This is very much one of those posts which lets you catch up with everything that is going on, skip to the next post if you're not at all interested dear reader!

 

So, there are only 2 special Mothers Day sessions remaining, they're on the beach at Tynemouth on the 14th March and the sessions remaining are at 10.30 and 1.30pm, they're £30 and you'll be getting a complimentary 12x8 inch print of your favourite image (worth £15), a web gallery so you can show mum and everyone else the lovely images and also you'll get 15% off your order if you place it in the first 7 days your gallery is live.

Also, after cutting work right down I have now formally asked my lovely assistant to become my associate so from now on there'll be 2 of us available for photo shoots making sure that you get more chances to have your photo shoot wherever and whenever you want. You'll always know if it's me or Stacey who'll be shooting your session and I'll be doing all of the editing to make sure that the images have the same look you have all come to love.  Customer service will be dealt with by lovely new assistant Sue as I've said a very sad goodbye to Elanor who is off to take over the whole world!

I'm delighted to say that work keeps coming in constantly at the moment and I am shooting a really diverse selection of jobs, from families and their doggies, maternity sessions on the beach and newborn sessions in the comfort of my lovely clients homes (I like those, my toes stay warm).

and on a personal note, well there's always Holly

I'm off to Edinburgh today for a travel assignment for Ibis, absolutely thrilled to have been asked and from the schedule I have seen it looks like it's going to be a pretty brilliant 24 hours.  If you want to keep up with everything that is going on on my assignment please follow me on instagram

We have availability for photo shoots on 21st and 22nd of March, 21st is on the beach at Tynemouth, 22nd is Jesmond Dene, it's up to you which one you choose but they're my regular 30 minute sessions with a 7x5 print, web gallery and 15% off for the first week your gallery is live and you can even buy one for Mum for her Mothers Day present, gift certificates are always available.

Having some niggles with one of my websites today so please contact me via email or through photographer newcastle

Re-New, Re-Visit, Scrapbook...

Dear reader, some of you will have no doubt read this blog forever, well I hope some of you have, I started blogging in 2003/4 and started this blog in early 2005, that seems like forever to me!

So anyway, you may have time to time encountered posts on here where I've been talking about scrapbooking, it's my hobby, the thing I do to relax, something which creatively nourishes me and stretches my arty crafty gluey persuasions for the parts photography cannot reach.  You see I love photos but I want to do something with them, I want to make albums with stories to leave for my ancestors, a kind of window on my life which the girls will inherit and then they can show their children and they can show their children etc.

My girls love to scrapbook, it's the only time they stoop fighting for more than 30 seconds, anything that can accomplish that is quite frankly a miracle!

I don't get very much time to scrapbook because business is so busy constantly but thats fine, yesterday after spending a day catching up in the office on Wednesday I gave myself the afternoon off and completed 4 pages to add to my scrapbooks, 2 of them went straight into the scrapbooks but I thought I would share a couple of pages.

I'm having a lot of fun creating things with Instagrams at the moment and I've found a couple of great companies who can free your Instagrams from the page.  Photobox.co.uk will do lovely quality 5x5 prints and printing.com will do lovely prints which look like polaroids, I'm testing another service based in Australia at the moment, I'll get back to you when I have the prints and have assessed their service.

Ask any contemporary scrapbooker what they love about the hobby and somewhere in there they'll mention the supplies and it's a really lovely treat to yourself to get all those pretty papers, stickers and embellishments.

I do think my style has changed over the years, in the peak of scrapbooking in the mid noughties we would all spend hours/days/weeks creating the perfect scrapbook page of well, sometimes quite frankly, an insignificant moment, those were the days I used to be a buyer for a scrapbooking company and also ran their design team and it was all about who could get published the most, I think we all took ourselves way too seriously, for me now it's just about having fun, it doesn't have to be the latest or greatest product (though I am still very good at scrapbook supply shopping), it's just about telling the story behind the photographs to leave a window to my world for future generations.

So while I am off photographing a wedding and the little people of the North East this weekend why don't you spend some time being creative, getting messy, and giving yourself an excuse to play, nourish your creativity and you'll be a fuller better more relaxed person whatever field you work in.

Happy Weekend dear reader!

Autumn/Christmas 2012 Family Portrait Photoshoots, 3 Very Special Dates

Yes I know what you're going to say, it's only September but when it comes to finding a photographer in Newcastle to shoot your family portrait session you really do need to make the booking early if you're considering giving them as a present.

This year I'm delighted to announce 3 very special dates so you can have the photographs on location at either Jesmond Dene, Saltwell Park or a special session at my studio the following week.

Because these special family portrait photoshoot sessions are a special price (the disk one saves nearly £100) I'm expecting the sessions to sell out in super quick time, I only announced this yesterday and session times are going fast!!!

So all you need to do to book is tell me which location at which time and I'll get you booked in!

you can either call me on 07918 121838, you can email me at mandy@mandycharltonphotography.com or you can click through to Newcastle Photographer and fill out a contact form.

If you are really savvy you could even buy one of these sessions as a gift certificate and make someones day!

The Sunderland International Air Show 2012

The Sunderland International Airshow is now in it's 24th year and can you believe that until yesterday I can't ever remember going?

I rarely get weekends off due to weddings and portraits but I'd booked this one ages ago to catch up on a little family time!

Abigail was off at her grandmas having a little holiday which left me, hubby, Looby and Iain to go over to the Sunderland Air Show.

For 1 day the sun did actually shine all day, I couldn't quite believe it after all of the rain we seem to have had all day.

Iain and Paul absolutely loved the airshow and sat on the seafront watching all afternoon, Looby enjoyed it but got a little bored so we wandered around the myriad of stalls which were gathered along the sea front from Roker to Seaburn.

