Last weekend feeling rather numb and overwhelmed with life, I booked an Airbnb dog friendly cottage on the Solway coast, waiting until the last minute paid off as we ended up paying just £187 for 3 nights at Field View Cottage in Port Carlisle, a small village on the Solway coast just 4 miles away from where Hadrians Wall ends.  The cottage had only been a holiday let for around a month and was one of those properties that really justifies just how wonderful an Airbnb stay can be.  To be fair I've only had one really unhappy experience of Airbnb and it wasn't anything to do with the site, it was the horrid owners.

Not the case with Field View Cottage though, it had been sensitively renovated keeping all of that beautiful character a cottage is supposed to have and then to add to that it was a two minute stroll down to the banks of the estuary, a village so quiet that Holly Bobbins barely had to be on the lead and she was free to pop outside the cottage for a wander into the small lane without fear although she did find one or two people to "Arooo" at but really, that's kind of obligatory if you are a beagle.

I'd travelled to cumbria to really give a roadtest to the Kodak Pixpro AZ527 kindly given to me by the lovely Kodak folk, I knew I wanted to put it to the test somewhere really special and somewhere it would be given a run for it's money for Cumbria, The Lake District and the Southwest coast of Scotland are some of the most beautiful areas on earth, if it couldn't do a good job there, it wouldn't do a good job anywhere.

Now I should point out if you've just landed here for the first time that I've been a professional photographer for 12 years, the last bridge camera I owned was circa 2005 and I'm pretty used to doing everything manually and the longest zoom I own is 24-70mm, I had to remove everything I knew from my brain to put myself in a position where I could really gauge who would buy the AZ527,  for one it has a 52x optical zoom, AZ stands for Astro zoom and although I didn't have my tripod handy in Cumbria, I did test it on the big shiny moon one evening and yep, it certainly works, it's the closest I've ever seen the moon, I've promised myself an evening with a tripod over the next few weeks to try and get something close up because at 52x zoom, even with optical stabilisation, you really can't handhold, once I got over about 5x zoom I couldn't hand hold.

So, back to the beautiful lazy cottage stay, my brain was furiously working overtime when we left Newcastle and I felt I hadn't breathed properly for weeks, the virus I'd had plus a busy time for photography and running Inspire, suffice to say I was a huge ball of anxious energy, luckily within hours of reaching our destination I felt my shoulders relax, now it may have been the beautiful scenery or it might have been the smell of biscuits in the air as we picked up some shopping at Sainsbury's in Carlisle, for anyone who doesn't know, it's next door to the Mcvities factory and the air is thick with the scent of sweet biscuits, every time you breath it's just delicious.

We'd decided that we would have a day exploring the Lake District and a day exploring the southwest coast of Scotland, and we planned to spend the hottest day of the year in Scotland because the temperatures rarely made it over the low twenties, perfect for Holly Bobbins although she was super grateful to be travelling in a car with gorgeous 15c air conditioning, a happy girl she was only out for short strolls in shady places or a trip on a boat or a quick tasty lunch at a pretty cafe out of the glare of the sun.

For 3 days I managed to completely relax, I took late evening sunset walks with Holly along the estuary, I explored our chosen destinations with Abigail and Harriet and I laughed with them a lot, much more than I usually do because with chronic anxiety, I'm often scared of laughing too much, it induces asthma attacks so i've learnt to try and not let myself truly laugh or indeed relax but for a couple of days at least I tried not to worry so much and just let myself go, I ambled around villages snapping everything in sight, I tried pet mode, beautify mode, landscape mode, all of the things I'd never usually do with a camera although I stopped short of testing the pop up flash, on board flashes are the work of the devil!

The Kodak really handles most situations well, I hated the fixed screen, even with the brightness turned up, I think we're now in the realms of the adjustable screen although it does have wifi and an app you can connect to if you want to shoot remotely or maybe you want to film yourself and you're a budding Youtuber, it does output full HD after all.  I think this is the perfect camera for beginners, teens who want their own camera or people who love simplified processes, although it does have a manual mode I'm not sure you can push it to any better results than the myriad of scene options, it's always a little weird for me using camera's which don't have an eyepiece and that's where an adjustable flip screen would have been a real boon but perhaps this is a consideration for the future.  You know, Kodak were the pioneers of photography so it's a shame that they don't have a professional level camera currently and if they ever release a DSLR I'd certainly love to compare it to my CSC Fuji's and my full frame DSLR Canon.

