Is it really Wednesday already?

Today is all about entering into a new realm; one that has not yet been discovered. The past two years have thrown manic chaos and joyful happiness at us all tied up in ribbon. Like two peas in a pod. One cannot exist without the other.

Without dark we have no light. Without light we have no dark.

Today we’re letting a little bit more light in and with that comes anxiety and excitement.

This week I’m thankful for;

Being able to document a wedding taking place inside Tower Bridge, and not just any wedding, but a civil partnership. It’s wonderful to be able to be witness to love without judgement and it saddens me that so many of our population wouldn’t see the beauty in that.

Fixation, a camera hospital and retailer based in Vauxhall. My beloved entrusted his Think Tank to carry his camera with 35mm lens attached and the bag had other ideas, resulting in the 35mm smashing on the floor. I’m grateful to Fixation for having the knowledge to fix this for us.

My slow cooker. One of the rare downsides in having a vegetable box delivered each week is that we end up with excess potatoes and carrots constantly. During a dinner planning process on Monday I decided to dig the slow cooker back out from the ‘winter only’ cupboard and threw in diced potatoes, chunky cut carrots, rosemary sprigs, oil , paprika and salt and peppa and then laid organic chicken thighs on top. I let that bubble away for SIX hours and then placed it under a grill for 15 minutes to crisp up. Pop some salted greens on the side and voila – yum!

Blake Lively. My constant girl-crush. Just because.

Gorgeous, Daily. Daily gorgeous bits and bobs? Who can complain!

In a creative life I find that there is a constant battle between inspiration and imitation. How easy is it to be yourself when our virtual social lives revolve so much around this idea of coming together as an industry; of supporting each other? I’ve limited the pages that I follow on Facebook and contained my regular blog reading to predominately Pinterest-esque tumblrs or ideological writers and still I worry that even that will inform my view in a way perhaps that doesn’t suit what my style could be.

I follow around four wedding photographers. Only. And it’s very obvious to me that the way in which they shoot is also not inspired by other wedding photography. The most important thing for me has been to discern what I like about their work. Is it something specific? Is that something that I can apply appropriately to the way in which I work without this need to recreate the same images that we all seem to fall – as a trap – into? I’ll break this down into a couple of examples:

Sean Flanigan (http://seanflanigan.net)

There is an effortlessness here. How can you set up a composition so simply and yet still allow it to breathe and to say so much. Especially early on in our photographic careers I believe that we look for fireworks and for it to be made easy for us. Jumping jacks and false dancing and lets-pose-this-to-be-natural that never works. Okay, so the jumping jacks were perhaps an over statement but I’m sure you understand where I’m coming from. I feel that Flanigan captures what is. The light – the most important thing – is always spot on. The composition is simple. A lot of his work seems to have the subject(s) centre framed. The couple are often just holding hands and looking into the camera. There’s a tranquility to it. What I have learnt from this, rather than trying to imitate these exact photographs, is just to be present. To work with the couple as they are. Something that I never wanted to admit is that it is absolutely a collaboration. I love the idea that the result is created solely by my skill with a camera and yet when you have a couple so at ease with each other that no direction is required it just opens up this space that I can move into and get those more daring shots that I always endeavor to produce. I work on being present, on taking a step back and remembering to breathe.

Oli Sansom (http://www.olisansom.com)

My initial reaction to seeing Oli’s work was a) I love this and b) these images are very dark and gritty. It’s almost habit now that my brain instantly begins to try and figure it out. Is he underexposing? How deep are his blacks? What we must remember to do is stop. Have another look. Take your brain out of the equation. What do I really see? With Oli’s work I feel that it is that the exposure is always correct to the scene. The way in which he sees is totally informed by the way in which he sees light and that is sublime. This makes me question how much of our images are we faking, in a way, because what we expect from wedding photography is something light and airy. I’ve done it myself on more than one occasion where perhaps the light or the tone of a composition isn’t great and I’ve overexposed it to be more consistent with the narrative of the day and yet part of me knows that I’m taking from that image. I adore those photographs where just a part of the subject is shown; when you expose for the highlights of a scene. I feel that there’s a mystery and an elegance to it and an emotion that shows just how strongly the light can affect our reaction. Oli wrote a post explaining this much more articulately than I ever could over on The Define School recently. You can read that here. (http://blog.thedefineschool.com/2013/05/what-i-have-to-say-oli-sansom/)

Gary and I have begun to run workshops for other photographers where we discuss this topic in greater length. It’s become something so difficult to articulate as truly approaching our work without method and consistently taking inspiration from within ourselves is uncomfortable. There is no safety net. And for me what I have seen in the last two years of my being a photographer full time is that asking those questions of yourself is only what pushes you forward into new terrains. You can shoot as many high ranking venues, as many quirky bride and grooms, be featured on the top wedding blogs and have as much confidence as the next person but become lazy with it – think that you know how to do it – and you run the risk of your photography becoming stale.

Photograph of Paul and one of the littles. Taken by Linda McCartney.

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Happy Fathers Day to my other best friend, mon papa, Dr. A.

Thank you for influencing my photography, my music and my literature tastes and for always supporting me in non-obvious ways.

I love you x

It’s done. It’s complete. Waahoooooo. My new rebrand is UP and LIVE and WONDERFUL. Thank you so much my handsome man for completing this for me. All of those years working in design for a bank certainly paid off and boy, am I glad you waited a while to become a photographer *wink*.

If you haven’t seen it yet you can visit my new main page HERE. I am having the site migrated tonight over to my old domain claudiarosecarter.co.uk but a redirect will be up on this to get you to the right place.

