*apart from the ones we photograph, obviously. But that's different from just poring over photographs of weddings I haven't been to, of people I don't know. Weddings we photograph are about love and passion and creativity and hard work and that's a different kind of excitement from 'look at the pretty strangers in the pretty dresses, and OMG the bridesmaids' shoes.'
Thank you all so much for your suggestions on somewhere to escape to while we're in the South of France this summer. Due to overwhelming recommendations in its favour and being easily influenced we have decided on 3 nights in Collioure (which incidentally my father in law says isn't very nice. Incidentally, we're choosing to ignore him) and wondered if the peeps who suggested it might also suggest a hotel for us to stay in. You know, as opposed to doing our own holiday research.
photo by Doume73
You Don't Have to Be Pretty. You don't owe prettiness to anyone. Not to your boyfriend/spouse/partner, not to your co-workers, especially not to random men on the street. You don't owe it to your mother, you don't owe it to your children, you don't owe it to civilization in general. Prettiness is not a rent you pay for occupying a space marked "female".
Erin, at A Dress A Day.
I thoroughly recommend reading the rest of the post, especially if you've ever felt that you shouldn't wear something because you're too old/skinny/fat whatever.
* via Zoe, on pinterest. I 'liked' it, I commented on it, I repinned it, but it just wasn't enough.
* image of Diana Vreeland by Andy Warhol, 1980
It's Sunday morning and the babies will not sleep. There's been a lot of that going on. There's also been a lot of not eating and not smiling going on. Instead we are mostly concentrating on frowning, grumbling and being unwell. And yet they are still the most adorable, the most wonderful ever.
Amelia mastered rolling some time ago and is now expending all of her energy (and I mean all of it) on learning to crawl. For a couple of weeks now she has been getting herself up onto her hands and knees and rocking back and forth. For the first 5 minutes she frowns and blows raspberries. I like to think that this is her concentration noise and that throughout her life, when she is focussing most intently on something - exams, driving tests, maths - she will frown and blow raspberries. Then her little arms get tired, her head droops to the ground and she continues to rock back and forth, resting on her forehead instead of her hands, frowning and grumbling, before the grumbles turn into the most disgruntled of yells. And yet she doesn't give up, my little trier. She gets up and does it again. And again and again and again. I love and adore and admire and am awed by her persistence and simultaneously I long for her to get there, to learn to move one hand then the other, one knee then the next without falling smack onto her face and adding another small bruise to the collection on her forehead, and ache just thinking about the day when this phase is over, when she is one step closer to not needing us to help her.
Meanwhile Ella watches, with a small bemused smile. Ella sits. Sometimes she sways back and forth, sometimes she shakes her head madly from side to side as if to see if it's still attached but mostly she reaches out and touches, with one tentative finger, whatever is around her in each direction. Chases small pieces of lint across the floor with her index finger, reaches with precision for whatever she wants, stopping when she realises it's out of reach, rarely if ever losing her balance. Occasionally a gleeful giggle, usually at Ammie's grunting efforts, punctures the air. Yesterday I left them on the playmat for 5 minutes while I went and made a coffee. When I came back Ella was 5 feet from where I'd left her, still sitting upright, gnawing on a cable tidy. For a few days before that she had been showing signs of wanting to be somewhere that she wasn't, of looking around, spotting something good and thinking 'yes, not only do I want that cable tidy, I want to be where that cable tidy is' but showing no signs of trying to get there, absolutely no desire to get down on her hands and knees and crawl. And yet yesterday she moved 5 whole feet, on her bum, without toppling. I'm pretty sure that while Amelia has been working on crawling, Ella has been formulating a plan, rocking back and forth testing her balance, figuring out how to move with as much ease as possible, without breaking a sweat. Nye and I just sit, watching in wonder, knowing that throughout her life Ella is going to continue to astound and surprise us.
"The ordinary and the extraordinary exist side by side in Isabelle Puech's Paris apartment – a converted carousel workshop in the 9th arrondissement, where merry-go-round horses were once repaired. A stuffed crocodile stands guard in the hallway, and an ostrich skeleton, animal hoofs and austere oil paintings are displayed in the living area."
Fiachra Gibbons, guardian.co.uk,
A converted carousel worshop!
9th arrondissement!Merry-go-round horses!A stuffed crocodile!
(where does one buy a stuffed crocodile? John Lewis?)
"This is what you do on your very first day in Paris. You get yourself, not a drizzle, but some honest-to-goodness rain, and you find yourself someone really nice and drive her through the Bois de Boulogne in a taxi. The rain’s very important. That’s when Paris smells its sweetest. It’s the damp chestnut trees."
Audrey Hepburn as Sabrina
Remember when I said I was going to start using my Holga again? I didn't. Partly lack of time to figure it all out, mostly fear that I will get all excited about it and the photos will turn out looking like a Scottish sky; uniform grey, maybe with a patch of darker grey in one corner. In other words, like exactly all my previous Holga photographs.
I long to take pictures like these by Debs Ivalja but having played with a Holga before they seem like the result of some sort of wonderful dark magic. She who can make such beauty with such a piece of plastic crap is clearly a Camera Whisperer.
Photographs by Debs Ivalja.
Three is the next best age after 6 months
(friend to her three year old about Ella : "isn't she adorable?" Three year old: "no, she's just nice.")
You will come away from even the most respectable of hen parties knowing more about the groom than is probably appropriate for the wedding photographer
(hi Nathan)
Disregard for kegels after giving birth to twins + trampolining = uh oh.
* photo by Monkeyiron
