read loads) and a number of visits to house for quotes or future planning. I've even managed to squeeze in a little bit of project work this year too (more about that in the next blog). I'm coming off one of my busier weeks, and even though I was away from 3 days I still managed to squeeze in 5 shoots in the remaining 4. One of which started at 4:30am (it was a beautiful sunrise.

What next? I'm going to share a few photos from the weddings I've shot, but I'm working through wedding blogs for all of these, so only a few photos here for weddings and remember I always ask permission for this information to be shared. Privacy first people.

A few commercial shoots to for good measure thrown in, including working with the County Hotel Newcastle, as their preferred photographer to produce their new material for their wedding brochures and some social media content. One of the conditions of this shoot is to only share what they share. Which is a bit of a nightmare, but its a condition of a commercial photographer. Here are a few images from the shoot so far.

The exciting news is now that I'm a recommended photographer at the following places. County Hotel Newcastle, Grand Hotel Tynemouth, Jesmond Dene House and Blackfriars restaurant. (I might be beaming as I write this list).

I'm going to wrap this blog out with one of the family shoots, as I really cant share too much, as the majority of my family clients don't want to post anything about their kids on line. While I would really like to share more, its about customer confidence and trust.