Can you believe it's been 9 days since I last updated?  It's been such a busy time, my business continues to grow at a pace which isn't bad when you consider I've been a professional photographer for 10 years next month.

Tuesday and Wednesday I was at the Thinking Digital conference enjoying brain food and that resulted in being exhausted, there were so many highlights I don't even know where to begin but I am sitting with a new book on my desk called 59 seconds by Richard Wiseman who I saw speak, it's a book which has lots of tools to help you change your life in just 59 seconds and I can't wait to delve in.  other standout speakers were Simon Singh who gave us "The Simpsons and their Mathematical Secrets". I can't even explain that one because I didn't understand most of it, another book I need someone more clever and math based to read it for me.  There was just so much inspiring stuff in one day, everything from rocket science to being happier, from freestyle rap to Imogen Heap (she plays extraordinary music with her insanely brilliant gloves).  It's no wonder that I was in a bit of a mind coma yesterday and actually sitting at my desk editing 11 photo shoots was just what I needed.

The lovely people at Three have given me a Samsung S8+ to review for a month, it's kind of a point of terror as an Apple evangelist but it wasn't too hard to set up and I'm looking forward to pushing it's boundaries, at least in the photography sense of the word.

I also picked up some new photography kit this week a  very lightly used Fuji X-T1, Battery Grip and a 56mm f1.2 which is a joyous thing of yumminess, it means I'm pretty much going to go between my Canon 6D with the 50mm f1.4 and the X-T1 with 56mm f1.2 for all of my portrait work and then I have my nifty 18mm pancake lens to stick on it when I'm travelling although I do love my Fuji X70 for travel as it's so teeny tiny whilst packing a huge punch, I'm also about to invest in either an XPro2 or a 24-70L f2.8 lens for my 6D but I'm buying neither until I can make a decision which isn't based on me saying "eeny, meany, miny mo".  To be fair, I mostly buy my kit on a whim.

Anyway, enough geekery, I'm sure you don't come here for that!  On the dating front, someone asked me to go on a date and so I retreated and decided that I couldn't possibly do that.  Jeez I hope I meet someone I fancy in real life one day because I think it's the only way it's ever likely to work, it's not that I'm a nut but I am definitely crunchy!!

Ooh, ooh and (just brushing over my dating ineptitude) last night I booked my June travel moment, I'm going for one big trip a month at the moment so April was of course Mallorca, May is the South West coast of Scotland and at the end of June I am going to Madrid with Harriet, whoop!  I'm incredibly excited, I love Spain so much and exploring another city will be an amazing adventure, oh and we bagged ourselves 4 nights in a 4-star hotel including luggage and transfers for £231 each, I truly am the queen of finding great travel deals.  I must tell you that at the end of July, I'm taking Abigail to Italy, the Amalfi coast beckons but what I haven't found yet is a brilliant deal, you can be sure when I do that you will be the first to know about it.

This weekend I have a very light work weekend, just 3 photo shoots tomorrow and four on Sunday and I'm happy with that and not taking any more on now because next weekend I have 2 weddings!

Whatever you get up to this weekend, make it a wonderful one!

What Thinking Digital Conference Means To Me

LJ Rich blowing us away with her musical, digital tribute to Science

It's been a few weeks since Thinking Digital Conference2015 at Sage Gateshead and I've had some time to reflect and see what I actually managed to retain, everywhere I go I seem to talk about it, it completely blew me away and totally exceeded my expectations. I was delighted to be there as part of the Sage One Street Team and spent my time tweeting to the max with I'm sure steam coming from my fingers tips in over excitement at some points!

Now let me tell you a story of how I came to know of Thinking Digital in the first place.  The year was 2008 and I joined this little microblogging site called Twitter (who knew that 8 years later I would be named as the 167th most influential tweeter in the North East (higher than Cheryl Cole by quite a few places) out of a mere 2 million NE tweeters,  anyway back to 8 years ago, well what happened next was that I somehow ended up being part of the most amazing creative and digital community in Newcastle and after a few years of livestream and one year in the livecast lounge I finally made it to the conference for the whole 2 days in the main hall plus the conference dinner and closing party, sadly I couldn't make the opening party as I was with my gorgeous daughter Looby at the RTS youth media awards but next year I am clearing my diary for the whole shebang, oh and maybe Thinking Digital Manchester in November if I can wangle some time off to be be there.

It's hard to know where to start with highlights, there were literally so many - 

I was blown away by Tara Shears a particle physicist, her enthusiasm for her specialist subject gave me a greater understanding about the Higgs Boson and what it means for us, I'm very excited that the LHC is currently being switched on again and I'm pretty certain that we won't all be swallowed up by a huge black hole... or will we?

Tim Lebrecht spoke to my soul about being in love with your business, being a business romantic, how can we make business more magical, as you know I believe love is at the core of our very beings and the more love we have the more possibilities there are of amazing and magical things happening around us and not just in a romantic way but also in a life way, a business way, every word he spoke resonated with the things I believe and I was delighted to be able to spend some much needed "Thick Time" with some great digital friends, Laura from Sharpe Recruitment, George from Epic Times, and Graham from Canny Insights.  You see the thing for me is that Thinking Digital is about more than just the conference, it's about the community and one of my highlights was finally meeting Herb Kim, we've been friends on Facebook for several years and finally at the closing party we actually met in real life!