I'd definitely recommend it as a great day out for all of the family no matter what ages the kids are, we took the metro to Seaburn and it was a 15 minute walk to the seafront, the metro was actually packed though so thats the only thing I'd advise.

Here's a few photos from the day - 

my son Iain is going to be 16 in September, where on earth does the time go? As  someone with aspergers and being a teenager he's always the most difficult to get photographs of, I don't hold out hope to get very many of him anytime soon as I managed to get at least 4 of him yesterday!

Looby of course is our resident poser, thank goodness for her or sometimes there wouldn't be anyone to photograph!

Christmas is coming

and there's not very much time left to book a festive photo shoot if you want to guarantee delivery of your precious photographs before Santa comes down the chimney (or through the door with a magic key in our case as we don't have a chimney)

These are just a few gorgeous photos with a festive touch I've shot this week

so if you don't want to miss out then call me/contact me/shout at me and I'll get you in my studio toot suite!

Holidays are coming, Holidays are coming, Holidays are coming

Maize Mazes, Fruit Picking and a lovely morning at Brockbushes

It's a bank holiday weekend and so we decided that we needed to atleast attempt a day out with the whole family, we sort of fell at the first hurdle because Iain wasn't even out of bed but thats teenagers for you, excuse the mix of iPhone and Instagrams in this post, I do actually like the iphone HDR photos though and don't always want everything to be square!

We'd heard about the Maze Maize at Brockbushes, just outside of Corbridge in Northumberland and so we set off for the maze after a hearty breakfast in their tea rooms, you can't complain at a full english breakfast plus toast and coffee for under a fiver!

The maze is huge, it's designed in the shape of an owl, well it would be if you could see it with a helicopter!

here's me and Looby pretending we're in the jungle!

It has pretty sunflowers at the edge of it, it's funny but when I'm in these Mazes I always feel like im in that classic movie "Field of Dreams"

Looby found a corn cob proving that yes the Maize was err actually Maize

Onwards we marched towards the middle, I have to say that there were points where I felt like I'd just paid £10 to have arguements about which direction we should go in

Finally we made it to the middle and let me tell you that it wasn't quite so hard to get back out thankfully!  After the maze we decided to go and pick our own fruit as demonstrated here by Looby

at one point she turned to me and said "I love plums mammy but not as much as I love you"

we were careful not to pick too many because you know you can get carried away in these situations but we got some plums, raspberries and broad beans for the princely sum of £5.91

Meandering Paul was in a sunny mood so we all had a lovely time, after the fruit picking we went to the farm shop and picked up ingredients for tonights dinner, gammon with a honey and mustard glaze followed by Eton Mess using raspberries instead of strawberries.

While we were roaming the fields we noticed they were growing pumpkins so you can be sure we'll be back in a few weeks for some pumpkin patch photos.  I also noticed that at Halloween their maize maze becomes a field of screams, will I be brave enough to enter I'm not sure but I think Meandering Paul will be back there, he likes to be scared, he'd probably tell you thats why he married me ;)

The Charltons go camping and other wonderous holiday activities

This week off has been bliss, nearly 10 whole days with the kids and for several of them even hubby managed to be not at work.  on the Easter weekend we entertained ourselves at Kielder and then Belsay Hall and then this weekend we went on our inaugural camping trip!

Staying at Dunroamin Farm Camping and Caravan Site in Kirkinner on the beautiful Southwest coast of Scotland we had a blissful weekend and I have to say that living under canvas officially rocks!  I have to say that the site itself was gorgeous, the most amazing display of stars I have ever seen and the facilities were all beautifully clean one thing I had worried about.  I'd thoroughly recommend staying there, especially if you have kids because they have loads of stuff for the kids to do including a games room, adventure playground, basketball ring and plenty of balls, they even have a sandpit!!  Our kids also made friends with the other kids on site which was so lovely.  Here's some highlights of our Easter breaks

Starting with one taken by Iain, yeah he's getting good though I've given him a tip to try not to cut his sister off doing arty things!

Kielder, just as we were leaving on the Osprey ferry

Love this one of Iain but oh my he's getting so big, he could be in a boyband!

The Creetown Gemrock museum, I swear that Looby has a career in comedy ahead of her, love the gemrock museum, definitely a must visit if you're staying in the area, kids will love it.

Wigtown is gorgeous but if you have a chance walk down to the harbour for views like this, absolutely gorgeous!

Adore this portrait of Looby, she wasn't the happiest of bunnies when this was taken

Next to the Caravan site was several farms and an evening walk with Looby meant that I got to photograph some of them.

This is the view you wake up to every morning, I'd swap Newcastle for here any day of the week

One of the local sheepdogs, love this photo

Yesterday we went to the Logan Botanic Gardens, what an amazing coastal garden this is and we had the perfect day to visit it.

Looby in amongst the bluebells in the woodland at Logan

and of course the Gunnera is at it's most magnificent at Logan, definitely a highlight, I just wish the Gunnera in our garden would grow as big as it does at Logan

Finally got a photograph of all my gorgeous kids together, proud mummy I am

The Mull of Galloway, Scotlands most southerly point, some great views and plenty of wildlife

Now there's a cool portrait of the kids

The beach at Port Logan, next time we will get to the Logan Fish Pool

Last night we went for dinner at Portpatrick, one of my favourite little Scottish villages, if I was going to move to Scotland I'd love to live somewhere like this.

Last night I just managed to catch the sunset as we returned to our tent, I'm so thankful to be blessed with such a brilliant little family who enjoy our adventures as much as I do.  Without them, none of this would be a possibility.