Wow it's 11am already and I'm still in my pyjamas dear reader, tartan pyjamas non the less!  The truth is that I woke up with a huge headache so I've just been bumbling around this morning and not attempting anything too energetic.  I've had this recurring headache for most of the week so I can only assume that it's wholly stress related.  I actually can't wait for the Christmas break this year so I can just spend the 2 weeks at home with my children.

Speaking of my kids, hello to Abigail if you're reading, we went out for dinner last night and she said she skim reads my blog most days but it's not got enough appeal for 12 year olds so just for you Abigail "teen angst, hunger games, mocking jay oh my life is so bad I could cry and everyone hates the world and I hate the world and no there's nothing wrong with me"  There you go, that should appeal to you and any other tweens or teens looking in.

The truth is that I really don't write my blog for anyone but me, it's just kind of an accident that 15,000+ people a month happen to read it, I know it's helped lots of people in similar situations to mine over the years though because I get the emails and the comments and I don't intend to stop writing any time soon, freedom of speech is probably the most important civil liberty we all possess whether that be speaking out about a personal situation or something political you feel must change, i'm actually so proud of Abigail being on the Youth council and I think she can run for a seat in the youth parliament next February, destined to be the next female prime-minister that one!

oh and if you are here to read the exciting news, well 6pm today is the start of my festive shopping weekend where you can win 2 of my framed and mounted art prints, more news of which ones in tomorrows blog post which will be all about this Christmas shopping weekend but just to whet your appetite if you are a lover of my fine art prints get yourself over to Philomena's Boutique and when you are checking out enter the discount code CHRISTMAS and you will bag yourself a whole 34% off just for this weekend, tell your friends, your family, do all of your Christmas shopping and you'll also be entered into that competition to win both of the framed and mounted prints.

There are more ways to win and more ways to save but at the risk of crashing severs I'll just leave you with that first offer until tomorrow.

May your thirsts be quenched with the fabulous flavour of a festive Thursday.

Autumn in Newcastle and a wedding in Harrogate

Well better late than never dear reader but I've just come home from shooting a lovely little wedding in Harrogate and a beautiful wonderful thing it was too!

Yesterday I was walking home from some photo shoots in Jesmond Dene so I thought since I had my camera I might capture just a few images which will soon be going into my Etsy store, Philomenas Boutique, I think they're going to make fabulous Christmas gifts for the lovely people you have in your life.

If you look closely at this bottom one you'll see the shoe tree, people have been turning up to throw their shoes into the trees as a form of celebration since John the sheriff of Newcastle threw his shoes up there in 1684 after the birth of his first child.  Some say this is all myth and legend and it's just silly students but the romantic in me wants to believe it's true.

So that wedding I shot at the Hotel Du Vin in Harrogate today, beautiful, intimate and some gorgeous autumnal light for the portraits.

Tomorrow I have 11 photo shoots in Saltwell Park, trying to catch up from the horrid weather of last Saturday and thankfully it looks like it's going to be a gorgeous sunny weekend so I'm going to cheer loudly at that and I can't wait to share lots of highlights with you over the coming weeks.

Have a wonderful weekend, I can't promise to blog as regularly over the next few days but I'll be back to normal again by this time next week hopefully. 

Christmas Shopping, supporting small businesses and blissful dog walks

Yesterday I started my Christmas shopping, "it's way to early" I hear some of you cry dear readers but I figured this year I had to be extra organised and that if I started now with my bumper bargain Christmas I would have some chance of actually being able to afford it all.  I think there's so much pressure placed on parents at Christmas and if you're a single parent then the chances are that the kids actually see that as an excuse for double presents and not that they might get less, perish the thought!  To be fair though I have pretty good and understanding children, I've told them my budget is £100 per child for them to choose whatever they want and then I'll spend around another £50 on surprises and you know what, being a bit of a bargain hunter I reckon they'll all get a very nice size pile of presents for that amount, for me it's not so much about the value I just like a big pile of presents which look pretty around the Christmas tree.  I've said for years that I am Christmas, it's just my thing, I love every second of it and I'm one of those who's always just a little sad when it actually gets to Christmas day because I know that the magic and excitement is over for another year.

Maybe that's why I've really embraced autumn this year, because I know after autumn comes winter and in winter we have Christmas!

Yesterday was a rainy horrid day but it dried up just in time for Petunia and I to trot down to the park which was bathed in autumnal glory.  I love walking Petunia and please don't judge me but I like it best when it's just me and the dog, doggy and me time is the loveliest time of day and it's funny but I never feel quite so lonely when Petunia is around, last night as I did some window shopping on Etsy she lay on the sofa next to me nuzzled into me and I embraced the love you find in having a pet dog.  I'm so head over heels in love with Petunia and I'm thankful every day that she came into our lives.

