The Story of How I Began {Ad-Gifted}

*The bag in this article was gifted to me by Billingham, I was not paid to write this article.

In June 2007 I tentatively launched Mandy Charlton Photography, I knew nothing, I'll be honest, I had a camera and friends and family told me kindly that I was good (I wasn't, I was dreadful).  I'd looked around photographers sites, worked out the hourly rate and thought I can do that, erm...

In a way, I'm sort of glad I went into it blindly though it's something I would never recommend!  I joined a photography forum called DWF and I think I read every single thread on that board, I learnt by information, not just any information, the information of some of the best photographers in the world.

Occasionally I joined in, once I even posted a thread after feeling a bit low, I received some of the harshest criticism I've ever had, mostly it was warranted, I was a terrible photographer.

There were things I knew I wanted though, I wanted to be accepted as a good professional photographer, I wanted to not constantly have imposter syndrome (still working on that one daily ;) ) and finally, I wanted a Billingham camera bag, I'd read the threads, I'd perused the website and I'd lusted at the British handmade, beautiful, beyond beautifully skillfully crafted bags.

Billingham is a family company who've been crafting the finest bags for the top professional photographers for many years and each stitch, even on the inserts you don't really see, every single piece is designed and made to the highest standards.

As the years went by I achieved so much in my business, I learnt my craft, I shot hundreds of weddings, thousands of portraits and have lived a life I have loved for over a decade because of professional photography.

I never did get that Billingham bag though...

A few weeks ago, that company, Billingham, who make the camera bags of dreams, asked if they could send me one, I just had to pick!  Clearly, I was like a child in a sweet shop but after much deliberation, I chose the Hadley Small Pro in burgundy canvas with chocolate leather and oh my gosh, it was worth the 12-year wait I can tell you.  

I'm not a handbag type of person, I own 1 and I only use it if I'm going to conferences but this bag, for one, it's perfect for my small kit which I always have on me (I should state that I also have a mountaineering backpack full of kit which Stacey, my assistant looks after at weddings, I'm not just taking 1 camera and 1 lens to a wedding) and when I'm not doing photography I can take out the inner piece and I have a non-girly bag perfect for all of my needs.

Somehow Billingham found me by chance, in the way that the universe always delivers these things because you wanted something and then it happened, yes, sometimes it takes longer than others but in the end, you always get want you want if you work hard enough.

I'm so thankful to Billingham and I've recommended them for years without ever having one because quite simply, everyone who sees it, loves it and it goes with me, it's bright and happy and it makes me feel good in the same way other professional females carry their Mulberry bags as a badge of how hard they've worked.

Thanks also to my wonderful assistant Stacey who shot these images whilst I was shooting portraits of my amazing clients.

Why you should book me to photograph your wedding

This year so far has been a revelation to me, I've shot more weddings over the spring than I had for years.  For a few years now I've been extolling the virtues of my smaller wedding photography package, being a wedding photographer in Newcastle upon Tyne, I've shot over 300 weddings over a decade.  It takes years to develop your craft but then you get to a point where you can start to push your own boundaries and truly strive to do something different.

For around 3 years now I've been photographing shorter wedding photography packages and I adore them, I go to weddings for 2, 3 or 4 hours, I sweep in, along with Stacey my amazing friend and longtime assistant, we capture beautiful images and we sweep out again, leaving you to get on with the rest of your beautiful, wonderful day.

I'm shooting more 2-hour weddings than ever before, it's the perfect amount of time if you just want the highlights, it goes from 30 minutes before and captures, the arrival, the wedding, some groups (if you want that) and the portraits.  I am a portrait photographer, kick-ass portraits are the thing that I live for and it's not just me, Stacey also comes up with the most amazing ideas, together we're innovative, we're different and if you tell us you just want an hour of portraits after your wedding then you're going to get the best portraits ever.

This year I'm probably the happiest and most in love with wedding photography that I've ever been, I mean who wouldn't love a job where they get to work with one of their best friends taking photographs of couples who've just declared their love to the world in front of the people who are closest to them.

Wedding photography is a gift to be cherished, it's all you have left after the day and so I always say, don't have 8 hours of bland photography of the back of people's heads, have 2 hours of extraordinary photography you can cherish your whole life through.

I shoot 2-hour wedding photography packages all over the northeast of England and with 4-hour bookings I travel anywhere from Edinburgh right down to York (travel costs may be incurred).

