Sinead Jenkins Photography

Goodbye old blog!

2009-04-08T01:06:00.000-07:00

For I have a brand new blog, and here it is:

www.sineadjenkins.com/blog

Blogger has served me well over the last couple of years, but the time has come for my blog to be a bit more glamourous, more in keeping with its owner (joke). Please update your bookmarks, and RSS feeds and whatnot. I promise to blog more on the new blog too. Honest!

Kim and Steve's Wedding

2009-03-31T20:02:00.000-07:00

Hello there! I'm back with some images from Kim and Steve's wedding in Becks, Central Otago this month (not photographs of me or the barn as per my mum's request!) March has been very very busy for me so next month I'm going to catch up on blogging and also update everyone back home on my news.

When I turned up to the hotel that Kim was getting ready in the morning of the wedding, I was SO excited to see it was like a mixture of an old wooden balconied wild west hotel, and also a fancy country lodge. I could have stayed and photographed Kim getting ready all day but she did have to leave at some point to get married. Here are her wedding shoes, which says a lot about what an outgoing, happy and fun person Kim is:

Looking radient!

Kim's mum couldn't decide which shoes to wear, so she brought three pairs with her on the day. She works in a shoe shop!

Kim and her dress. I love it when brides wear something they feel fabulous in and then really make the most of it for the day - how often are you going to look this good?

So of course this was Steve's expression when he first saw his wife to be:

Kim half crying half laughing during her vows:

Married!!

The guys...

A photograph at the old sign for Steve's family's farm:

Well done to everyone who held it together for Kim's dad's speech!

The cake cutting was outside after dark, so I employed some extra lighting - here is the complicated photography lighting setup below:

Not only did they have a really relaxed, happy and beautiful country wedding, but Kim and Steve also had what I would consider a dream honeymoon. Steve set up a holiday spot for him and Kim which involved moving a hut to somewhere in the Hawkdon (sp?) range, filling it with wine and food and a coal range, building a verandah (!!) and then surprising Kim with a week's honeymoon there. Seriously. Oh, and they also MADE eachother's wedding rings, as in - buying some gold and diamonds, and making rings for eachother. And look how amazing they are!!

As you can tell, I'm more than impressed. Thank you both for being so happy and full of life all day, and to your family and wedding party for being so agreeable and welcoming. Speak soon! xx

Amy & Bernard's Wedding

2009-03-23T16:24:00.001-07:00

Oooh, I haven't blogged in a while - thats because March is a very busy month for me workwise and homewise. Last week we sanded the walls of the barn conversion and painted inside. I spent 12 hours painting on Thursday! More on that soon...

Amy and Bernard got married just over a week ago in the herb garden at the botanical gardens in town. Their reception was in Port Chalmers, so we had loads of cool spots for photographs. Here are a few from the day for now...

Getting married at the herb garden means you have a nice walk along the elegant pathway before you get married.

Amy and Bernard very excited to see eachother as her dad walks away in the foreground:

They didn't stop smiling the whole time.

A moment whilst their witnesses sign the register.

We found this great old green garage for group photographs in Port Chalmers. I love green backgrounds! And the rustier the better.

Arriving at the reception:

Bernards mum did a really lovely speech:

Catering was done by Bede Beaumont catering and the food was really tasty. The highlight was this dessert display which was fantastic!

Witnessing the dessert display for the first time(!)

Amy and Bernard were such gracious, lovely people to work with and took great care of us all day. Thank you guys. Hope these few little images keep you going until you see your whole gallery. Speak to you soon xxx

A few changes...

2009-03-05T13:13:00.000-08:00

You may have noticed my website not behaving itself recently - pages not loading, pixelation... apologies for this. I am in the process of sorting it out, and part of that is relocating my whole site to a different server. I'm also installing some brand new proofing (online gallery) software, and getting a sparkly new blog too! So over the next few days lots of things will be changing, and my site may not be available here and there. Hopefully it won't take too long. For those people who are waiting for online galleries I should have you all sorted in a few days time.

I was going to finish off this post with a photograph of the new barn conversion from the outside, but its raining... and I might get wet.. Plus the interior isn't too glamourous yet since we still have to paint it and carpet it. Next time! The main thing is I am typing at a real desk, with all my things! And a solid floor, and walls that don't rustle in the wind. Woohoo!

Angela & Guy's Wedding

2009-03-03T11:25:00.000-08:00

Angela and Guy got married on Saturday at the beautiful Chingford Stables. I'm just blogging a few photographs (since I'm still editing) so that they can view some with their families before they leave for a honeymoon in Thailand.

I started the day at Angela's family home, where her mum June has been busy making Angela's wedding dress. June isn't even a dress maker, she just happens to be REALLY good at it. Angela and Guy live in the UK, and came back to Dunedin not long before the wedding, so there wasn't much time to fit the dress and make adjustments before the wedding. Angela's mum June was still making the dress when I arrived to start photographing, and an hour before the wedding, Angela and her bridesmaids were still adding the finishing touches! I could not get over how calm, happy and unconcerned Angela was about this. She was truly serene.

Angela's niece and nephew were flower girl and page boy, and they were so cute.

Yey, she's in the dress and it fits perfectly!

The guys, also very happy and chilled out. I photographed them as they wandered over to watch some cricket that was happening on the other side of the gardens. Luckily I was there to photograph the men, and didn't have to subject myself to watching any cricket. Phew.

I thought the red and grey colour scheme was really classic, and it looked perfect on the day because it was overcast and misty looking (one of my favourite kinds of wedding weather), and the reds really stood out.

This was a requested shot. When I get information from my couples I ask them to tell me if there is any specific shot they would love me to capture (apart from the obvious). Angela told me she wanted a photograph of Guy's expression when he first saw her walk up to the aisle. Here it is! A delighted (and possibly slightly smug) groom.

It almost started raining towards the end of the ceremony but stayed fine. To be honest I don't think Angela or Guy would have batted an eyelid if it had started pouring down.

The stone stables building is a nice backdrop to drinks on the lawn:

Some VERY cool vintage 50s cars. In red of course.

Angela and Guy, thank you for being such easy going, lovely people to work with. I can't wait for you to see the rest of your gallery! Have a wonderful, well deserved honeymoon and speak soon xxx

A nice romantic walk on the beach.

2009-02-25T13:19:00.000-08:00

Some images from an engagement photoshoot I did this week. Meet Amy and Bernard - they are getting married in just over two weeks. I wanted to put these on here and write about it because 1) Amy and Bernard are super cute, and 2) I want to show prospective wedding couples what the engagement photoshoot is all about. Its basically a way for me to capture you as a couple before you get married. I encourage you to wear whatever you like, and more importantly to be yourselves infront of the camera. Beforehand, a lot of people (especially boys) find it hard to imagine being relaxed whilst being photographed, so its great when after the shoot people say to me "oh that was actually quite fun! I didn't feel awkward at all". Thats the idea! It means that you have some lovely images of the two of you just being together, and also on the wedding day you feel SO much more comfortable infront of the camera.

There's my little plug! Here are the images. We shot this in the middle of all that horrible rainy weather, and the light in the evening was beautiful. I got Amy and Bernard to walk their two lovely dogs on the beach.

Look at the cute dogs! Thats Marley on the right, he's a 9 year old Blue Heeler (sp?) / Bull / Staffordshire cross and he likes to CHEW things. Aida is on the left, she's a Ridgeback puppy and she is so cute (and SO full of energy). They won't be the same size for long, Aida will soon grow up to be bigger than all of us. Well, almost.

Such a perfect evening for photographs, although a tad cold!

I love images where the boy is looking at the girl!

After the beach we went to hang out on the train tracks, which I've been eyeing up for ages as I drive to and from the beach with Nana and Nails. Plus the light was perfect for the old-rusticy feeling I was after.

I think this is my favourite - doesn't Amy look radient?

I have my first New Zealand wedding this Saturday, and a whole bunch after that too. How exciting! I can't wait to get stuck in. Its taken a while to build up the business over here, but I'm getting there. Luckily dunedin is geographically quite big, but socially quite small, so great for personal referrals!

My next post should be about the barn...

Our swanky London flat

2009-02-15T01:24:00.001-08:00

I've had requests to blog some images of our barn conversion. Apologies for the delay.. Part of me wanted to wait until we were in - which since Christmas I've constantly thought was going to be in about 3 or 4 days time! We're converting the barn as somewhere to live until we build the house. Anyway, we decided to do things properly, so we are essentially building a proper flat within the barn, and that means everything takes longer. Steven has done the whole conversion himself - I thought I was a perfectionist! When I help I can almost feel him worrying that I won't continue the STRAIGHT LINE.

Even though I say this every week and no one is going to believe me anymore - we will actually be moving in next Sunday. WOOHOO! There's only a few hundred more little things to do in the meantime. Sometimes I find myself daydreaming that its all magically finished and we can move in tonight. Here are my most popular daydreams at the moment:

1) We win the lottery, and pay a team of the fastest tradesmen around to finish the barn for us. Then we holiday in Hawaii for a bit.
2) We actually do the work ourselves, although I have a magical remote control that fastforwards to me sitting in the barn watching a good film with a large slab of chocolate thinking "I'm glad THATS all over".
3) We are nominated to be on one of those television programmes where Very Good People get rewarded for their good deeds by having their house built for them. Overnight. Only I'm not sure donating to charity by direct debit every month would qualify us.

Here are the photos!

Space for a double door and an upstairs window at the front:

Our new gravel driveway!

The upstairs is a mezzanine area, typical of a £300,000 flat in London! Only this is costing us a little less..

Weather boarding the outside:

This day Steven was doing the outside walls and I was doing the insulation on the inside:

A self portrait:

And a demonstration of how you insert the pink batts insulation into the walls:

That last one is Donna of course looking after her chicks. Its so cute watching them copy what she does. We only have 4 chicks now since Nana killed one (Nana the dog that is). She has a dark side to her that one. The only problem is she looks so cute and mournful on the naughty chain.

Piglets

2009-02-06T01:55:00.000-08:00

Okay I promise this is the last baby animal blog post for a while. But I just wanted to show you the new piglets from next door. They are 3 days old in these photographs, and they are SO CUTE!