On the subject of shopping for Christmas I've decided that for as much as I can I am going to do my Christmas shopping either on Etsy or within the Inspire Network so that I can support as many micro business owners, crafts people and artisans.  I read an article last year that if you supported your local business every £1 you spent was worth £50 to the local economy as opposed to spending that £1 with big businesses and obviously as a small business owner myself I appreciate all of my clients, you know I have an Etsy store full of gorgeous prints, why not consider purchasing your loved ones something lovely from Philomenas Boutique this year or failing that a gift certificate for Mandy Charlton Photography is the gift which keeps on giving!

Once again the rain scuppered an outdoor photo shoot yesterday meaning I have 18 photo shoots and a wedding in Harrogate in the next 7 days, even I think that's a lot of work and I may just squeeze in some extra vitamins and jumping beans, actually I have to say after losing a stone since the beginning of September I am feeling a lot more bouncy and full of energy anyway, 1 stone down and 1 to go, I shall be a leaping jumping bean by the time I am finished!

Today dear reader have a think about your Christmas shopping, if you are a parent be kind to yourself, tell your children this year will be about family and being together and special presents which mean a lot but might not cost a fortune and consider making some of your purchases from local businesses instead of those big corporate faceless organisations who steal our souls when we walk through the doors.

It's over, it's finally over....

The last 45 days have been the biggest roller coaster I have ever experienced.  Crowd funding is definitely not for the faint of heart.

Here's some stats from the UK Cityscapes project crowd funding campaign

144% funded
£3599 raised
15, 498 visits to the Indiegogo page
106 contributions
1500 Facebook shares
903 Tweets

If you were a part of this even in some small way then I thank you from the bottom of my heart.


If you read all of the articles (I'm quite glad I didn't read them until afterwards) the first thing they say is Do not do this on a whim!  So on that one I'd say Mandy 1 - Crowd funding advice - 0, I do know exactly what they're getting at though!

So you're probably wondering what exactly happens next?

It takes around 15 business days for most of the funds to be released, Paypal is immediate and that's helped with cities I've been to over the last 45 days, the bulk though will mean that the end of June/whole of July/August will be devoted to travelling this great land, climbing tall buildings and walking more miles in a week than i've ever walked before and that's not a bad thing!

If you follow me on social media you'll be able to keep up with each city as it happens, I post little postcards on the go through Instagram so feel free to give me a follow, I always try to follow back, I love seeing other peoples worlds, I'm instagram.com/MandyCharlton

My Etsy store Philomena's Boutique will be refreshed and all of the images from all of the cities will be available as Prints, fine art prints, Canvases and there'll also be options to pre order the UK Cityscapes books in both digital and hard copy.  I'm also working an E-Book which will be about the Crowd Funding journey and how to launch and run a successful campaign, I plan to get that written on evenings when I am in hotels on my own.

"But oh, Wait, I'm a company and I want to get involved, I really want to sponsor UK Cityscapes" I hear you say, well worry not, companies can still get involved in return for publicity, reviews and other such wonderful things, if you are a UK company, involved with travel or you're a hotel then please continue to get in touch by emailing me 

you'll also be seeing a lot more photos of my cats again and yesterday we just gave a home to Petunia, a 2 and a half year old husky with neurological problems, she has the equivalent of doggy autism and problems with her back legs, we took her out for her very first trip to the park yesterday and she loved it She's just quite the most enchanting little character. She's perpetually happy and has settled in better in one day than any other pet we've ever had, because she has no prey instinct and wants to be everyones friend she'll no doubt end up being friends with the cats, she's not even interested when they go next to her cage, much to their dismay.

I'm happy we found Petunia, she's going to keep hubby company when I'm away from home.

Oops, got totally distracted there didn't I, not like me at all!

Have a wonderful weekend, pray for sunshine because I am off to photograph a wedding and the portraits are timed for the same time as the thunder, my outfit today will probably be a floaty dress and galoshes!