Thinking Digital isn't just about innovation, it's also about inspiration and I couldn't have been more creatively inspired, it's made me think about my own business and what can I do better, one of the speakers talked about not doing new stuff, there is no new stuff, we must just learn to do what we do but better and I think that's what I'm attempting to do in my business, I am the worst for going out on a whim when I need to just buckle down, work harder, work better, work smarter!

I'm sure over the next year I'll use lots of what I learned at Thinking Digital, I have notes, I have photographs, I have videos, if you have never heard music live coded then I would urge you to go and check out Sam Aaron, the man is quite honestly a genius although he did say that 10 year olds are brilliant at this stuff, well I'm neither 10 nor fluent in Raspberry Pi so I'll have to just enjoy the work of Sam.

One person I would definitely want to see again is Steve Mould and in fact I've urged my son that we need to go to the festival of the spoken nerd when it comes to Newcastle later this year, Steve was one of the most engaging speakers I think I've ever seen, to talk about data collection and correctly predicting the birth time of your daughter whilst your wife is in labour is quite literally the most brilliant and hilarious presentation I've seen for a long time although I did think "his poor wife" at one point!!

I could go on for pages and pages but I hope I've done enough to whet your appetite to come along to the conference next year or Thinking Digital Manchester which is in the autumn, the tickets for both that and Thinking Digital 2016 are on sale for the bargain price of only £99 and you'll have to believe me when I say that even 1 of those speakers would be worth the admission price alone!

Catching Up....

Don't you hate it when bloggers go missing for an entire week or something?  Every day since last Tuesday I've sat down to write without any success whatsoever because I had too much going on so here's a little catch up of exactly what's been going on, going down, coming up ;)

So a week ago, I went with Looby to the RTS Young Peoples media awards, there was a red carpet, there was a buffet (probably from Costco if I'm honest) and I even chatted to celebrity superstar Rachael Teate, that's Kara from Wolfblood, she's lovely in real life and she presented the awards with style and grace and I am pleased to report that Benton Park Primary school went away with a special commendation award for their short film "Home" and it was another red letter day as Looby wore heels for the first time ever (barring the times when she stole mine from the cupboard to play shoes shops and models and....)

My gorgeous girl gets more grown up and beautiful by the day and can I also say that she managed in heels far better than I ever do!

Wednesday and Thursday were Thinking Digital Conference 2015 and I'm in the process of writing about that so more later but it was 2 full days of not only inspiration and learning but also of connecting with the community that I love, it encapsulated everything from particle physics to artificial intelligence to social media and art and data collection, to say it's wide ranging and educational is quite an understatement and the reason there's no official blog about it yet is because I still have to get my head around some of the information which I literally found to be life changing and mind blowing.  So I do hope you'll come back in the next couple of days to read about my snippets of information I'm taking away and using in my own life and business.  I actually wrote the blog in my dream last night and I remember thinking it was the most inspirational blog post I'd ever written, it's just a shame I can't remember a single word of it this morning.

Friday and it was time to catch up with a little one I've photographed 3 times now, she's utterly adorable and at 2 I would have to say very independent and strong willed, perhaps I think she's going to be a world leader in the future or maybe a fashion icon, you can never really tell can you?

One joyful thing is that in Jesmond Dene at the moment the rhododendrons are in full bloom so it's a great time to have a really pretty photo shoot with lots of bright happy colour in it.  If you would like a photo shoot this weekend I have availability in Jesmond Dene or Tynemouth Longsands on Saturday or Sunday.  Mini Sessions are £25 and regular 1 hour photo shoots are £40, both come with a complimentary print, web gallery, 15% off for the first week your gallery is live and can be used for any occasion.

Oh yes, I think I might have just said that....

On Saturday I went down to meet a gorgeous family at Dunston Staithes, now that is a great place for a photo shoot, I think it would particularly work well for a couples session, the intention with kids is always different to what actually happens on the day, we know that by now though, right?

I shan't give away the location of the secret flower meadow down there because you'll all rush off to blow those dandelion clocks and then it would spoil it the next time I want to use it.  I loved shooting down at the Dunston Staithes because it meant that I could walk down, it's just under 4 miles and takes around an hour and it's such a pretty lovely walk, keeps me fit and out of mischief!

Sunday/Monday were more along the lines of relaxation days, I sorted out my very messy bedroom and cleared away the very last my little pony, I have my bedroom back people, I have wrestled one last barbie and the scary welsh doll and Looby is happy to be in her own space upstairs, well except for the fact that she's always doing things in my room, in fact i'm sitting on the bed with that Stampy Cat right in my ear, I don't know why she always wants to be within 3 foot of me but I don't intend to complain as I suspect one day she'll scream and shout at me as much as Abigail does!

So, here's the rest of the week and there are a lot of photo shoots in there but that's not a bad thing, in fact it's a very good thing and so you too could nip in and take advantage by also having sessions so...

Today I'm going to be in Jesmond Dene for a session at 4pm, probably it's too late notice but hey, before or after always works if you have the urge.  Tomorrow I am on the beach for a session from 11-12 so I could fit you in before or after if you fancy coming down to Tynemouth Longsands. Thursday I have nothing in my diary so you could have a photo shoot anywhere and Friday is looking like photo shoots in Heaton Park if you fancy one there!  

Oh and just 1 more thing, I currently for a very limited amount of time am offering 30% off all weekday wedding packages which makes them so reasonable you might jump up and down with glee and I'm also offering 15% off weekend wedding packages for this year only until my diary is full so if you would like to speak to me about booking your wedding or shooting your portraits you can do so via -   Email/Website/Facebook go on, contact me now, it might just be your favourite thing you ever did!