Not everyone wants 12 hours of photography on their wedding day although I do occasionally shoot those spectaculars too and I love them, the benefits of smaller packages are, it's a tiny window in your day, you get those perfect moments and the rest of the day you get to party hard if you want to.

I am booking now for this summer, I have dates available from mid-June right through until Christmas and I'm holding my pricing until June 15th, after which there'll be a small rise to account for the fact that my prices have been the same for over 3 years now whilst the cost of living, equipment, business and insurance has all risen.

If you book me now for 2021 or 2022, you'll get the price you book at so tell all of the single ladies, the ones planning far off adventures or the ones who are getting married this summer and still don't have a photographer, the whirlwind romances, the relaxed affairs, I love and cherish each and every one.

Shorter Wedding Photography Packages

2 hours - £450

3 hours - £600

4 hours - £750

So, you want more information, come email me and tell me all of the details of your wedding today

3 Simple salad recipes perfect for barbeque season

It's officially barbeque season and it's time to move away from the bread buns, it doesn't matter if you're doing the Keto diet, you just want to be a little healthier or maybe you just can't face another finger bun with a sausage in it, well I'm here to tell you about some super simple salad recipes which perfectly accompany the delicious cuts of meat we'll all be cooking in our Chimineas or on our BBQ's this summer.

These salads all have at the most, 4 ingredients in them, they're perfect for using up fridge supplies which means you can get healthier whilst also combating food waste.  

Cucumber and Onion salad, the perfect accompaniment for chops - 

Half a cucumber with the seeds removed, roughly chopped

One red onion, roughly chopped

2 teaspoons of Cider Vinegar 

Himalayan Pink Salt

Freshly ground pepper

Simple cherry tomato salad

1 punnet of cherry tomatoes halved

1 Tablespoon of aged balsamic vinegar

Salt and Pepper to season

Simple Guacamole 

1 Avocado roughly smashed

The juice of half a lime

Salt and Pepper to season

Cucumber and Lime Salad

Half a cucumber peeled, deseeded and roughly chopped

A handful of roughly chopped coriander

Juice of half a lime

Ground Pepper to Season

A good sprinkle of Himalayan Pink Salt

All of these recipes work perfectly with pork or chicken, some of them work with steak and the cucumber and lime salad is the perfect accompaniment with white fish.

I love inventing new and interesting sides to go with the perfect barbequed meat or Halloumi and if you try any of them out I'd love to hear from you, especially if you have some other ideas.  I'm off to buy some fresh lemons to see what I can come up with next.

The iPhone XS Max vs The Huawei P30 Pro

When the Huawei P30 Pro was launched it was everywhere, every ad I seemed to see online extolled the virtues of this new kid on the block with its quad camera and sleek look with the mermaid back.  I got in touch with my friends at Three and they quickly sent one out for me to road test.

I've used the iPhone ever since the iPhone 3G and I've tried many times to swap to other things, I've tried the Samsung range a couple of times but overall I've never found anything which comes close to my iPhone, whatever generation it was.

I've been using the XS Max since it was first released having upgraded from the X (pronounced 10) and I absolutely love it.  The portrait mode makes many images indecipherable from the ones I shoot for clients with my pro body equipment.  So much so that the only time I use my pro bodies is when I'm being paid for portraits or weddings.  My Instagram is 99% iPhone photos and the only times I've ever felt it could have been better were at night when it's virtually impossible to use portrait mode with good results.

The Huawei P30 does look sleek, it's lighter than the iPhone and overall, it feels shiny, it's maybe too shiny, to the point where I knew I was bound to drop it if I wasn't careful.  I tested it over a period of days and barring one feature, I really wasn't impressed although it is to be noted that it is around £600 cheaper than the latest iPhone.

Instagram stories were a fail for me completely, it either posted them with the voice out of sequence to the photos or the sound was so awful, it felt like I was talking from the inside of a tin.  The portrait mode on the camera was good but it didn't recognise Holly Bobbins face in the same way that the iPhone does.  It does, however, come with a separate aperture mode and for the most part, this makes for better images though it should be noted that the images straight out of the camera are much cooler and have a magenta tinge.

The only mode where it completely outdid the iPhone is night photo mode when it produced an image in the dark which I'll be honest, I was not expecting.  If it had of produced similar astounding images in other modes then I might have considered upgrading although I'm still not a huge fan of the Android operating system although that may be down to personal taste.