A happy pig:

I've got lots of barn conversion photographs coming up too!

Animal farm!

2009-01-26T14:39:00.000-08:00

Here are some photographs detailing the latest happenings at our place. We're going to move into the barn this weekend - woohoo! Conversion into something liveable has taken a while since we're essentially building a flat from scratch. Laying the concrete floor took ages, we could only start work in the evenings when Steven got home from work, and we're not, you know, complete experts... The animals weren't too helpful, I managed to match up these wet concrete footprints to a certain rooster... He's looking more and more tasty by the day (joking!)

A couple more photos of our lovely dogs. Nana always looks like she's done something wrong. When its more likely to be her brother- who spends a lot of time on the naughty chain.

"Nails, have you done something wrong?"
"Me? definitely not..."

laying the concrete floor - SO boring. But hopefully worth it.

Down at the river during a very hot spell.

Collecting our furniture from Christchurch. We hired a big lorry which Steven drove. He thought he was very cool, signalling to the other lorry drivers with all the fancy lights on the front. We packed up the furniture, and I kid you not, there was not an inch of space left in the back. We were so lucky to get it all in! The dogs came with us and rode in the cab. They slept most of the way, although Nana likes to look where she's going through the front window. Nails keeps his head down and looks mildly annoyed if you go through a corner at any speed.

We came home to find that 5 of Donna's eggs had successfully hatched! We have 4 yellow chicks and one black one. I can't wait to see how they'll turn out. She led them all down the ramp to the grass at the back of the coop where she shows them how to peck, and keeps them warm in her feathers.

This one was all sleepy:

Thats all for now. I need to go and stare at the chicks again - my new hobby!

Portrait Special Offer

2009-01-18T15:06:00.000-08:00

I've just added a couple of new pages to my website for wedding and portrait offers. I'm going to try and do a new offer every few months. At least until I get properly up and running here in New Zealand. My current portrait offer is for 20% off portrait packages, so that means my $375 print package is now $300! The offer is valid until the end of March.

Here it is:

And here is my special offers page on my website: www.sineadjenkins.com/offers.htm

Baling hay...

2009-01-17T02:42:00.000-08:00

Here's a few little shots from our hay baling last month. I am such a city girl, I had no idea how hay is made! For city types like me (or rather those city types who are as ignorant as me) you just let the grass grow until it seeds, then cut it, dry it, and bale it. Which is easy as long as you have a very helpful neighbour with a tractor and a hay baler...

The dogs had a great time running around after us. One person drives the car and all the other helpers throw the hay bales onto the trailer, then you offload them into your barn - oh yes, you need a barn to put them all in :) Its hard work, but so satisfying.

The only trouble is, hay gets everywhere. Like when you holiday on the beach and you keep finding sand for weeks afterwards. I pulled my purse out in the bank the other day and a bit of hay fell out! But I probably shouldn't worry because I expect here in New Zealand that's considered perfectly normal.

*NOTE* -For those who come to my blog to see portrait and wedding images, I have lots of shoots coming up in the next few weeks so stay tuned!

A new me.

2009-01-10T22:48:00.001-08:00

You might notice I've just changed the image of myself to the left hand side of my blog, and also on my website. I was getting fed up of the other one - I can't remember the exact day it was taken but I looked slightly hungover, pale, and clad in too much wool. This one I took today in our new barn, infront of the hay bales we cut the other week. I used the self timer on my camera because I am the worst at trying to be patient whilst a family member attempts to take my portrait. My husband will attest to this. What normally happens is, after the 30th attempt I start to look a bit grimacy, tell the photo taker to JUST TRY and focus on my eyes, after which they get fed up, tell me to take my own **** photo and walk off. Yey for the self timer!

Two lovely doggos.

2009-01-09T17:53:00.001-08:00

Meet Nails the dog:

And Nana the dog:

4 weeks ago I was saying to my husband " We are DEFINITELY not getting a dog". I didn't want the hassle of looking after one, organising for when we go away etc... I love dogs - I just didn't want the responsibility. Steven didn't either, although he has always wanted a dog. He likes the idea of a dog who follows him around, a clever type who shares jokes with him and fetches him his shoes. Kind of like a better version of me.

So 3 weeks ago we agreed to look after these two random dogs whose owners were going on holiday. Oh and we were told that after that the dogs needed a new home. Hmm.

Nana and Nails arrived, and for two weeks they would sit and look up at us with big doggy eyes that said "We love you. We really love you." So after about 3 hours we gave in and decided to keep them. We're such softies.

Now every morning I take them down to the beach and they run in and out of the sea, I watch the sun come up, and I spend the rest of the day doing chores and working on the computer and they watch me. How romantic! Its so much fun having them about. And there's nothing better when you're a bit down than having a nice dog around to cuddle. And they always want a cuddle.

Sometimes it isn't the right time for something, or you weren't planning for it, but you just have to go with your instincts. Now we have two gorgeous dogs that we love, and we'll just work through all the other stuff.

Nails is a real boy. He loves play fighting, running about, guarding the property, looking after his sister, being beside you all the time, and a good tummy rub. He gets SO excited when you come home that his whole body wags and he does the funniest little smile with his front teeth! He's my favourite.

(I bought them new collars and tags.)

He has lovely soft fur.

Nana is Steven's favourite, she's a real girl, and is much calmer and softer. She likes to nuzzle her head in your arm for cuddles, she loves napping, chasing birds, swimming, burying things and driving in the car with her head out the window. She's a real dreamer and goes off sniffing by herself, getting Nails all worried because the three of us might be SEPARATED!!

And at night they have a lovely bed to sleep in. We made it using wooden pallets, a single (human style) mattress, covered with a layer of fluffy pillows, a soft-feel bed protector (for children who wet the bed), and a duvet cover....what?? ha ha. Nana is pretty much in here all day dozing. When she's not burying things.

And here is a huge rainbow that appeared over the sea one day after a rainstrom. We were sitting in the barn having a nice cold beer from the fridge!

I love a good rainbow. I swear we get about one a week out here.

Right, I'm off to buy some dog roll and more beer. In my gum boots! I feel like such a New Zealander.

Barn buildin'

2009-01-03T00:28:00.000-08:00

Two really good things have happened in the last week. The first is that we finished building the exterior of our barn, and the second is that we bought a fridge freezer. That stores ice-cream! If someone had told me before I got here that the highlight of my first 3 months in New Zealand would be eating ice-cream in my tent infront of some trashy TV I may have been a little dismayed. Luckily I got this far and I think its great! It helps that New Zealand produces some really good ice-cream, and that my expectations have been beaten down by hammering THREE THOUSAND nails into unyeilding, reflective tin in the last week. Okay, when I say 'I' I really mean 'Steven' but I have also been hammering nails until my arm has cramped up, just at a much, much slower pace. In a mini heatwave! We've had some amazing weather, but it has meant working in the hot sun with temperatures in the mid 30s.

This week we are going to convert the right hand bay into a little flat to live in whilst we build the house.

Here is the finished product - isn't it a thing of beauty??

My nails, look how straight they are!

The process: poles, roof perlings(sp?), and tin.

Casting a shadow on the land..

Steven drove next door's tractor to finally fill in the trench that has been left open for about 8 weeks when the phone man came to bring us a landline, the internet and civilisation!

Steven on the phone, in a field!

I tend to take more photographs on sunny days just because I'm hanging outside a bit more, but this particular day a couple of weeks ago I wanted to document our water tanks arriving. The man bringing them on a huge trailer got stuck turning into a bridge just half a kilometre down our road. So Steven drove the tractor to collect them and it only took about 2 hours(!!) altogether to dislodge the trailer, deliver the tanks and position them on the land. In the mist... It looks a bit grim doesn't it?

Tank tipping!

I'll finish off with some nice, happy animal photos. Here is Hussein looking sinister:

Spending some man-time roaming about the recently cut hay field without his two ladies:

And this is Brandy the horse from next door having a gallop, woohoo!

Upcoming blog posts will include my first hay-bale collecting (which I've only ever witnessed on TV before!!) and 2 new additions to the farm (very exciting). I'm calling it a farm now because we have 3 chickens. Oh, and Mavis MAY be sitting on 6 eggs! She comes down from the nest now and again to fuss about with the other two so I'm not sure if they'll get cold or not.

McCallum family portraits

2008-12-31T14:33:00.000-08:00

On Christmas eve I had the pleasure of photographing the McCallum family in St Clair. They have 3 super cute dogs and this baby so I was in photography heaven! Look at those eyelashes!

He has the most expressive laugh!

Awww..

We had a stroll on the beach, and captured baby Ollie (who lives in the Uk with his parents) enjoying some time with his grandparents, who adore him.

I'm such an old romantic...

Two sisters:

Thanks McCallum family for being so friendly and hospitable. If anyone else fancies a portrait shoot in the Otago region just email me at sineadphotography@yahoo.com. You can choose from a print collection or a coffeetable album.

Happy Christmas!

2008-12-27T19:43:00.000-08:00

Happy Christmas everyone! I'm used to cold wintery Christmasses by the fire, so it still seems a little odd to have Christmas in the heat, but I'm not complaining - the sun is out! Here's a couple of shots I took over the last week. I'm going to save the barn building photographs for another blog post.

Hopefully next Christmas we will have a lovely new house to celebrate in. x

The Barn, and a Cheese Thief

2008-12-11T17:57:00.000-08:00

Here are the barn posts, all ready to be made into a barn - how exciting!!

And for scale, here is a little miniature me sitting in the middle of it...

No, thats a joke actually! Although it is BIG. Are you allowed to show off about how big your barn is and not come across as a very annoying person? I mean in the same way that its not cool to say to people "I have a very large house"? Lets presume its okay, in which case, we will soon have a HUGE barn. Woohoo! It'll be bigger than the house, and we also can store lots of useless junk in there.

What's Steven doing here? Well, he is preparing a... box thing.. to hook up our electricity!! Isn't that great news?!!! Tonight we will plug in for the first time!! Its SO exciting! Today I bought a hairdryer to celebrate, and tomorrow, I'm going to blowdry my hair! With the new hairdryer!! We're even thinking about buying a kettle! And a fridge! You can tell how excited I am.

