la coco noire.

So thus far in my teeny eeny weeny experience as a wedding photographer (I'm not sure I can even write that yet..but acorns into oak trees and all that and I'm feeling positive - it's Friday!) I have had the pleasure to photograph two women of ridiculous natural beauty. I'm pretty sure it's impossible to look anything but beautiful on your wedding day, but seriously - Kate & Gem were practically glowing.

I can't imagine a job in the world more emotionally rewarding than wedding photography, it's basically just happiness and loveliness overflowing all day (and tons of great food & music..obvs), which means that I'm counting down the days until June when I'm booked up to photograph another day of wonderful love and stuff. 

While I try & carb my cravings to go & gate crash every single wedding in Paris I can find, I have sorted through a few photos from Gemma's & Kate's weddings to show them in all their natural beauty looking sassy, stunning and totally marvelous.These are some of my favourites.









Also, super sorry for the repost of some of the same pictures..as much as I'm loving teaching tiny kids in Paris all day long..it does unfortunately mean my camera is being totally neglected which means far less photographs to share than I'd like. Boohoo, I'll make up for it over my 5 month summer to the point you'll wish I was still wrapped up in Parisian primary schools..).

I don't think there is anything better I could have possibly read online right now. Been seriously thinking recently that regardless of how much I may have improved, I'm still not where I want to be. I'm still not quite good enough. My work isn't quite how I want it to look. I'm not there yet. But bloody hell, am I going to persevere the absolute shit out of this because I want it so bad. 

In other news I had a mini-meltdown the other day when I realized that I don't have my camera charger with me in Paris which means my technical babykins is down and out for 2 weeks until I'm back in England for the holidays. After a 2 minute window of panic-crying-angry-bitch behavior, I calmed down and realized that maybe this means I'll stop taking boring as hell photos of our apartment and my painted nails. So maybe it's a blessing in disguise and I'll appreciate my little darling a little more when he's rejuvenated come Feb 14th and fill him up with things of actual note, that might enhance my currently sad attempt at a career in photography.

So I have a beautiful little friend called Natalie that I met here in Paris. She came round on Saturday and after eating our body weight in chocolate (actually not exaggerating), I took a few simple snaps of her in the apartment because she's got the biggest most beaut eyes ev.







Just the cutest little person in the world! Completely unrelated, I'm starting to seriously dislike how useless I have been with buying photography equipment up until now. Mainly through lack of money but also through lack of realizing that you really do get what you pay for when it comes to new gear. Aka, my £110 pound 50mm f/1.8 really isn't doing the job for me anymore after seeing how a f/1.2 works, it's grainy and hard to focus and just getting on my tit's a little bit. So I'm making a mental note to myself to scrimp and save my life away in order to afford new gear before the summers out and I've wasted 5 months with a cheap lens. WISH ME LUCK DEAR GOD I'LL NEED IT.

If there is one thing that has been a constant learning curve throughout the entire time I've been interested in photography, it's airbrushing techniques. I've lost count of the amount of YouTube tutorial videos that I've painstakingly sat through to try and improve my knowledge and style. Up until two years ago, I'd only been using Photoshop Elements, mainly because I couldn't afford Photoshop but also because I didn't see the point in splashing out on something so advanced seeing as my actual knowledge on the matter was minimal as shit. But I won't lie, elements was kind to me for a good while. As a beginners tool it's perfect, that is if you don't know any better. I learnt to use curves and adjustment layers and all sort of basic little tools that fitted little naive me perfectly back in the day. But then Mikey downloaded Photoshop CS5 for me, and sweet Jesus, the possibilities were simply endless. At first I absolutely bloody hated it. I didn't know what anything did or what half the buttons even meant, high pass layers..what!? I seriously almost deleted it from my laptop and shied back to my loyal Elements that understood me so well.

Two years down the line and countless, countless countless hours spent googling and fiddling and undoing and crying later, I can't imagine what the bloody hell I would do without Photoshop. There is probably not an online tutorial that I haven't watched at one point or another while trying to understand this huge expanse of untouched land ahead of me. I still don't know what many of the buttons are supposed to do for me, but the list of functions I am conquering is slowly and slowly getting bigger and more in depth. Last week, I even learnt the meaning and main use of a CMYK color mode, regardless of whether it still feels like I'm talking gibberish - I actually know what the damn thing does!

It's so nice that I can finally say, with a tiny bit of pride but also a lot of grief and slog, that Photoshop is starting to become a faithful companion rather than a big-headed bully, although the speed at which I'm making myself learn new techniques is inhumane so I'm sure looking back in a years time I'll laugh at how little I actually know right now. But presently, I'm content.

Antibes. Cannes. Paris. Bern. Interlaken. Amsterdam. Eindhoven. Milan. Heurtevent. London. Egham. Dorset. Honfleur. Disneyland.
I didn't quite realise how busy this year has been or how many amazing places I've visited until I looked through my iPhone to chose which photos to upload. I can only hope that 2014 brings as many amazing, amazing memories and experiences as 2013 has.