It goes without saying that I really wanted to love this phone, a phone with 4 cameras produces immense capabilities if you're a photographer like me who doesn't always want to be attached to a bulky DSLR but for now I'm going to be sticking with my current phone, well at least until the next version of the iPhone is released this autumn.

I was loaned a Huawei P30 Pro from Three, I was not paid to write this article or recompensed in any other way.

Your garden is good for your mental health!

It's mental health week and so this coincides nicely with my mission to get everyone enjoying their garden a little more.  You see, I've always loved my garden, in fact, I grew up in a house that gardened and I always loved sitting in the garden on those perfect English summer days, you know the ones with the blue skies, the white fluffy clouds which pre-empt the bigger storm clouds and a downpour the moment you go to fire up the BBQ?

As well as my love of all things green-fingered, I have, of course, also struggled with my mental health throughout my life, bipolar disorder, chronic anxiety and at times, agoraphobia.  I noticed over the years though that if I could get outdoors my moods were always much better and it's not hard to appreciate why that would be, you cannot beat time spent walking in the countryside or sitting in a sunny cove on the beach listening to the waves lap on the nearby rocks.

The thing is though, there's a revolution afoot, I've come to understand I might have a passion as great as anything I've done before, it's life-changing, maybe not in the life or death sense but I'm on a mission worthy of your favourite superhero to transform people's lives with the power of outdoor living.

So, let's just talk about gardening for a moment, Alan Titchmarsh, Monty Don, Gardeners World, mature sedate ladies cutting roses and deadheading poppies in their white painted cottages in the countryside.  Well, I'm here to tell you that isn't what this mission is about.

Love gardening, hate gardening, I don't care, I just want you to look at your garden as an extension of your living space, somewhere you can entertain, somewhere you can get away from it all, a place you could have a holiday in your own home.  The thought of gardening can seem overwhelming, particularly if you're not akin to the RHS plant manual and all of its botanical names.  You don't have to be Charlie Dimmock to make your own little haven.

My garden is 4.5 metres long by 3.4 metres wide, it's a teeny tiny postage stamp of an urban garden on a housing estate which fringes the edge of the city and where high rises are the only view I have.  I live a few hundred metres from the main east coast train line, it is not a large idyllic house or garden.  When I began the transformation it contained 2 wheelie bins and a compost bin.  The wheelie bins are now at the front of our uninspiring house, where we have zero gardens, not even a patch and where if you placed some pots to upscale the entrance they would either get stolen, vandalised or set on fire.  (or all 3).

What I'm trying to tell you, is that it doesn't matter about the size of your garden or where you live, from the tiniest flat with a small balcony to the standard townhouse near the city with a postage stamp sized garden, you can still create your own personal oasis.  It doesn't matter if you just add some garden furniture, some trellis with fake leaves and a pile of plastic plants and fake hanging baskets, the point is, create a space you love, a safe space and if you can't do it alone, ask family or friends to help, if you're broke you can do this on a budget, plants are cheap, second-hand garden furniture or repurposed furniture from your home, you can build something amazing from not very much at all.

The more I live outdoors, the more I cook outside, the more moments of stillness I can find the better I feel and it's not just living outdoors, I even feel calmer when I'm working on my laptop in the garden, my mind is clearer, my anxiety levels fall and I'm more zen than I've ever been.

I actually have loved the act of gardening, the joy of transformation, the fact that I designed something in my mind (and on Pinterest) and it was the first ever project which now looks the same in reality as it did in my head when I designed it with my mind.  For me, I think there's something healthy, something wonderful about growing plants,  planting seeds and small plants and watching them blossom into something extraordinary.

I want to encourage people to love the space they have in the same way that Mrs Hinch has transformed our attitude to cleaning the house.  And yes, I realise Mrs Hinch has 2.4 million followers on Instagram and I have just over 10k but you have to start somewhere don't you and if I start a revolution to inspire others, well when they join in, perhaps, we, yes, you and me, we could start a movement which ends with us collectively having millions who transform their lives, their mental health and their outdoor living areas.  Of course, I'll have to come and visit for a nosey and a cup of tea but I'll guarantee you this, you'll find me smilier and happier, calmer and less anxious than I have been for a very long time.

Garden makeover on a budget, how much did it cost?