It is good though, becuase soon we will be in the barn, and I will be able to work from home. Things are happening a lot slower than I thought, but what it does mean is that when we are all set up (soon!) then we will be extra grateful.

The barn building should be happening this weekend, and then next weekend we can get the steel cladding on. I will photograph the process as much as I can. Thats if it doesn't rain.

Chicken news:

Yesterday Hussein stole a large chunk of cheese from inside the tent. He ate some and then gave it to Mavis. How can I punish this behaviour? I can't even catch a chicken let alone explain the basics of theft to it. Anyway, Hussein is such a gent I can't bring myself to tell him off. When we get the barn up we are going to try and hatch some eggs. Either by letting Mavis sit on them or by buying an incubator. I can't wait to have little fluffy yellow chicks!

...Sniff!

2008-12-08T21:21:00.000-08:00

I saw a cute doggo today that looked a bit like Max.

*Note to my family - I miss you too. You just don't look as cute on my blog.*

"Like being on holiday all the time!"

2008-12-07T16:01:00.000-08:00

We're having so much fun on the land, and this week the barn is starting to go up - how exciting! I've got my vegetable garden started, we get 2 eggs from the chickens every day, and on a clear day you can gaze out to see and see the waves twinkling. It's great!

One thing has surprised me though. And that is how many people say to us "oh, you're living in a tent - it must be like being on holiday ALL the time!". At least 5 or 6 people have said that exact thing to me! Someone else told me it must be like a "CONSTANT holiday!" They are jealous of my holiday lifestlye. I used to find this slightly strange -I'm definitely having fun, but I'm not sure why life is more fun if you live in a tent. That leaks.

But then again maybe I'm wrong..... Maybe I am living a life straight out of a glamourous holiday magazine and I don't even know it! Lets see.... we can take today as an example: I got up in the tent, fed the chickens, filled the bucket for my shower, mopped up some mud, washed the dishes in the rain, made some phonecalls, dumped a couple of wheelbarrow-loads of clay onto the barn foundations, ate a tin of spaghetti out of the saucepan (saving on more washing up in the rain), drove into town, sat down to do some photography related work, and studied some tax issues. Later on I will take part in some more popular holiday activities like wheelbarrowing a couple of loads of cow poo over to my vegetable garden. In the rain. And buying kitchen roll, dental floss and bin bags.

Hmm, actually the more I think about it, the more guilty I feel at living this luxurious holiday lifestyle when some people have to put up with the tedium of solid housing and electric lights. In a couple of weeks we will be finished living in the tent. It will all be over. But now I'm feeling bad that here we are being on holiday "ALL the time" and we haven't even appreciated it.

Next time someone tells me how jealous they are of my constant holidaying I am going to tell them about a golden, dream-like place in the south of the United States... where people live in trailers... not just for 2 weeks a year, but ALL the time! Like a constant holiday!

:)

PS - I am going to take a photo tonight of the beginnings of our barn. Which, be warned - is massive! Our own little blot on the landscape.

Sitting in the clouds

2008-12-03T19:57:00.000-08:00

It turns out the land we are building on is in a cloud forest. How cool is that? In the evening after a rainy day the clouds settle and disperse over the hills and it looks amazing. At the moment it is quite mild so you can just stand outside and breathe in the atmosphere. This is Steven enjoying the view:

(those are our barn poles waiting to go up in the foreground). And this is my lovely husband:

We've started a new fence that stretches across the top part of the land. The idea is that it marks a boundary between our house area and then other/farm area below. You can just see the fence posts in the image below. Rhys from next door put them in using his tractor, with Steven's help. Infact you can assume from now on that any tricky farm type work that takes place on the land has been done by Rhys. Even if you thought that it was me who put all those fence posts in...

Okay this is slightly freaky. I'm new to owning chickens, and our chickens seem perfectly normal and healthy in most respects, but surely all chickens are not this needy. This is what happens with ours - I feed them (in their coop) in the morning, then they peck about a bit, I go inside the tent... and they stand outside. For as long as I'm in there. And they don't just stand around - they STARE at me. All day. Is this normal? Sometimes I look around and they pretend to be cleaning themselves. Otherwise they just stand there.. and stare in:

Shooing them away or throwing things at them doesn't work because they just pop right back - they don't seem to learn like dogs or cats. Oh and the other day it was pouring with rain, and rather than go and hang out in their coop, they stood outside staring at me IN THE RAIN! They were soaked through. I felt guilty which was silly because they are there of their own free will!

Very odd. When I'm gone they behave like normal chickens and peck about at things. And I probably need to point out that I'm gone most of the day doing things.

Last weekend we hired a rotary hoe to dig our vegetable garden. I assumed as a machine I would simply stand back and let it do all the work. Its the 21st century after all! Unfortunately that wasn't the case and you need arms of steel to operate the hoe for more than about 10 minutes. Which was as long as I lasted. Luckily Steven came to my rescue (after a morning of pouring concrete into the barn pole holes), and he spent the next 3 hours rotary hoeing our veg patch. I was on hand with my camera to record things. Oh, thats Steven in the far distance doing all the work. And on my head there you can see my makeshift cap. It was soooo sunny on Saturday.

This morning I made up for my lack of work on Saturday - I had to empty the barn pole holes (that the giant corkscrew made) of all the rain that had filled them up over the last few days before the council inspector arrived. Steven has a new job in town. I tied some rope to a bucket and hauled out the water and did that for about 3 hours. There are 17 barn holes and each hole contained about 10 bucket loads. Ow! luckily we passed the inspection, possibly because I looked so bedraggled by the time the inspector arrived.

I'll leave you with a photograph of Steven looking out over the sea at the peninsula on Sunday. Its either pouring with rain, stormy or very very sunny here!

But which is cuter?

2008-11-19T17:30:00.000-08:00

Bruce next door has some tiny new ducklings that are being looked after by one of his hens (hens make better mothers than ducks). If you go near them in their hutch they make little squeaking noises. So cute! Of course the other image is baby Matthew having a cuddle with his mum. A little napping baby.

Website issues

2008-11-18T21:44:00.002-08:00

I've noticed a few little issues on my website when viewing it using Internet Explorer, which may be down to the fact that Internet Explorer is RUBBISH! (shock horror!). So I'm not sure how I'm going to fix it so that it shows fine on Explorer without changing my site too much. I will have to work on it. In the meantime, if you're still stuck using Internet Explorer why not try Mozilla Firefox, which is soooo much better. And free... **EDITED TO ADD - all fixed now thankfully!**

House News...

2008-11-13T16:53:00.000-08:00

Well its been an eventful old week here on the land. You'll have to imagine I'm typing outside the tent though because I'm actually in an internet cafe in Dunedin surrounded by fellow nerds on a really beautiful sunny day.

Last week our friends Conrad and Sue gave us our first farm animals - a rooster and 2 hens. This was especially generous of them since these are prime chickens apparently, from good stock. Which panicked us slightly when we left them in their temporary cage for a few hours and got home to find they had all escaped. All three. It was late and there was a storm brewing. So we spent the evening chasing chickens from our land to Bruce the neighbour's land, and back to ours, and back to his. It may have appeared funny to the casual observer but we weren't impressed. One hen got herself into a large thorny bush and stayed there. The other we caught, and the rooster obviously thought it was hilarious and just kept running. We got them all back in the end, thankfully, and now they go to bed quite happily in a lovely chicken coop that we built all by ourselves. During the day all three chickens follow Steven about pecking happily. Whenever he turns around they all look up expentantly.

Oh, and we named them. The rooster is called Hussein, after Hussein Bolt the star athlete. The ladies are Mavis and Donna. Mavis seems to be in charge, which is funny because she is the most stupid. Often the way though with leaders ey? I'm trying to get them to have baby chickens, so we need to get Hussein in the mood. I played him some Barry White on the ipod and he seemed to like that, so we'll see how it goes.

Our barn has been delivered! And this week Wayne the digger man showed up to dig the platform for the barn and push a gigantic cork screw into the platform to make big holes for the barn posts (you'll notice I'm learning the technical jargon as I go along here). The cork screw thing was great so I took a video of it which I will post on here. We've also had gravel delivered for the foundations. It won't be long before we have a barn to stay in! With 4 solid walls that don't threaten to collapse in the wind! And electricity!!!! Phew, its all a bit much. Steven 'phoned the man at Delta electricity to find out why it's taking so long. They're a relaxed bunch at Delta. "As long as you have it before Christmas ey?" said the cheery (and very relaxed) man on the phone. CHRISTMAS??!!! I tell you what, if we don't have electricity pretty soon I am putting Steven, Hussein, Mavis, Donna and probably Tasty and Tasty Junior the goats in the car and heading over to the Delta man's house to enjoy his electricity for a bit.

I jest though, its a pain sometimes not having power but also kind of cool. (We will have alternative power up at some point in the future but we decided we needed to hook up to the grid for the meantime.) We have the gas lamp on in the evenings and it feels great to be on the land - our own land! I like to imagine myself as a hardened early New Zealand pioneer, eeking out my existence on the unforgiving land....only with nicer clothes... and decent moisturiser... and access to a supermarket - but you get the idea.

Weather-wise its been pretty turbulant. Going from hot and sunny to... snowing.

Bruce and Rhys (I'll spell it the welsh way until I'm told otherwise!) our neighbours helping with marking out the barn poles:

Wayne moves a bit of grass for us (thats the trench for the phone):

The Morganty boys help us with the new chickens:

Making the chicken coop in a blizzard (fun). Thats our toilet and showering facilities on the right there:

Hussein:

Donna:

Mavis:

The coop! They know its home now and pop up to bed when it gets dark.

Freedom!

Tasty and Junior sharing a moment:

We now have cows down the edge of the land to eat away the broom and gorse. Here is Steven attempting to feed a very uninterested Horny the bull (not our name for him).

So, things are moving on - I can't believe it's the middle of November already! I have a fence for my vegetable garden but no vegetable seeds, so I must go and order some...