As soon as we arrived home from our trip the anxiety made it's come back and yesterday I had a full on anxiety attack leading me to believe that I am so much better when I am in remote and relaxing places.  I try to get away around every 4-6 weeks just to keep myself sane and I know I'll return to cumbria time and time again just because it offers that life of calm and idillic living that I crave.  For someone who lives on the edge of the city but craves to be a rural living lady, Cumbria is only a short distance away, I'm not sure if I'm trying to constantly escape or if it's just that I need to calm my psyche often so that I do stay sane.  My life at home is demanding, filled with questions and queries, strategies and way more numbers that I'd ever envisioned and yet when I am away I come up with the most brilliant business strategies and ideas, perhaps because I'm not overwhelmed with the constancy of it, the email pings every 3 seconds, the perpetual messenger alerts (I've had to switch those off as they had gotten too much) and really it's not that I'm scared of hard work but I do acknowledge that life with chronic anxiety is a constant battle when you seek success.

And as for the Kodak, would I use it again?  I would, I think it's a great camera to pop in a bag if you want a day without too much thinking knowing that in landscape mode it'll deliver as well as thinking seriously about your DSLR and all of it's manual settings.  I think this particular camera is going to find a home with my son or my teen daughters who love it and find it super easy to use, much like life, overcomplicating things is never a good idea so it's nice to have a camera which will do the thinking for you and whilst you might not be able to have the moon on a stick the AZ527 will certainly let you capture a photograph of it.

Disclaimer -

I was given the Kodak AZ726 in return for an honest review and this is exactly that.

On being busy and unexpected disasters

Well after yesterdays post you all certainly took me seriously and I booked 4 photoshoots in the space of an hour yesterday, Yes indeed I am looking forward to every single one of those! Today though we've had joiners here making more mess and disrupting us even more, please hope tommorrow is the last major day of disruption, It's kitchen upheaval day tommorrow, after that we should be able to start thinking about decorating, I've already got a couple of tester pots and a bag full of paint charts!!

We've had a major disaster today, this morning as Paul attempted to take the children to school he discovered that the car wouldn't drive forwards and well it's not exactly practical to drive everywhere in reverse so we called good old Green Flag who sent a lovely man who in a calm manner told us that it was our cylinder head gasket, ARGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH, we drive this teeny Hyundai Atoz + it's an S reg and pretty much gets us everywhere, we're a bit devastated to know that it would cost more to fix the car than it's actually worth so we're tommorrow paying the princely sum of £250 for an L reg Golf which will hopefully get us through to the new year. I can kind of manage without a car as I have an assistant who does all the driving to weddings but as I can't have consultations in my kitchen at the moment we really don't have any option plus Paul definetly needs a car for his business! Oh well, lets be positive but can I just ask any potential clients to be put off by our sad old car, I promise it's no reflection on my photography, strange thing is that I now own lenses that are worth more than the car!!

Tommorrow should be a better day!

A little excitement...

as the UPS van pulled up to deliver my new lens, winter brides should take comfort in the fact that this lens is astonishing in low light situations and it's also fabulous for discreet photo-journalism.



I shot these as soon as I had unwrapped it and taken it out the box. Poor Looby, look at her poor chin!

We're off to the local fireworks display this evening, happy bonfire night to you all.

on the eve of a new year

Yes it's true, my last day as a thirty two year old and thirty three shall begin at midnight, actually I was born at teatime but we'll not quibble about those few hours, I'm sure when I reach 40 I won't be celebrating till the exact second!!

So has 32 been good?

Well I finally kissed goodbye to the harmful family members who had done so much damage over the years, still having to protect the children from their malevolence but I have no doubt that we'll triumph in the end.

I've got the beginnings of my own business which I never thought I would do, I have a job which I love and I have a husband who I adore and cherish, I aslo have three darling children who no matter what they get up to at home always behave immacuately in company (well nearly!!) I think I'm pretty well blessed lately actually.

I've of course just bought my first DSLR which a year ago may not have been half as possible, amazing what a two income family can do in comparison to a no income one!

Yes there have been tears and trials but you know that even if it's bad in the end so long as we learn from it then I firmly beleive it's all good and you can't know just how much therapy it's taken for me to realise that.

So the future is bright, I'm meeting with my therapist tommorrow and will be telling here that I feel it's time to wind things up, I have gone about as far as I can go i think and I'm as healed as I possibly can be. my hubby remarked the other day that I'm definetly not the damaged woman he married, I'm this whole other exciting and exhilarating being, thats about the best compliment that anyone could give.

Life is Good!!