On Friday night, I finally finished my garden, it was all done on a really small budget but I'm going to let you in on how much it cost and where everything came from.  The best thing about gardens of course is that they constantly evolve and there are still things I would like to add and ideas to make it even better, today, for example, I spotted an Easter Island side table which looks small enough to fit next to my grey moon chair and don't even get me started on the planting, every time I see plants I want to buy them!!

Here's how much the main things cost -

Arbour - £250 from Amazon, paid with vouchers I'd saved up

Chiminea - £100 from Wyevale, they had 20% off and triple points when I bought it so I got it for £80 and will get back vouchers for around another £15.

Egg Chair - £24.99 from TJ Hughes, I hadn't seen these cheap anywhere, even on Amazon it was nearly £40 for one but then I spotted them in the garden department of my local store.

Water Feature - £29.99 from TJ Hughes, again, the water feature I would love costs around £150 but this one, made from solid plastic, does the trick but it's awful, I need to refill it all the time, sometimes it does a trickle, sometimes it flows really quickly, I don't recommend!

Slate - £2.75 per bag from Home Bargains, I used 13 bags

Paving Stones - £5.99 per paving stone from Home Bargains

New Plants - £100 from various places

Trellis - £15 from Wyevale using a voucher, it should have been £17

Bark - £1.99 per bag from Aldi, we used 6 bags but I would like some more

Bricks - Free from a kind person on Facebook

Cushions for the bench, the 3 green checked ones were £5.99 each from Home Bargains, the other 2 I previously owned and used in my garden last year.

So basically it was all done for just over £500 and when you think what it was before...

That's all the major bits, most of the lighting was already in the garden or in the house and a lot of the objects are repurposed like the butlers tray table and the fire bucket but what I have now is a space I can truly relax in, not just that though, it's a place I can record video's, take photographs, it's a restful environment an Instagram worthy space,  for years I've looked at gardening magazines and wanted a space like they have and yes, it's not the size of Monty Don's back garden or indeed his front one but I live 20 minutes walk from the city centre, when you are so urban space is a premium.  I've also realised I couldn't afford a bigger garden in terms of time, money or the energy because even a small space takes up so much of all of that.

This coming Sunday, May 12th is Garden day, a day to celebrate the spaces we live outdoors in and I shall be having my own little garden party in honour, not just of Garden Day but also Abigail's, Harriet and Ron's birthdays, all which truly are worth celebrating.

I've always loved gardening and so I hope this is just the start and I hope in 6 months or a year I'll add so many extra pieces to it, it becomes something more special than even I could have ever imagined when I first pictured the space in my mind and wondered what on earth I could do with it.

we accidentally manifested a cat...

This week we had a surprise new arrival in our family, I'd been manifesting, Looby and Iain kept telling me they wanted a kitten and I think the mutual power between us (Looby is amazing at manifesting given that she's done it since she was about 5 years old when I first discovered the power of the universe, I used to tell her, be happy, be hopeful, be grateful) just kind of happened at the same time the universe was listening.  Iain went downstairs, opened the gate and there, sitting quite politely next to the gate was a ginger cat, he followed him into the garden and just sat next to him, they sat together in the arbour with the warmth of logs burning in the arbour until 6am when Iain went to bed (he has sleep issues because of ASD).  When I went out in the garden in the morning, who should be waiting for me but the little ginger cat, I say little because he's still a kitten but he's definitely going to be a big cat.

After that he started just coming in our house exploring, he met Poppy and Pyracantha cats and Holly Bobbins too and then he just sort of stayed, adopted us and moved in.  We checked all of the local lost pets sites but there wasn't a cat that could be him and so I assume, that cats, in the way they do, just appear like angels and adopt their own family.

We left the backdoor open so he had the option to go off if he wanted to but no, he stayed and I'm not one to turn down an adorable animal.

After some discussion we decided to call him "Jasper Rockafella 17th" because you should always name your pets the most fabulous things, although I do believe it's probably us that are the pet's and the animals are the owners.

He's incredibly inquisitive, doesn't speak like Pyracantha does and he doesn't drink water like a normal cat, he likes to drink out of a big bowl and puts it on his paw to drink, he's adorable.  The kids had been asking for another cat for so long and I kept putting it off because I didn't know if I wanted another cat or if I wanted to adopt another beagle to be brother or sister to Holly Bobbins.  The universe clearly had different ideas, it's always right and leads you in the way it knows is best.  

I do have one thing to say though, when you're manifesting...

Just be careful what you wish for, because it might just come true.