More Barrett photos

2008-11-12T19:06:00.000-08:00

What? 2 blog posts in one day? I know, but I need to make up for the terrible blog drought caused by my laptop being in for repair. She is back by the way (my laptop) with that niggling little problem fixed so all is well.

I have many many things to blog, but lets start with these photos I took a couple of weeks ago of Steven's sister's family when we almost did a proper photo session. As you can see, Liana and Nigel have managed to produce not one, but THREE very cute children. In certain lights the beautiful Alice looks spookily like Steven. I will have to dig out a photo and do a comparison here on the blog. My mother is hoping that I can produce equally cute children. Thanks mum, no pressure then. Here are the photos:

Like a little doll!! I'll probably put this on my website actually, being a sucker for anything a little kitsch!

The game we played to get Bradley and Alice's expressions in the following photo didn't quite work so well for tiny Matthew. Awww!

Alice's little hands holding her brother:

I have lots of other news, but will blog that in a couple of days time, so stay tuned....x

A wedding special offer!

2008-11-12T18:29:00.000-08:00

Yes thats right, I have a very cool special offer to get my wedding business going here in Dunedin. If it works then I won't have to send myself down the mines or work in the cement factory, which is plan B.

Click on the image to see a larger version if you like. Its pretty simple though, I'm going to hand out these vouchers to shops in Dunedin so that wedding couples can use them buy $150 worth of prints after their wedding. Lets hope it works! Spread the word Dunedin blog readers!

A weekend in Queenstown

2008-11-02T18:21:00.000-08:00

My laptop is in the laptop hospital in Dunedin getting fixed. It'll be fine, but in the meantime I am wandering about shaking slightly without the constant access to it I normally have. Oh well, it is a good lesson for me to not take it for granted (*shake... shake...*). Luckily we are currently in Queenstown at our good friends Conrad and Sue's place. Nobody could possibly come here for a weekend and not feel relaxed - Conrad and Sue have 3 very cute boys, a couple of acres of land and stunning views of the Remarkable mountain range and Coronet Peak (where you go skiing around here). They also have a big deck with a bbq, lots of chickens, a couple of sheep and a lovely little house.

Anyway, I get to use Sue's computer to do photos and blog - woohoo! So here are a few recent shots.

The Morganty boys: Simon, Guy and Matthew,

Guy doing cool tricks on the trampoline. He instructed me to photograph him so he looks like he's flying in the air(!)

The boys playing with a new bubble maker toy, so fun to experiment with the camera:

Us at a classic american car show last weekend. I loved it! Steven took a shot of me with my favourite car, and the reason my smile is slightly strained is because it takes him so long to take a shot! (awwww).

As soon as my laptop is home this week I will blog my super wedding special offer. In the meantime we have lots to do on the land. On Saturday the digger man is coming to lay our driveway and prepare the foundations for our barn (woohoo!) and we need to order lots of trees and plants. Also, we want to cut a trail through the bush to our river. There is a huge huge rock down there with trees growing out of the top of it and it would be great to access it easily.

New Zealand...

2008-10-27T19:49:00.000-07:00

First up, here is a photo of the land! Doesn't it look great?! I don't like to sound like I'm bragging too much but we have been working and waiting years for this so part of me feels I'm allowed to brag a little bit :) Pretty much this is the view from where the deck of the house is going to be. This tiny photo does not do it justice.

On a clear day you can see the white sand on the beach. And in the middle of this image is a kind of yellowy bush area that is full of evil GORSE (boooo). Its a prickly weed that we need to get rid of. Luckily our brilliant neighbour, farmer Bruce, is going to arrange for his cow herd to get in there and eat around all the gorse so it is easier to destroy. We just have to put up an electric fence to keep them out of our tent... Which reminds me, this is where we are living at the moment! And that is the new car/van on the left. Bruce's house is the one behind on the far left of the photo.

The tent is great. We have a large double bedroom (hidden from view behind the car), a kitchen (complete with shelves and work surfaces), 2 old armchairs and a gas fire in the living area, and a front room which stores things like shoes and water etc. Its great! Mind you I'd say the novelty of living in a tent will wear off pretty soon, but hopefully shortly after that we will have our new barn up! Electricity and phone should follow that. I'm going to say out loud on my blog that we will have the barn up in 4 weeks complete with electricity and broadband internet. Hopefully that hasn't jinxed anything, it just means I can either come back and read this in 4 weeks and laugh at my naievity... or not even read it at all because I'm too busy lazing around our lovely new barn.

Here are some shots of the neighbouring farm animals who have discovered that we aren't farmers, and as a result have rubbish fences that they can crawl under. It seems we have the best grass in the valley because everyone wants in!

This was sooo cute. The tiny lamb had its eyes closed and was dreaming about suckling, and doing the actions in its sleep. I can't think of anything cuter!!! Thats our power pole by the way.

Tasty junior, Bruce's goat. He likes wholemeal bread.

One of the calves in the paddock next door.

They LOVE a good rub under the chin. Steven is making friends with this one so that when it is a massive bull, it will be big and scary but still want a tickle under the chin from him. That really is his plan. The only problem I can see is that when we are busy building the house there will be a bull getting in the way because it wants a chin rub.

A little bbq outside the tent one evening:

And here are just a few images from our trip down from Auckland with the new car (we didn't bother stopping in the end becuase it was raining). If it was up to me, we would have stopped every half a mile to take photos. Good job we didn't though because it took 2 full days to drive back down!

Coming next: a New Zealand Wedding Special Offer! Also some very cute photographs of the Barrett family (see below) and more photographs of our travels.

New baby Matthew

2008-10-16T17:54:00.000-07:00

This is our new nephew Matthew at just 2 weeks old - isn't he gorgeous! We've been enjoying catching up with Alice and Bradley, his older brother and sister who we haven't seen for 3 years. They're great fun. Oh, and their parents too - Liana (Steven's sister) and Nigel, who are almost as much fun as their kids, ha ha. Although for some reason I didn't take any photos of them! Plenty of time for that though..

Steven has two children stuck to his arms:

Alice is such a character. Lush!

Bradley is soo cute. And already really good at art.

Alice showing me all the stuff in her little house in the garden.

We picked up the van by the way - I will take a couple of photos to put on here. It's so tall!

Off to the big smoke..

2008-10-14T12:01:00.000-07:00

In about 15 minutes Steven and I are off to catch a plane to Auckland - the big smoke! It turns out the car we actually wanted to buy was up there, so we will buy it, then cruise down through the middle of the north island, to the west coast of the south, so that we can have a little two day holiday with it. Which means I'll be offline until Saturday.

Oh, and yesterday we bought a huge tent, so when we get back we are going to camp on the land! We'll also need to purchase a nice comfy mattress and a few other luxuries. Soon I'll be cooking our first tin of beans on Steven's old camping stove, listening to the birds :)

House news

2008-10-10T18:30:00.000-07:00

This is the first installment of our house news. I'm sure there'll be many more... I'm sat in a trendy little internet cafe in central Dunedin, about 15 minutes drive away from our land (incidentally!). We are staying at Steven's mum's house at the moment, and trying to get lots of things sorted in a short space of time!

First things first, we need to get a barn up on the land, and convert one bay in it for us to live in whilst we build the house. We need planning permission to put the barn up, and apparently that can take up to 3 or 4 weeks - eek! What happens is, we submit the plans from the company that makes the barn, and the council give consent to build because it is a rural section of land and we are allowed to put a barn on there. Great. **EDITED** - we were under the impression that you couldn't live in a barn, whereas actually thats just a technicality - you can sleep in your barn, as long as you don't plumb a sink in.. (?!). How exciting! We are learning the dark ways of the council very quickly. So now we don't have to feel naughty when we put our bed in the barn, along with a couple of nice lamps... and all my clothes...

Before that happens, we need to buy a car. But not any old car, Steven wants a Mitsubishi Delica 4 wheel drive 7 seater van that converts into a campervan. Conveniently there are about 3 in the whole of the south island. So having driven a total of about 4 hours to see 2 of them (which we won't be buying) we are probably off to see the 3rd tomorrow. In Nelson, which is right at the top of the South Island! We will look at it as a bit of a road trip holiday though, and go camping on the way. I'm hoping this van is worth it but apparently it will be.

This week we are also going to start planting trees on the land! We need a wind break from one direction, and want to plant in the general area around the house so it doesn't stick out so much when its built.

Oh, and we are thinking about putting up some alternative power generators - wind, water and solar. To get the energy company to put a transformer on the power pole, and for us to run a cable to the property will be $10,000NZ. Which is sickeningly expensive! And also we want to have our own power sources eventually anyway. We could do quite a lot with $10,000 in terms of alternative energy stuff so need to do some research. If anyone has some time you could email me ideas!!

Here is a photo of the land I took the other day. I love it. When I see it I feel like lying down and rolling around in the grass!

Due to the direction of the sun, where I'm standing and the wide angle lens you can't really see the sea in this one, but rest assured it is there! We are going to build at the far right of the grass bit in this picture. See all those trees bordering the field? They're mine, ah ha ha ha haaaa!!!!!

Here I am looking back up from where the barn is going to be.

And um, here is a photo of Steven ordering a giant pizza from Pizza Hut new zealand. He is happy here because pizzas are sooo cheap. We are going to be very fat.

Oh, just while I was uploading those photos, Steven came over and told me that you can buy a wind generator for about $1,400. How exciting! We are off now to visit some alternative building guru in Dunedin to get the lowdown on putting in our Strawbale application. I tell you what, there are some great characters over here. We've been given lots of advice and told where to seek out the alternative people (anyone with solar panels all over their roof and lots of chickens really).

More land photos soon. I'll have to take my camera down to the river, it is soo gorgeous.

xxx

Louise's afternoon tea party

2008-10-10T17:44:00.000-07:00

Louise contacted me by email as we were making our way down to Dunedin. She was having a birthday afternoon tea and thought it would be fun to get some photographs of her and her friends before they finish their last year at university. It turned out the tea party was happening on my very first day in Dunedin! Luckily Steven was able to change the plugs over on my battery chargers(!!) in the morning, and that afternoon I headed off to Corstorphine House in Dunedin, an old country house hotel with fantastic views over the city. The hotel serve a huge range of lovely teas in old fashioned pots, with little sandwiches and cakes on silver cake stands. So cute! I will have to take my mum here when she comes to visit.