So, this last week…

On Friday I set off to the amazing Fforest campsite in Cardigan to document Laura & Marco’s wedding. I could just live there, honestly. It’s my soul home. You feel as though you are in a total bubble for the entire weekend!

My Abel & Cole vegetable and meat boxes arrived and I just love them. I’m making salmon, carrots, peas and diced Nicola potatoes for dinner tonight. You know when you just get that intense smell of a potato having been dug out of the ground? Yeah that. Yum. We came downstairs this morning to 4 cardboard boxes packed up with wool and ice packs to keep the meat and fish cold and I have to say I haven’t been more excited about something so basic in a while! You can package the boxes up again and the driver will pick them back up to recycle them afterwards. Each one came with some recipe cards and as an introductory gift, a free cookbook. I’ll definitely be sharing some recipes that I make on here in the next few weeks.

I have a clothes crush on this top. Over leggings. In the summer time. Simplistic. What do you most love to wear?

Spicy Carribbean Stew? I will definitely be making this very soon. We need to get hold of a new BBQ for the rest of the warm(ish) weather so I’m sure we’ll spend most of our dinners outdoors but for those colder nights this looks real tasty.

I love Eric Kim’s blog. Every week there is something fascinating being discussed and his passion for his work is so contagious. This post about being grateful for what we have is a good reminder to kick ourselves into gear.

Samm Blake’s photography. Oh my dear lord. This shoot. The light. Wow.

End of. Thank you for reading this week and see you next Wednesday!

Claudia x

Last year I wrote a lot. I had an on-going weekly blog post that discussed things that I was going through, things that I loved and recommendations for things for my readers to check out. As I got busier I fell away from this but I think it’s vital to a healthy blog. I subscribe to a reader named BlogLovin’ that you can sign in using Facebook with. In total I follow around 100 blogs. Every day to start my morning I check in and read all of my unread blogs and it’s such a main part of my day that I feel it’s silly not to be writing again myself.

So, firstly, I want to share with you some recent images from weddings over the last three weeks. Enjoy:

Hope you loved them! My brides are so beautiful.

Next, lets have a chat about dairy. Yes, I can see those puzzled faces. One of my favourite photographers, Andria Lindquist, recently posted this blog. That should begin to explain it for you more articulately than I could manage. Anyway, I have followed in her footsteps for the last few days and have cut dairy out of my food habits. I am drinking soya milk instead of milk and do not eat butter, cheese, yoghurt or eggs. I’m not going to be fussy to the degree that I won’t eat pastry that has been made with butter and eggs etc however I eat healthily anyway so my intake of those type of foods is minimal. I always feel drowsy and I have a habit, as she does, of getting sniffly and ill on a fairly regular basis. I am hoping that this change will reduce that!

Hayfever. I’ve not had hayfever, ever, in my life. I seem to have developed it this summer. Does anybody else struggle with this and have any good tips? Is it possible for it to suddenly appear!?

Abel & Cole. My whole life I have dreamt of having a vegetable box delivered to my door. I am a massive fan of using locally sourced food and supporting regional produce. A girl knocked at my door last night and it took me about 3 seconds to agree and sign up to it; usually the poor people are met with such trepidation! I’ve just noticed that also they do meat boxes so I might add this to my weekly slot!

BlogLovin. Just say yes. Honesty, if you follow any blogs at all, if you are a photographer or a creative or a bride looking for daily inspiration then get on it. Sign up via Facebook (it doesn’t post anything to your profile, just an easy log in way) and then search for your favorite blogs at the top and then hit follow. They do an IPhone and IPad app as well for reading on the go. It’s changed my life!

Food blogs & bread. I want to make this so much. I’m starving just looking at it now. This website has amazing recipes so stay tuned to it!

Coming up on wedding blogs. Stay tuned to Love My Dress for Lou & Rik’s wedding, Rock My Wedding for Allison & Ricky and Louie & Shep’s weddings and a potential Rock n Roll Bride post with one of the beautiful girls above… It’s such a massive honour for me to have my work featured on these sites and it’s an endless source of enquiries from gorgeous potential brides.

That’s it for today everyone. Please do check in every Wednesday for a round up of weekly thoughts!

Love, Claudia.

To illustrate this I will let you in on a couple secrets. Firstly, I recently I set myself a goal to only buy black or white clothes in order to refine my wardrobe and avoid the umms and ahhs of the changing room. Secondly, I hoover on an every-other-day basis in order to keep the floor clean of any additional bits of fluff that don’t need to be there.

Some may call it obsessive. I just see it as my ‘thing’.

To be able to find simplicity on a very hot, very bustling bank holiday Monday in Brighton was a challenge. That challenge inspired this photography:

My experience of Brixton on a Thursday night at 11pm two days before Christmas was vastly different from the Brixton that I experienced with the lovely Julia & Greg. Culture. Food. Sensations that attack all of your senses. And a feeling of being part of something upon stepping into Brixton Village. Like you’ve been accepted into some strange far away world full of quirky boutiques, colourful restaurants and pop up shops. Julia and Greg are very much part of that world and jumped to let me into their secrets. After a glass of prosecco (celebration of course!) and a buckwheat crepe (yum.) that is where we shot this pre-wedding. In the pub down the road that you wouldn’t necessarily walk to if you didn’t know it was there and the green spaces tucked in down a residential street lined with skinny houses with shutters in that absolute ye olde London town feel.

I hope you love it.

Here is their story:

Featuring: Northbrook Park, Surrey