All PR requests  and enquiries about the UK Cityscapes project should be sent to mandy@mandycharltonphotography.com

A Sunday look at #UKCityscapes and why this project is so important to me

It's a grey and slightly damp morning in Newcastle and I'm still in my pjyamas planning my next move! This morning someone tweeted a link to this photo saying they'd found it in my Etsy store and isn't it fabulous.

and this dear reader is the photograph which inspired my UK Cityscapes project

Earlier this week I spoke about why I need your help and told my story but this was really the moment that inspired it all.  I was over 400ft in the air standing at the top of the radio tower in Liverpool and for the first time in forever (sorry Frozen ;) ) I felt that feeling of total insignificance, we're all so incredibly small when viewed against the large landscape in which we live.  We can be all consumed by our problems, worries or human conditions but in reality they're so microcosmic when compared with the universe and it's amazing structures, formations and landscapes.  Now I'm not trying to undermine how utterly trapped you can feel when you have any mental health challenge and I should know from my own personal experiences of bipolar and agoraphobia, I suppose that several years ago I could not have done this, I could not be so high, so open,so tiny for agoraphobia made me essentially hide into the smallest corner wanting to be wrapped in a warm dark blanket of my own mortal fears.  I manage my own mental health pretty successfully and I speak about it to try and help, encourage and inspire other people who may at this moment feel trapped by their own inner mortal fears.  I think there's an ongoing fighting viking inside me which some days has to fight harder than others, don't get me wrong, when I get worried I get anxious and when I get anxious I forget to breath, funnily enough though it never ever happens in my professional life, probably because when I hold that camera I am very much in charge of the world, maybe that's what we all need, to find our own empowering tool which helps us to be in charge of our own universe so that we can climb tall buildings, scale large mountains and reach the precipice of our own destiny.

That's another reason that this project is so very important to me, I want to use this to do as much good as I can, I want the world to know my story and for everyone who's currently struggling to know that it is possible to be amazing and do great things.

Please support this project by claiming a perk on my crowd funding page or sharing this post or sponsoring me with your business and thank you, you're amazing!

Edinburgh, city 6 of 69, The UK Cityscape project by Mandy Charlton

So it's 7.20am on Monday 28th April 2014 and I've woken up to a sunny morning in Edinburgh, the 6th city in my UK Cityscape Project to be the first person to  document and photograph all 69 cities of the UK.

I've had a pretty good nights sleep at the Old Waverley Hotel on Princes Street, I still can't quite believe how lucky I was to find that this hotel had a massive discount on lastminute.com  The staff here have been lovely even though we were only staying for 1 night, we've a great view of the Scott Monument and our room faces onto my favourite department store Jenners. I'd always wanted to stay at this hotel, just for the views really and I thought i'd won the jackpot when the promised internal room actually happened to be one with a view, some of the front facing rooms which look directly onto the Scott Monument and Princes Street are definitely worth paying a little more if you are in Edinburgh for the whole Scottish experience.

So, what can I tell you about Edinburgh?

Well it's of course home to 2 very famous Pandas who live at Edinburgh Zoo, no time to go and visit them on this trip sadly but I'll be back with the girls in the summer for our fun trip!  Oh and just a warning, click on that link and you'll be transported to the Edinburgh Zoo panda cam, you may spend the day doing not very much else ;)

Apart from the Pandas -

Edinburgh is the capital city of Scotland, population is around half a million or was when it was last counted in 2012.  It's home to the Queens official Scottish residence the Palace of Holyroodhouse, I've never actually been inside, the next time I must visit!

Edinburgh is a city steeped in so much history your head might just explode if you try to absorb it all at once, it's not a city you can just spend one day in, I've been visiting for many many years and still haven't seen all of it, there's just so much to do whether you have kids or not, to name a few things there's the National Museum of Scotland, the National Gallery, Dynamic Earth, the royal yacht Britannia, the botanic gardens, and of course Edinburgh castle a place I can finally say I've visited, just 1 note about Edinburgh castle, it's amazing, however it's also got a very expensive coffee shop, if you're on a visit you might want to avoid the £3 cup of coffee and the £3 cake, just because they're expensive does not mean they're the best coffee and cake you'll ever experience ;)

And so onwards with our photographic journey, lets enjoy slightly misty murky Edinburgh, at one point I thought we would have to give up as you couldn't even see your own nose never mind a cityscape but lucky it cleared a little later on in the day.

 I have Abigail joining me on this leg of the journey as she's still got another week left of her Easter holidays even though it seems like Easter was weeks ago, if you're wondering what the heck she's doing, well I think she was either trying to hold up the ice-cream van or she's being a tour guide.

yes I think we all wish we could do this to our beloved Tweens every now and then.

and so that was Edinburgh, one of my favourite cities and I suspect when I get to the end of the project it will still remain as one of my favourite cities, everywhere you go in Edinburgh there's beauty to find, the magnificent layered landscapes our cities provide is really in evidence in Edinburgh and although the layers combine the old and the new it's really the old which stands out more than anything else, inhale and you'll breath in thousands of years of history, so much so you better hope you don't get some stuck up your nose!

and so onwards we go on this crazy journey, we leave on a train for Glasgow this morning, luckily it's only a half hour journey and luckily for me I love train journeys.

