A Year Ago Today!

Well, here it is, folks!

2nd July 2012. My blog's birthday! Happy Birthday Blog!

I've had a wicked year personally, as you can probably read back (if you have a lot of time!).

In the past 12 months I've:
- bought a new camera
- bought a new lens
- acquired a portable(ish) studio and lighting
- exploited my make-up brush wielding genius of a friend.
- worked on films
- assisted other shoots
- worked with various models, MUAs, artists, actors, designers, film crew, authors and a director!
- executed several personal shoot ideas and concepts
- shot live gigs
- taken stills for film
- made some moolah doing what I love
- filmed someone on fire with my camera (no, I didn't put them out either)
- forced Ceri Williams to pose for me.
- painted Ceri Williams
- exposed Ceri Williams sexy shoulders on camera
- worked with THE Ceri Williams
- turned Ceri Williams into an unforgiving diva
- shot some gangsters
- won a (reasonably dodgy) competition
- been in other blogs
- cut off nearly all my hair to raise money for the Little Princess Trust
- shot my brother... O_o
- time-travelled
- let a stunt-woman (notorious for making things go boom) ride my beloved bike, Angus.
- shot too many weddings!
- gotten a lot of people half-naked
- received fan mail \o/
- made some clothes?
- climbed trees
- acquired a cat
- shot a rather iconic dress
- found a ghost
- broken some houses
- had photography assistants
- avoided security guards like a ninja
- been gifted with new studio-lights, filters, a new lens, a VERY EXCITING piece of kit that I can't tell you about as it'll ruin the surprise and a VERY good tripod all by amazing friends. Thank you millions.
- turned a boy into a maybe-girl
- taken pictures of myself (*sings* "you're so vain.... you probably think this... blog is... about...")
- run two competitions
- bled a vampire (to come)
- shot catwalk
- stalked someone at a train-station
- been interviewed
- set myself some targets for 2012
- posed topless! :o
- achieved all but one target so far (and the last will be happening in Oct!)
- scared some locals in Hindhead
- shot a bald princess (to come)
- started my lovely new business
- made lots of lovely new friends (models, MUA's, designers and the like!)
- taken on several regular business clients
... and posted (now) 42 posts all about it all!

All this while, you brilliant folk have followed it all on Facebook, Twitter and on this wonderful blog.

I have, in that year had 11377 views on my blog which is about 270-ish views per post! So thank you all so much for following my progress (at least I hope it's progress)!

I can't believe that it's been within just one year that all of these things have happened!?

Though it would explain why I've not slept much. :)

Post-wise, I have coming up to start off the new blog-year:

Post-shoot, now editing
- A Little Princess Trust shoot
- A 'Vampire'-related shoot (non-glittery)
- Live bands
- Me again! (*sings* "You're so vain...")

To shoot soon!
A sci-fi themed shoot, to put it vaguely...
... and many many more left to do (but if I told you, I'd have to kill you).

Anyway, I can't stop... apparently I've got some editing to do (see above) and I have private work to finish before I get to do mine!

Cheers for sticking with me and thank you all so much for all your support so far, you guys! Ahhhh!

\o/ *in happy place*

x

The 'Big Day'

As of the day that I have received my very first digital SLR camera. Ordered on Thursday 30th June 2011. Arrived at 10:45am on Saturday 2nd July 2011. Canon 7d. Beautiful. This is when everything gets a million times better for me.

Whilst the 350D was a great camera to learn with, I found the restrictions closing around me rather quickly when I started getting a bit more adventurous and wanted to do more with my camera. The more I got smothered, the more I lost my 'keen' for photos. I decided I was going to save up for a while and buy a better model before trying to do any more with it.

So I shelled out £1200 on a Canon 7D. My first digital SLR camera! Chosen for it's prettiness and it's 8fps shooting (I've missed out on a lot of epic action shots in the past two years... realised it was something I really wanted to dabble in more). I could not contain my excitement when it came. I might have welled up a little bit when I first saw it laying there in it's box. Totally new.

There it is. Straight out of the box. Body only. It's beautiful, isn't it? Makes you me want to cry.

I then preceeded to look at it for approximately 45 minutes before actually getting a lens on it and playing. Though, once that bridge was crossed, I then forced my other half's brother outside to play 'keepy-ups' with his football out in the garden while I took photos of him and played with the settings.

I couldn't believe how the camera just purred away taking pictures when I got it onto high-speed continuous shooting... I thought Adam was going to cry by the time I let him finish kicking that ball but he held himself together rather well. XD

I've still got a lot to play with on this camera though at the point of writing this blog entry I have already done 4 photoshoots, been on a film set and have another couple of shoots set up for tomorrow.

Want to see some images from it? Next blog for you then!