Louise and her friends were gorgeous, and we had loads of fun taking shots inside and in the grounds.

I'll try and post all the photos I prepared for my blog, but blogger is playing up at the moment so I'm not sure if they will render properly. Here goes!

I'm going to post some photos of the land next. How exciting!! xx

Arriving in New Zealand!

2008-10-04T20:21:00.000-07:00

Well, after all that dreaming, planning, packing, travelling, and more dreaming we are finally here, in Dunedin, New Zealand. We've been here for a week already, travelling down from Christchurch and seeing some family and friends on the way. Its so great to see everyone and catch up.

Yesterday was the first time we saw the land we bought 3 and half years ago, just north of Dunedin outside a place called Waitati. Its even more beautiful than I remember: 35 acres of lush green grass and dense forest with a stream, a river and a pond. I tell you what, it just seems ridiculous to me! How can we possibly own all of that?! This morning we walked around the boundary, sat in Steven's future fire circle in the wood, lay in the grass under the sun, and hopped on stones through the river. I sat on a big rock in the middle of the water looking at the dappled light on the stones, the ferns and the trees and I felt like laughing it was all so good! Its spring here so things are blossoming, and the land has a sweet smell like honey and coconut. Seriously, thats what it smells like!

When you stand on the spot our house is going to be on you look down through the valley to the sea. Thats where the sun rises in the morning and its just stunning.

I would obviously upload photographs, but my laptop is out of action for a couple of days and the images straight out of my camera would take about 3 years to upload on a dial up internet connection. But I will definitely get some images up in a couple of days time.

This week we have lots to do. We need a car, and some kind of garage or enclosed barn to put on the land to store our things in and to live in until we build something else. I think tomorrow night we might pitch a tent there so that we can wake up in the morning on the same spot that next year will be our house. Maybe then it will seem real.

Oh, and yesterday (our first day in Dunedin) I had my first photography commission! Which I will blog about this week.

Here is an internet photo of Blueskin bay which is the bit of coast we can just about see from our land. We are somewhere up a hill to the right of this photo I believe:

Aaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.

Extra luggage

2008-09-20T13:28:00.000-07:00

Just sorting through images on my harddrive and I found this one of Max at Christmas. I wish I could fit him in my bag and take him to New Zealand!

New email address

2008-09-18T08:07:00.001-07:00

I'll still be using my sjenkinsphotography@yahoo.co.uk address for the forseeable future, but this new email is for any new clients, I thought the uk part of my email might put them off. Thanks!

sineadphotography@yahoo.com

Natasha and James' Wedding!

2008-09-18T08:07:00.000-07:00

If you wondered why I was back in the UK at all well then its these guy's fault. Infact if it wasn't for them I would probably be lying on a beach somewhere now... with a cocktail maybe... listening to the lapping of the sea upon the shore...hmmmmm... Well if Natasha and James weren't such lovely, funny, adorable people then I probably would be. I've been so excited about this wedding for aaages, and felt really honoured that James and Natasha got me home to photograph their big day. It was well worth it, they had such a gorgeous wedding, with everything carefully and creatively thought through. Natasha and James have the loveliest family and friends who made the day even better, and to top it all off it was SUNNY!!!

I started at Natasha's place:

She doesn't scrub up too badly:

By the way, when you see people in magazines looking like this its because they've been photoshopped up, the image above is straight out of the camera!! Yes I know...

Look at the fabulous wedding shoes!!

James supported by team usher:

Cooling castle barn entrance:

The ceremony felt very happy and intimate.

I could have photographed Natasha and James together all day, but I had to let them escape back to their guests at some point.

I LOVE this image. Its definitely going on my website.

Natasha's dad's speech:

Himali dishing the dirt on her sister:

James' brother and best man Andy pretended to be nervous before going on to deliver a great speech:

Which included these lovely new sporting outfits:

First dance:

Congratulations guys, and thanks again xxx

Well, thats me all done in this country then. In a couple of days I will be flying out to Delhi and then on to Bangkok to meet up with my gorgeous husband for a long awaited reunion - how exciting!! We'll be leaving shortly after that for our new place in New Zealand. I'm nervous, excited, happy, tired and a few other emotions too. We've been planning this for so long I can't believe we are going to stand on our land in Dunedin, look out on the view... and then, um, build a house.

As everyone knows, we'll miss people here loads but are definitely expecting lots of visitors - if you come early enough you can help to build the guest bedroom!

Ash and Debbie's Wedding

2008-09-10T15:01:00.000-07:00

When Debbie and Ash hired me to photograph their wedding back in the spring, I was so excited about the gorgeous little village church, the horse and cart, the marquee and the glorious summer weather! So as me and Emma drove to Debbie's parent's house on Saturday under threatening clouds I wondered if it could all go ahead as planned. I needn't have been concerned at all though, because with meticulous planning from both bride and groom's families and such excitement and happiness about the wedding, the day was a great success despite a torrential downpour in the middle(!) Debbie and Ash were like glamourous film stars gliding through everything in a serene and stylish way.

I processed most of my shots to be black and white or vintagy since they all just seemed to suit it. Here is Bella the flower girl, a perfect model for the camera:

This is the only bouquet I have ever photographed that smelt gorgeous! Which I imagine would be great before a ceremony if you're a nervous bride - you can just dig your nose in there...

Debbie. There's something old-fashioned about this image that I like.

The confetti wrapped in music scores:

Awwww. The glamour of it!

This is just before the surprise torrential downpour. Observant blog readers will notice a clue in the picture:

Lush!!

It stopped raining so we were able to get some coupley shots.

Attempting to feed the cows:

Incase you can't recognise it from this photo, the dessert was pavlova with raspberries, fresh cream and raspberry coulis.

I love the way that Debbie's mum is looking at her husband speaking here. It was the part of his speech where he was talking about how lucky he was to marry her.

First dance:

And some dancing photos - here are three that I like. Love this guy's expression!

Thanks Debbie and Ash for being such patient and good natured photo subjects. Hope you have a wonderful honeymoon - in India! Of course you can read my in-depth travel review below (joke!) xx

Our house plans

2008-09-05T04:22:00.000-07:00

So, its not long now until October when I'll be in New Zealand with Steven starting to build our straw bale house. I'm so excited!

Here are the room plans. These bits of the plan don't show the wide decking that will be on the front and side of the house that will lead onto the garden, so you'll have to imagine that. The doors to the north (on this drawing) of the ground floor are big french doors and windows that will lead onto the deck, where we are going to have seating to the right (under the kitchen window) and where Steven wants an outdoor pizza oven. He has spent months and months getting the details just right, so that, for example, we have a kitchen window that slides open so that you can hand out drinks and pizzas without getting in anyone's way.

I designed the kitchen and it has a built in wine rack and cocktail cabinet (of course), and a nice big breakfast bar.

There will be stairs to the south (in this drawing) of the house with a study area to the side.

Click on the image for a larger view if you like.

Here is the upstairs. Its going to have a sloping roof on two sides, so the bedroom looks huge here but some of that space will be under the roof. The reading area is just going to be a space with a balcony looking down onto the living room with books and comfy chairs, and the thing in the middle is a bridge to access it!

One more thing. Matt has done the drawing for us so that the size of each straw bale is defined (they're big!). The walls are going to be half a metre thick because thats how big the straw bales will be.

I plan for the house to be finished next April, giving us 6 months to build. Whenever I say that my dad and my sister raise a quizzical eyebrow because they've been watching too many Grand Designs programmes where there is always a major disaster/delay before the final set of adverts. Fingers crossed then!

Amy and Lee's Wedding in Peckforton Castle

2008-09-03T04:05:00.000-07:00

What a stunning location for a wedding! Peckforton castle is in Cheshire and is a huge medieval style fairytale castle surrounded by forest with a proper gatehouse, moat, portcullis and banquet rooms. Amy and Lee contacted me at the end of last year after seeing me at Rachel and Dave's wedding in Fonmon Castle -Dave is Amy's uncle, although of course he doesn't look old enough to be(!) Of course I wasn't meant to be here so I told Amy and Lee that I couldn't photograph the wedding. Then Natasha and James decided to fly me home for their wedding in 2 weeks so it turned out I could photograph Amy and Lee after all!

I only found out last week, but for a while recently there was almost no wedding at all. Just over 4 weeks ago Lee was diagnosed with a brain tumor. He was rushed into hospital and all wedding planning was dropped. Incredibly, Lee was operated on, the tumor was removed and he started to recover slowly. Last Wednesday, 3 days before the wedding he returned home, weak but able to walk and strong enough for the wedding to go ahead on Saturday. There must have been a lot of frantic last minute wedding work - Amy and her mum finished the table plan on Friday night, amongst other things.

Lee - this man was lying in a hospital bed 3 days before this shot was taken.

I love this image of Amy and Lee in front of the Castle, they have such a quiet, gentle way with eachother. You can just see an operating scar at the front of Lee's head here.

A couple of Amy before the ceremony. Can I just say, she MADE HER OWN DRESS. I have to be honest, I was expecting something very simple and kind of homemadey. This dress is an incredible peice of work, full of intricate detail on the bodice, with beads and antique lace that looked amazing in the medieval castle surroundings. I am just in awe, especially considering it was finished the night before the wedding! Amy looked very beautiful and serene all day.

The couple's son Oscar was the page boy,

And Lee's daughter Katie was the flower girl,

Lee read Amy a poem during the ceremony,

What a place to get married!

This shot is for Rachel :)

A couple of Amy and Lee together after the ceremony,

Amy's mum was busy assembling this on the day of the wedding(!) and just look how cool it is!! The icing figures have the same outfits as the wedding party and little Oscar even has his special cuddly donkey, brilliant.

Some very irresponsible father was encouraging this activity after the wedding,

Rachel and Dave looking very glam,

I feel quite smug about this shot - there were lots of peacocks in the grounds of the castle, and I caught this peacock and peahen having a wedding day kiss!