If you would like to grab yourself a pre-order of the book, find out more about the project or sponsor my campaign you can do so here

If you're a business and would like to discuss corporate sponsorship and working together to show how magnificent your business is in your city you can email me here

and if you would like to purchase any of the cityscapes from any of the cities you can drop me an email or there's a selection in my fine art Etsy store Philomenas Boutique

Newcastle, City 2/69 in the UK Cityscapes Project...part 1

It's Friday and actually sort of the weekend for me which doesn't happen very often, I have 1 photo shoot tomorrow late afternoon and the rest of the weekend off, blimey!!  So earlier today I took a 3 hour walk with my camera around part of Newcastle, the Quayside mainly as it's my favourite bit.  I think you know when you live in a city you often forget to look around and see what's going on, it's like Ferris Bueller famously once said "Life moves pretty fast, if you don't stop and look around once in a while you could miss it."

I've also heard that it's said that Liverpool is quite like Newcastle, I can sort of see how you could think that, if you read this post and then my last one about Liverpool you can make your own mind up.  What ever you decide, you must admit that Newcastle is pretty though I did notice that there's quite a lot of scaffold about at the moment in the quayside area.

Some of these images will shortly be available for purchase as fine art prints and canvases in Philomena's Boutique so why not pay a visit and purchase something lovely for yourself or maybe Fathers Day.

I actually think rooftops are s incredibly pretty, I went in search of non traditional views to create multilayered "painted" images and by multi layered I'm not talking about overlaying 10 billion photos in Photoshop, i'm talking about looking at the natural landscapes of cities and the way the buildings create layer upon layer of unusual beauty, give me this over a traditional bridge scene any day!

Panoramics are my favourite thing, I never did have the patience to sit and fiddle for hours doing them but the power of the amazing Fuji X-Pro1 is an amazing tool to have in your hands.

Again this image is multi layered, the corner of the Millenium bridge overlaps the law courts and behind it the quayside and then we have the bridges which all seem to sit on one another, it's a pretty amazing city when you see it like this.

I think the way I see things is with a touch of halcyon vision like a picture postcard from 1963 telling you to visit this great city, simpler times I'm sure and the quayside has changed so much.

These are mostly all legal offices now but I do love the multilayered canvas of cityscapes

The Newcastle Malmaison and Pitcher and Piano looking glorious in the sunshine, if you look closely you can even see St James Park

So the next time you're in your home town why not try and see it through the eyes of someone who's never seen it before, have an adventure and be an explorer in your own city

Liverpool, City 1/69 in the UK Cityscapes project

I hope those of you who have begun your Easter break are having lots of fun, Looby and I have been on one of our adventures dear reader, this time to beautiful, vibrant Liverpool, we really did find somewhere we truly loved and I think it won't be too long before we make another visit.

So, here's our review of things to do, places to see and wonders to experience if you find yourself in Liverpool with 48 hours to spare.

Here's some of our highlights in photographs, many of which will soon be available as fine art prints or canvases in my lovely Etsy store Philomenas Boutique

The Liver Building, possibly the most famous building in Liverpool, it's said if the birds ever fall then Liverpool will be submerged.

Looby on the Mersey Ferry, some great views from the ferry journey, well worth the admission of around £14 for both of us

The ferry terminal, with the Three Graces in the background.

If you really want the best views of the city you should go up this radio tower, it costs £8 for adults and £5 for concessions but it's worth every penny because at over 400ft high you'll never get views of the city anywhere else quite like it.

The next time I go to Liverpool I want to stay on the yellow submarine, a floating aparthotel, don't fancy the Titanic though ;)

Mrs bug!

These are all views from the top of the Liverpool Wheel, costs around £15 for 1 adult and 1 child, the ride is 10 minutes and we would have gone on again if we'd had time, possibly on a sunnier clearer day!

The Three Graces with Mann Island in front of them, I really love the architecture of Liverpool, the juxtaposition of the old with the new and quirky is quite amazing, it seems with every build the architects go a step further to create a very interesting and creative landscape, i don't think I saw two buildings which looked the same!

The Super Lambananas Outside of the museum of Liverpool, we also spotted these things in various locations around Liverpool, they're quite bonkers!

I finally got a panoramic with both the anglican cathedral of Liverpool and the Catholic Metropolitan Cathedral which the locals call "Paddys Wigwam"

For any photographers who might be looking in, all of these images were taken with the Fuji X-Prol and the 35mm f1.4 lens, next time when I come back to Liverpool I am bringing a wider lens!

Looby and I had an amazing time and she didn't mind at all that I was there on a photographic mission and I think the plan now is to photograph as much of the country as I possibly can,  it's something different and it fills in the time between portrait sessions and weddings and means I get to take photos every day for Philomena's Boutique, it's a great time to be a photographer.