It's hard to know quite where to start when thinking of the holiday from which we've just returned dear reader and you might be forgiven for thinking we've been somewhere terribly exotic when you look at this photo, I'll try my best to take you on the journey with us on our Sun £9.50 holiday to Haven, Berwick, in Northumberland

I can honestly say that I didn't have huge expectations of our Monday to Friday caravan break, I'd paid £62ish with The Sun plus another £70ish for entertainment passes, linen hire and a £20 pet supplement for Holly the beagle and I really didn't know what to expect.

I've never been one for caravan holidays but after Looby and I spent 4 nights in Ugly Betty last year in Hereford I thought it was worth a try and it definitely was, from the moment we arrived and saw the immaculately kept caravan park which is nestled on the cliff tops of 2 sheltered coves of white sands made from ground shells in  beautiful Berwick I knew that we had gotten ourselves an absolute bargain.

The caravan, one of Havens standard accommodation offerings was clean, modern and cosy during the day, it was colder than the actual North Pole during the nights and when we go back I am definitely going to be hiring a space heater.  Last night for example I slept in 2 layers of clothes, a huge cardigan, 3 quilts and a hat and I just about had a great nights sleep!  There was a fire in the caravan but it really only kept a small part of the caravan warm and it's no surprise that Abigail chose to sleep on the sofa closest to the fire last night. Obviously though it's warmer in the summer evenings so it might not be as much of an issue but I would pack a hot water bottle just in case.  I do think it's a shame that you can't hire a nicer caravan just because you have a dog, I would have paid more to have one with central heating.

When we arrived we were told there was a leaky tap which would be fixed that evening or it may have already been fixed, I went back to reception on Wednesday to report that it was getting worse and was told that it would be fixed that evening, a repair man did appear and promised he would be back to fix it properly on Thursday but at the time of checkout on Friday it was still unfixed and getting worse all the time.

The wardrobe door was also broken having come off it's track and the extractor hood on the cooker didn't work which lead to me setting off the smoke alarm twice.  They really are just minor quibbles and for the most part for 4 whole days we did what we wanted, ate what we liked and walked many miles each day, it's good for the soul to have a break from the norm and that includes eating all those yummy but usually taboo foods!

The scenery of the surrounding coastline was for me the thing which made the holiday, I just adored every second of the copious amounts of walks with Holly every day, we walked early in the morning, mid morning, lunchtime, afternoon, after dinner and sometimes in the evenings as well, it's no wonder I was racking up 10k steps by 11am most days, it's just a shame it didn't counteract all of the sugar and pastries, haha!

Looby loved the swimming, the activities and the entertainment, she did fencing, water walking, retro party dancing, game playing, amusement arcading, swinging, climbing and lots and lots of sliding and I think if you have kids then that's the joy of a Haven holiday, there's literally things to do nearly every minute of the day.  Looby particularly loved Funstars Go Live in the evenings and I think we went every night, Abigail came with us a couple of evenings but she mostly lounged about with Holly or on her own or did the being teenage and angry thing!  I asked her why she asked for money so often, she said, it's my age, that's what we do!  I don't think she's coming with us during summer but she did say she might come for a weekend which will be handy if it's just Berwick as it's only 45 minutes on the train.

I took some time to contemplate live, the universe and everything and came to the conclusion that Looby, Holly and I need more holidays, more adventures and so during term times I need to really work at making my wedding photography and portrait photography businesses really blossom, it's taken me several months to get to the point where I am enjoying work again, I suppose not just work but also life.  Huge life events take a long time to get over and the healing process does seem to be well on it's way for me, I found I enjoyed all of the time on my own with Holly when we were away, I felt like better company to myself and Looby and I had a big chat about how I would have to work extra hard so that we could take the time away and have many holidays, suffice to say if you would like to speak to me about shoooting your wedding or portraits this summer please do get in touch

For now I am going to have a nice hot bath and enjoy the feeling of being warm again!

(all of these photos were taken with the awesome iPhone6 and edited in Instagram and yes I will be ordering prints)

I photographed a kids session on an iPhone 6... with a selfie stick!

It's a bit of a bonkers world isn't it dear reader and I may have been accused of being a slightly eccentric member of this population we have called humanity but that's ok, nothing wrong with being different!!

I guess I'd always been intrigued by the differences in cameras and there's been vast improvements in the quality of the images the humble iPhone is capable of putting out.

I was so flattered at the number of people who offered to entrust their children to have a portrait session with an iPhone and in the end I couldn't thank Samantha of North East Family Fun enough for letting me borrow her children.

The first and most noticeable difference and you might be able to see it on this photo above is the lack of depth of field, the iPhone 6 camera boasts an f2.2 lens but in reality if you were shooting with the same aperture lens on a professional camera you would notice depth of field straight away and without question.