The hog roast

And it didn't even rain! Thanks for a great day guys xxx

Amy and Lee, one photo...

2008-09-02T07:49:00.001-07:00

This is for my avid blog readers (all three of you...!) who I know are waiting for images from Amy and Lee's wedding on Saturday, which was just beautiful.

I'm looking forward to posting lots more tomorrow. I've had to sort out two software issues in the space of about 12 hours... without Steven's help! Normally if I have a boring software or computer problem I do a kind of girly swoon and get Steven to sort it out for me and then brief me with his results while I relax with a bit of cake. But Steven is in India! Lazing on a beach reading books and eating steak! So I was up till 2 am last night reading nerd blogs on the internet and doing various tests. Anyway, all is well now, but I am slightly behind my strict schedule so will carry on with that tomorrow.

Plus tonight I am making a blue cheese, red onion and walnut tart for my family, and I have yet to purchase any blue cheese, red onions or walnuts. And Max keeps pushing his filthy plastic cat toy in my lap and smearing me in dog drool... the life of a glamourous photographer ey?!

Dog in a coat

2008-08-28T04:10:00.000-07:00

Yes I know, its wrong to put clothes on dogs, but listen, with all the rain we've been having in the UK and what with Max's long flowing fur, it makes sense for him to have a raincoat. I chose the most manly coat on offer in Petsmart, and it has practical features like a detatchable hood and adjustable waistband. As you can see, he love it.

Work it for the camera Max.

My friend's Fergo's wedding

2008-08-26T14:16:00.000-07:00

I flew back to the UK last Thursday just in time to catch the train up to Norwich for my friend Ferg's wedding (of course, Ferg's nickname originates from the name of the main prison screw in 1980's Prisoner Cell Block H...). I was so excited to go to a wedding where I got to be a guest, gossip, drink cocktails and wear a fancy dress, woohoo! I took a few little photos before I put my camera to bed.

This guy was a very accomplished breakdancer.

Awww. I'm very excited now about the 3 weddings I'm home to shoot over the next 4 weeks. This Saturday I'm off to Manchester to photograph Amy and Lee in Peckforton Castle which looks stunning. Steven is enjoying the sun in the meantime on a beach somewhere in Goa before he flies out out to Thailand to meet me in September. Infact he was probably strolling into the sea to cool down yesterday at exactly the same time as I was huddled on Southerndown beach with my scarf and coat on. In August...

Cows and moustaches and things like that in India

2008-08-12T09:00:00.000-07:00

I'm finally at the last destination on our journey before I return to the UK at the end of next week.

We are in Jodhpur, a big city in Rajasthan, India, after arriving in Delhi late last Thursday night. Its funny, even though we've travelled a huge distance over the last 10 or so weeks, seen some strange things and got used to being in different places, and even though this is the 3rd time I've been to Johdpur, India is still like one big fat smack in the face :)

Entering Mongolia on the train and seeing the vast expanse of steppe dotted with ger camps was incredible. And walking over the border into China to see a city full of street traders and people on bikes was really exhilerating. But its nothing like coming out of Delhi airport and walking into the thick heat, the colour, the noise, and 100 people who all want you in their taxi.

I love it here, but part of that is because it's such an extreme country, so incredibly different from anywhere else. 20% of each day is so rewarding that you can forgive the other 80% that is frustrating, hot, sweaty, and smelly.

Some things I've seen in India in the last 4 days:

A man praying to a cow in the street
2 adults and 3 children travelling on the same motorbike
A festival
Men with gigantic moustaches
Hundreds of pilgrims walking with flags
4 cows lying in the road creating a brand new roundabout
2 car/motorbike crashes
3 crippled dogs standing together
People queuing to pray in a shrine building lit up with hundreds of lights and filled with flowers
A woman determined to sell me a turnip
Babies with big kohl eyes looking out from the back of a rickshaw taxi
One old man cycling 4 young men up an incline in Delhi
The rooftop view of Mehrangarh fort from our guesthouse in Jodhpur
Deep fried red chillis
At least 4 million men standing around street corners in jeans and a shirt staring at me

The funny thing is we aren't really here to sightsee. We came to Jodhpur just over 3 years ago and found some beautiful furniture manufacturers. Since we are on our way over to New Zealand in September we thought we would stop and buy (pretty much!) all the furniture for our new house. We'll ship it over in one big container. So for the last 3 days we've been visiting shops and factories trying to locate some nice things and discuss logistics with lots of different owners and suppliers. I'm also getting a dress made for my friend's wedding on the 22nd. Very exciting!

So far things are going really well, and we've met some incredibly friendly, genuine people.

Sooo, no photos this time I'm afraid, because we've spent all our time on the furniture. That doesn't mean that every few yards I walk along the street here I don't see an award winning shot (or two). I really hope that one day I can go out with my camera and just take photographs. Although it will be very difficult because each time a westerner stops in the street here (without a camera!) 10 people stop with them, including 5 small children who want money, 3 handicraft shop owners, 1 man who wants to talk about cricket and 1 man who wants to stare at your chest.

We're in Jodhpur for the next week, so if I have any news or photographs before we go home I'll blog again. By the way, I know most of my readers are suffering with the yucky UK weather at the moment. Today it was stiflingly hot and I was starting to moan about it when the monsoon rain hit and it POURED down for about 2 hours, so much that it turned the streets into rivers and soaked my nice pair of shoes, grrr. Now it's stiflingly hot again and I wish it was raining. xx

Just Laaazin' on a beach...

2008-08-03T23:02:00.000-07:00

Feels like ages since I last wrote, but maybe thats because we've covered so many miles in a short space of time! From the central west of China, down to the lush green south, across to Hong Kong and then (on the first flight of our trip so far!!) here to Thailand, from where we are flying to Delhi in India tonight. Phew.

From the Yangtze, we caught a taxi, then a bus, then an overnight train, then a taxi, then another bus until we finally arrived in Yangshuo, hundreds of miles further south, near Guilin in Guangxi province. The journey probably would have been more fun if it hadn't been 35 degrees or above, and if I hadn't filled my rucksack to tip 18 kilos on that shopping spree in Beijing. Hey ho, I won't go on about the less glamourous aspects to travelling!

In Chengdu, China, we visited the Panda Park, which is a breeding and research facility for the Giant Panda and also the little Red Panda. For us that means you can go and look at little baby pandas at close quarters! We didn't have much time in Chengdu and could only visit the park in the afternoon, which is nap-time for nearly all the pandas - they are so furry that the day time heat in the summer means that they spend most of the time indoors in air-conditioned rooms. However we did manage to see the giant panda babies all curled up, fidgeting and snoring in their sleep (so cute!!) and some big fatty pandas eating bamboo before sprawling out on the floor to sleep.

The point and shoot camera struggled in the low light I'm afraid:

The little red pandas are more active and happy to sit in your lap for a fee. And some apple bribery:

Actually I have the cutest little video of Steven holding a red panda but my blog doesn't like it so I can't show it to anyone now.

Yangshu, where we stayed in southern china has some of the most unique geology in the country, with huge limestone river cut hills towering above sleepy little farms. The town is relatively touristy for China, but still quiet enough to be relaxing, and surrounded by the dark green of these limestone peaks and the bright lush green of the rice paddies. Its so beautiful. We spent 4 days there not doing very much, but we did hire bikes one day and take a trip down the river on a bamboo raft. Most of the time it was just sooooo hot we could only really slope around looking at the view. Which was fine, because I feel like we haven't stopped much during the last 3 months!

Buses in China aren't designed for big white western men:

A little snap of an impressive water and light theatre peice we saw in Yanghuo, where fishing boats with little lamps filled the water, and the surrounding hills were lit up, all set to music:

A touch of smog.....one thing I'm not sorry to say goodbye to in China.

So for the last week we've been hanging out in Thailand, with my brother and his girlfriend playing hosts for us. We stayed in a beach hut on Koh Samet, reading, swimming and eating for 4 days, and now we are back on the infamous Khao San Road, escaping from the heat and the tie dye in a little air conditioned internet cafe.

Look at the cool tee shirt my brother bought me! I love it!!

Because the good news is that in Hong Kong, I bought myself a very swanky new camera, and a brand new lens! Both of which I treat like my babies. The point and shoot is still in action because camera and lens mark II aren't allowed out of the hotel. My main professional camera is safely tucked up in bed back in Cardiff, so this my second camera, but my only camera out here so I'm taking good care of it.

I'll leave you with a photo of Koh Samet, taken just before I went for a little dip in the sea. Ahhh, this is the life!

xxx

A trip down the Yangtze

2008-07-22T22:13:00.000-07:00

We spent the last few days on a small chinese cruise ship (don't get any illusions about luxury though!) sailing down the Three Gorges to the new hydro-electric damn on the Yangtze. Here are some photos from the trip.

Steven helping the driver fix his bus before we set off for the port:

Sinead and Steven become minor celebrities on board as one of only 4 westerners. There was an official photographer on board that people bought a package of 10 photographs (of them infront of various parts of the river) from. Some people insisted on having us in the photos with them! This poor girl doesn't look entirely happy about her mother wanting a photo of her with the celebs:

We disembarked onto smaller wooden boats at one point to sail down the Little Three Gorges which was beautiful:

The water level of the river backed up behind the damn for 550 kilometres has already risen by 145 metres, displacing whole cities of people. A massive 1.3 million people have been re-located as a result of the project.

The damn will be finished in 2009, which is when the water level will rise another 30 metres to 175 metres. All along the river are markers indicating what will soon be underwater, such as this family's small farm:

The amount of construction in this area is incredible. Here is a new bridge being built to replace one that will soon be submerged. It is gigantic, and one of many massive building projects.

We are off to Guilin today which is meant to be stunning, so I can't wait.

Some lovely food, incredible sights and giant scary dogs...

2008-07-17T20:46:00.001-07:00

Well I still have a fancy birthday meal credit to use up, but last night in Xian we went to the Islamic food market and ate sooooo much tasty food. It is chinese food with an islamic influence, so tastes quite different to what we think of as chinese food - more spicy barbeque flavours. We had things like barbequed lamb kebabs, rice cakes, flat breads, skewered squid, little sweet potato cakes with figs, squished nut things - I have no idea what anything was called, but it was delicious.

We visited the terracotta warrior museums in the afternoon which was incredible. What amazed me is that the warriors are so lifelike, with individual expressions, and differences in their costumes and stances. And in one excavated pit there are an estimated 6,000 of them! I have an added appreciation because I went to evening pottery classes a few years ago and it took me about 3 weeks to make a pot with a handle.

Anyway, here are some little photos of our trip in China so far.

The forbidden city in Beijing:

Some chinese tourists on the move:

Steven's new favourite food:

At the bird's nest stadium, which is almost finished apparently:

Getting dumplings made for us in a food court:

Us at the Great Wall!

A guy hoisting part of a business sign onto the top of a building in Beijing:

Steven got his haircut and I 'read' a magazine whilst I was waiting. Interesting to see a very western format featuring the latest beauty products that we would recognise at home - folic acid etc, and then a recommendation to use lamb's placenta in the middle of it all.

I have yet to see a normal looking dog in China (er..I won't comment on why that might be actually!) since all the dogs we see are toy varieties and look completely ridiculous. The whole Paris Hilton carrying your dog around in a handbag craze has hit China big time, and dogs are all tiny, sometimes very cute, sometimes able to walk on their own, always vicious!

"Sinead, how did you get that terrible wound? Were you bitten by a huge scary animal?"
"Um... yes.. it was a big scary dog that I couldn't fight off. Really... big.. and scary..."

Steven and small dog stare eachother out. The small dog won.

A girl we were chatting to on the train who has a very rare ticket to the opening ceremony of the olympic games on 08/08/08. Her dad has connections it seems...

In the above image note the 2 tiny seats this girl is sitting on (the guy on the seat next to her was standing up when the photo was taken). The sleeper seats - beds on the train - were sold out, so me and Steven spent 11 hours overnight sitting on these hard little seats attempting but failing to get any sleep. The picture below was taken the next day at the terracotta warrior site in Xian (hence my facial expression!)

Detail of a warrior with his horse - these were made over 2,000 years ago, incredible:

And the Islamic food market!

Talking of food... I must be off. Thanks for all your messages! xxx

Peking Duck

2008-07-16T04:43:00.000-07:00

I was so excited about going out for a fancy meal for my birthday last night! We spent the day in the forbidden city, but got back to the hostel quite late.

After showering, getting dressed up, and locating the fancy restaurant on the map, we finally got there about 9.30pm. It turns out the fancy restaurant shut at 8.30pm. Hmm. So we were stood on the street wondering what to do when a friendly waitress from the closed restaurant offered to show us the way to another fancy restaurant serving Peking duck. Lucky us! On the way we were chatting and she explained that actually she was taking us to another branch of the same 'chain'. Like KFC she said. Ok, we thought, thats fine, its just a chain of really fancy peking duck restaurants where our going-out clothes will fit right in and we'll be served like kings on my birthday.

Not so. When we arrived at fancy restaurant no. 2, it seemed as if KFC had just moved out, leaving only the flourescent lighting, sticky tables and tacky decor, and the Peking duck company had just moved in. The menu arrived, and when we saw that our meal was going to cost us 70 pounds for the two of us, we decided to leave. The man behind Steven chucking his cigarettes on the floor just helped us along. I've been to plenty of tacky restaurants before, but not really spent more than a fiver in general.

Anyway, since it was late (10pm by the time we left) and all the restaurants in the area were shut, we stopped in a side street near our hostel and ate fried duck noodles for 70p each! Here is a picture of me with my noodles. Mum, thats my new handbag! Although its a wide angle lens so I'm not that small in real life.

My Birthday!!!

2008-07-14T18:49:00.000-07:00

How exciting! Its morning here in Beijing and we were meant to be getting up very early to visit the Great Wall, but when the alarm went off we convinced ourselves that it was going to rain today and we were better off sleeping in and trying tomorrow. Now that we are up its not raining of course. Infact from my position in the hostel lobby here I can see people outside with sun umbrellas. Its almost too bright to look without sunglasses. Anyway, its nice to have a lie in on your birthday.

So, I've reached the grand old age of 29. Which feels great, especially since at the moment I'm still bumming around china and I don't have a proper job, or even a house or a car come to think of it! My present from Steven was a special carved wooden stamp which stamps my name in Mandarin. I had no idea he managed to get one for me! It is sooooo cool. At some point in the future I want to make a chinese style embroidery/painting, and now I can stamp my own name in red ink at the bottom.

Instead of visiting the Great Wall today, we are going to walk around the Forbidden City. Then this evening we are going out for a fancy peking duck meal. Life is pretty good. Plus in just over 2 weeks we are going to be in Hong Kong, which is like Mecca for camera people. I am almost drooling already.

Oh, thank you for your comments below! I'm going to try and upload a video later, although until the hostel instal Steven's new electrical system they have the occasional power cut, so I'll see how I go.

29!!

EDIT: I believe my blog runs on GMT, so I haven't forgotten, my birthday is actually the 15th :)

Travels in Mongolia/6 tourists crossing the Gobi desert in a russian van

2008-07-10T00:56:00.000-07:00

Well I think the title says it all. As you can see from my post below we arrived in Mongolia just in time to arrange visas for China (it turns out we could apply for chinese visas in Ulaanbaatur although it took 2 days to cobble together the application, lots of dead ends and lots of supressed internal screaming) and then arrange a tour of the Gobi desert. Travelling Mongolia solo seems to be something that only very hardened travellers attempt in order to impress the folks back home. So instead of catching local transport to see the Gobi (a 6 seater indestructable russian mini-van packed with 14 people and a goat) we chose to see the country on an organised tour (a 6 seater indestructable russian mini van with 6 tourists, a translator and some bottled water) . Here we are at the start of the 2 week trip, very excited to be leaving one of the less inspiring cities in Asia and heading off into the open spaces of the desert.

From left to right: Steven (New Zealander!); Boloroo (Mongolian - our guide and translator); Gaelle (French); Ogi (hostel owner); Sinead (Welsh); John (Irish); Mario (Argentinian/Italian/Spanish); Orta (driver - I spelt his name wrong but it is pronounced Orllta and you can say that if you are welsh!); and Ali (American).

Here we all are after a few hours of driving, or maybe a day or two. The back seat passengers bear the brunt of the bumpy road. The other day Ali was asking how she could possibly describe in her diary the incredible amount of time we spent crushed in this van, clinging onto the windows and the roof.... I have no idea. I guess at least we were only 6 people rather than 14. The distances we travelled seemed even more massive because we averaged about 25 miles an hour once we left Mongolia's only few sealed roads :

Stopping for lunch on the way:

A vulture looking for stray tourists:

Mario attempting to eat his lunch en-route.

Almost everyone outside of Ulaanbaatur lives in a Ger, which is like a Yurt. We mostly stayed with herding families in the nights, and here is a Ger that we slept in. Thats my towel hanging off the side ruining the photo by the way :) In the south of the country, people keep goats, horses and camels, and in the centre and north, goats, sheep, cows, yaks, and even further north reindeer.

A rainstorm in the Gobi. I have never experienced rain like it - you can drive along, pass under a raincloud and get heavily rained on for about 60 seconds, then come through the other side into the sunlight - amazing!

Ali waiting for the longdrop toilet. She'll be delighted I used this photo on my blog:

Checking out a newly finished Ger:

An animal that stayed still long enough for us to snap it!

We had a small fly problem when we hit the greener pastures and steppe north of the Gobi. It was more unpleasant than a hot day in the van, and each person was constantly surrounded by their own swarm. The only way to be rid of them was to drive as fast as possible in the van with all the windows open.

Walking up a hill the van couldn't quite manage with all of us fatties inside:

A game of rounders in the evening:

Um, this was the 7th member of our team, a football we named wilson (after the ball in the Castaway film...) Wilson kept us company until he finally gave up the ghost on the last night of our trip. Here he is with some dead animal bones in the sand where we left him. Somehow this all seemed normal in the middle of the desert....

A waterfall in a ravine west of Ulaanbaatur:

A dog with yoghurt on his head outside a ger in the hills, central Mongolia:

This spot would have been blissful if it hadn't been crawling with flies!!

When Wilson was out of action we were forced to entertain ourselves. With the aid of a herder's gun here are John and Mario posing as a Mongolian freedom fighter and one of Osama's henchmen. Just a little bit troubling how realistic they appear...

Fun with some very cute kids on the way:

Our driver was incredible. Here he is one evening in the Gobi helping another driver remove the entire back axle of a van, repair it, and replace it ready to go in the morning for another 180 kilometres. They only stopped to drive off around the various Gers in the area looking for spare parts. Another night he lit a fire using cow dung to solder together more van parts.

A baby goat!!!!!

Every night we were entertained by gorgeous sunsets, and then a sky packed full of stars and the milky way.

We met some lovely people on the way, another van going the same way as us for a lot of the trip, were welcomed by very friendly mongolian families, and saw some beautiful places. Of course I'm not going to try and describe a 15 day journey in one blog post, so I will just list my favourite parts of the last 2 weeks on the road:

Getting out of the van each day and discovering a new place; trying to herd goats around the desert and getting upstaged by a 6 year old; drinking hot tea with yaks milk, fermented horse milk, yak 'vodka', and the cheap russian stuff; playing games in the Ger and discussing the important issues of the day; jumping in a freezing river after 3 days without washing; finding the same joke hilarious even on day 14; trying to pronounce mongolian sounds; camping in the mountains; camel riding on the sand dunes, galloping with horses on the steppe; watching the sunset in a vast empty sky; getting drunk and looking at the stars; playing volleyball, football and rounders; chasing strange insects; running down sand dunes; sneaking out food to the dogs; getting the best seat in the van; getting away from the flies; not having to think about anything but what we'll get for dinner that night; taking photos on Steven's camera; talking about photography; eating, drinking, driving and sleeping (although more sleeping and less driving would have been even better!).