To demonstrate, this below photo was shot with the Fuji X-Pro1 and the 35mm f1.4 lens at around f1.8

For the most part though the average parent probably won't care about that, they just want a pocket camera to capture the moments of their childrens lives and I'm very much the same, I always have my phone with me and I'm always snapping Instagrams through my day.

I'm going to compile some tips and tricks for parents over the next few days so you can make the most of your pocket camera or phone and I think we may even get together for an hour in the park, if you would be interested in a quick course of how to get more from your camera do let me know and we can get that set up.

I'm going to cover this more in future blog posts but I do love the selfie stick, not for selfies though, I just love it for being able to take the camera on your phone places where it previously couldn't go and places where it's significantly more difficult to get your professional camera (without extra equipment).

again, these 2 portraits I love albeit without the kind of depth of field I love but I'd print them, I'd have them on my walls or in a photo book.

Now then, something else I need to mention is the burst mode on the iPhone 6 camera, to take 10 frames per second with no real buffer is quite astonishing and the results are pretty good, well they are sometimes, again it's not going to equal what you can do with a professional camera but I love the movement in this one, it's one of those moments of childhood and this little one really was jumping up and down very quickly.  If I'd just captured this of my child when we were just out playing I would be delighted.

Again, all of these shots were iPhone in burst mode and I would be a happy parent to have captured these precious moments of childhood and you know, that is what it's about, I think as a photographer and a mum that you should have a portrait session every year, take the kids to places they love and have natural photos but as a parent you should be capturing those moments every day, not portraits, not smiley looking at the camera photos but the actual moments of their lives just doing things.

and so onto my beloved Xpro 1 and yes you can see the difference and I certainly don't intend to throw away my professional cameras...

The Xpro1 is capable of 6 frames a second and honestly that's quite enough for me and the average 3 year old, I also love the colours that my camera gives me, it's a beautiful wonderful thing I don't appreciate enough.

For the most part as a parent though I'll be so happy to carry around an iPhone 6 in my pocket for any moments that come up and I'll print them and I'll put them in frames mixed in with professional photographs, they all make up the rich canvas of life after all.

One thing I would say is that I hate editing photos on an iPhone, it's the screen which makes everything look better on an iPhone and then you see the images on a calibrated Mac and it's just yeuch.  I edited all of these images using Lightroom and Photoshop and I don't intend to stop that any time soon though I would say that the VSCO Cam app for iPhone/iPad is pretty good and I've also heard great things about Snapseed although I wasn't a huge fan, they tend to be the apps recommended by professional photographers though.

So go out there today into the spring sunshine and capture the moments of your childrens lives, it doesn't matter what kind of camera you have, just capture those precious moments because I can tell you as the mum of a pre-teen and 2 stroppy teens, they pass within the blink of an eye.

It's not about things, it's definitely not about things....

Come on, repeat it with me, it's about experiences, it's not about things...

Well except that I've had one of those rare moments where it actually was about a thing, you see it's been 2 years of love I've had with my iPhone 5 but our time had come and much as I loved it I upgraded - 

I know, I sound like a materialist or a capitalist but honestly I think apart from cameras my phone is the centre of my business with this one thing I can run my business from anywhere in the world.  One of the things is that the camera on my iPhone boasts a camera with a 10fps burst, that's incredible, I tried it today and took 28 photos quicker than I blinked!  Now just to compare this, my wonderful Fuji XPro1 shoots at 6fps and that is plenty for the average 3 year old who's running around wildly and no I'm not likely to start shooting portrait sessions on an iPhone but hell yeah I'm going to try it just to compare how it is.

For me there's always been something slightly disingenuous about the Instagrams that I post, i.e. it feels a bit wrong to upload professional photographs to Instagram because it clearly misses the point of it being in the moment and from the hip which I think is what an Instagram is all about but at the same time the average camera phone is not going to please the eye of the average professional photographer so I'd like to give this a go in some good light with a small person and shoot half an half and give them a proper comparison.

If you have got this far then well done, you'll be rewarded soon I promise... here goes, If you have a little one possibly about 4 or 5 and you would like a completely complimentary photo shoot with the understanding that half of it is going to be shot on my regular professional camera that I've used on every session since last March and the other half is going to be shot on an iPhone 6 then leave a comment on this blog post and we'll fix it up, if more than 1 person comments I'll do a draw.  You'll get all of the edited images and I'll edit them both in the same way as I normally do!

Please note that you have to be available in the evening as that's when the best light of the day is, think an hour before sunset sometime over the next week and if that's not a clash with bedtime then I'd love to hear from you.

I can't actually believe I am doing this but hey, it'll be an interesting experiment for sure!