Now I can't wait to get to China (we leave tomorrow evening) so I can stuff myself with chinese food. We managed to get a visa for 18 days, so that will be the next stage of our trip. How exciting!

Tonight we are going to an all you can eat mongolian barbeque, where I'm going to eat...... all I can!

Steven's Trans-Siberian pics

2008-07-10T00:42:00.000-07:00

A few little pics from Moscow...

2008-07-10T00:00:00.000-07:00

Well, it seems the good thing about using Steven's point and shoot camera is that I can upload images straight from the camera to my blog, just like the good old days! So here are a few photographs that Steven took in Moscow (I didn't manage to save any of mine before my camera disappeared).

Sinead in Red Square, pulling my "Moscow resident disgusted by tourist's question" face:

Why anyone would want to buy a Jeremy Clarkson book in English is a mystery to me, but here are a whole load of his latest works available for Moscovites?!

The GUM department store in Moscow at night:

Sinead with her lovely camera :) in Red Square at night:

A typical Moscow tube station, ever so slightly different from the London ones, only I can't quite put my finger on why....

Sinead being a tourist outside one of Moscow's very soviet style Seven Sisters that Stalin commissioned all around the outskirts of the city:

And this is a little video that I took in GUM department store (that fronts onto Red Square), and the first time I have tried to upload videos on my blog. Lets see if it works!

By the way, thank you everyone for your kind emails of commiseration about my robbery incident, they were much appreciated. Leave a comment below if the video works for you, I'm trying to lull my techno-phobic friends and family into leaving comments on the blog. Thanks!!

Good news and bad news!

2008-06-24T17:08:00.000-07:00

Here's the good news: we are off on a 2 week tour of Mongolia in about 20 minutes, so I thought I should write and let everyone know that I won't have access to the internet for that whole time but I promise to write when I get back! The 'tour' is really 6 people in a little 4 wheel drive van going out into the desert and the mountains to have a look around and commune with nature a bit... so I'm really excited.

We arrived in Ulaanbaatur on Sunday, after a 5 night train journey from Moscow which was absolutely brilliant. Travelling 1st class we had a gorgeous little cabin and sat eating sausages, reading lots of books, napping, and watching some stunning scenery out of the window. It was probably my favourite part of the trip so far - I was dissapointed to leave the train which does sound odd after all that time I know.

You might expect me to be uploading lots of photographs from my trip in Moscow and across Siberia (I took hundreds!!) but here comes the bad news: Last night in an internet cafe here I had my bag stolen. I was actually at the cafe in order to upload (and back up) the photographs I had taken for the last 2 weeks, but the system wouldn't work so I put my camera back in my bag to find somewhere else instead. Steven was booking flights and it was getting late so I sat with him for a while. Then I had that familiar sickening feeling all of a sudden - Where's my bag?? There was no one else in the cafe by this point and no way anyone could have got under the table infront of me surely?? I ran outside but it was dark and whoever had my bag was long gone.

I felt absolutely sick. I hope I'm not that materialistic, but I could only think of my beautiful camera, all those photographs, and the fact that I was about to see some of the most amazing scenery in central Asia without it. People who know how much I love having my camera will know how absolutely gutted I am.

Anyway, life goes on. I just want to say that amongst all the things I had stolen was my phone so I no longer have any phone numbers, so that includes friends, family, clients, anyone I met recently(!) so please email or message me here with your number.

I will definitely upload photos when I get back - Steven has promised me his little point and shoot camera for the rest of our trip so I'll consider it a bit of a challenge!

Much love to everyone and please don't worry. I'll be on the look out for a Mongolian urchin with a big professional camera with him :)

Smiling ruskies

2008-06-14T00:35:00.001-07:00

img_8695
Originally uploaded by Sinead Jenkins

Caption: The russian girl on the left is thinking "what are those strange people doing with their mouths in this picture?!"

Central cathedral in St Petersburg

2008-06-14T00:32:00.001-07:00

img_8716
Originally uploaded by Sinead Jenkins

From Russia with ...a stern handshake

2008-06-13T23:44:00.000-07:00

I'm going write a bit then link to my flickr page so you can see some photos from our stay in St Petesburg and Moscow so far (I've organised them into groups). We travelled by train for a day and a night through Belarus before arriving in St Petersburg, in our own little cabin where I was able to eat sausages and bread and take photos out of the window, bliss! The train stopped in a hot and dusty Belarusian town and we went for a walk through the long main street which was flanked on both sides by bleak looking communist style flats, the occasional shopfront (void of any advertising) and small lanes leading off into the distance and little wooden houses. We exchanged about 4 sterling in the station and got back about 20,000 belarusion. We didn't manage to spend it all although I had a white choc-ice with apricot jam in the middle and steven had a purple cornetto.

Our accommodation in St Petersburg was a number of ex soviet style apartment rooms converted into a hotel. Apparently one whole family would have lived in our room. We visited all the major sites including the Winter Palace, the Peter and Paul fortress, a place called Peterhof which is surrounded by huge gold statues and fountains, and walked the length of Nevsky Prospect with the uber-wealthy designer shoppers, the groups of wannabe gangster boys and the beggars. It was Russia day the day before yesterday and the streets were also lined with russian flags and hundreds of police. St Petersburg is one of those places you could easily get cathedral-fatigue, but they are so... grossly impressive that somehow you don't.

The russian people in the cities we have managed to talk to properly (only the people who work in the hotels/hostels really) are helpful and friendly, but I'm struggling to say anything nice about pretty much everyone else we encounter here - people in shops, restaurants, tourist sites, people we ask for directions. The nicest thing I can say is that they are stoic, and most people are physically very strong. Like the woman who pushed me out of her way in Moscow train station yesterday (both hands), or the old ladies who elbow me to get to the front of russian orthodox shrines. There are lots of girls here who dress up in expensive clothes, don huge stilletos and gold coats to parade around the centre of town, and they look down on me in my jeans and sandals with utter derision. If we ask for help people either wave us away or shrug and look back down at whatever they were doing. Hopefully when we depart Moscow in 4 days for the trans-mongolian railway we can meet some real people without their city pretensions.

In the meantime we are seeing the funny side. We had a little competition going in St Petersburg to try and make someone smile (no prize since the likelihood was so rare). I was completely unsuccessful (despite a number of attempts at holding doors open, catching hats in the wind, excessive tipping), but Steven is steaming ahead! He managed to make 2 old ladies in the Hermatage museum cloakroom smile (by making out that they'd stolen his camera?!), and then yesterday he had a shop assistant in stitches by doing a (very risky in my opinion) impression of her colleague. I think we're learning.

Last night we went to red square at dusk and it was fantastic. The Kremlin, St Basils Cathedral and GUM department store all lit up in the night sky. Seeing the square in the sunny day time seems strange to me - my visions of it are in the bleak mid-winter with all the ruskies wearing furry hats.

One last thing - the Moscow tube stations are incredible! Each one is a monument to soviet communism with statues, mosaics, chandeliers, marble pillars. Photography is forbidden and I'm such a wuss I haven't risked taking a photo yet but I will!

www.flickr.com/photos/sineadphoto

Lovely food in Poland

2008-06-12T06:45:00.000-07:00

Mmmm, I didn't expect to love the Polish food so much, but considering how much we ate during our stay (and probably how much weight we put on) I think I can safely say it went down very well. Polish food is like the ultimate comfort food, lots of mashed potato, stew, amazing soups, peirogi, which are like ravioli, cheesy bread, and then lots of cabbage too. Luckily, I love cabbage!

On our last day in Poland we were in Warsaw, and Steven took me to Wedel, the finest chocolatier in Poland. I was tired and needed a pick me up, so when we arrived in these dining rooms it was like entering a chocolate dream world. (See picture below I stole from the internet because I think if I attach my camera to the computer I'm sitting at it may grind to a slow halt).

We ordered the speciality hot chocolate (that you could almost literally stand your spoon up in) and two very simple sounding icecream/yoghurt dishes. I'll see if I can get a photo up in a couple of days because they were amazing!!! They came not in dishes, but in something more akin to a vase, with huge chocolate things sticking out the top. Woohoo!! Man, I was wired after eating all that. Steven felt sick and couldn't finish his chocolate so I had his too. Then in the evening we went to pizza hut.

Somehow I don't think thats the kind of food that skinny travellers are meant to eat but then surely I need my energy for the weeks ahead. Steven thinks he's definitely lost weight and where's the harm in going along with that?

In St Petersburg now so will blog again in Moscow. Internet is v expensive and I'm trying to be stingy. xxx

Hello from Poland!

2008-06-07T09:27:00.000-07:00

Thought I would share some photos from our trip so far. Plus of course I promised Max that we would keep in touch.

A little update on the general plan, since I know a lot of people aren't sure exactly what we are up to. Well, the initial idea was to travel over to New Zealand overland by train (as far as possible), via London, Brussels, Cologne, Warsaw and Krakow in Poland, St Petersburg and Moscow in Russia, and then through Mongolia - stopping for a while - into China, then Tibet and down to the south of India. Foreigners are no longer allowed into Tibet though, and now China has changed it's visa regulations, so we will change our plans for that part of the world, but so far we are booked as far as Mongolia - how exciting! We may fly into Japan from there, but will see...

In the meantime, we have managed to get as far as Krakow in Poland, which is an amazingly beautiful city. Hospitable, full of gorgeous old buildings, and sunny aswel, so we are starting to relax and enjoy things. I can't upload photos to my blog at the moment, but here is a link to about 10 that I managed to get on flickr. I'm not allowed to start missing my laptop though!

http://www.flickr.com/photos/sineadphoto/

will write again soon x

Panna and Vishnu's Wedding

2008-06-02T23:19:00.000-07:00

I've been so busy I haven't blogged any photos from Panna and Vishnu's wedding in City Hall, Cardiff last month. Panna contacted me because she heard I was around for these extra couple of months, and I'm so pleased she did, the wedding was a very happy, relaxed and joyous day. Panna and Vishnu are both lovely, chilled out people and their families are full of real characters, we had a great time. Not much time for words, but here are the photos!

Panna looking beautiful in a relaxed yet stylish way:

Her lucky husband Vishnu (also looking stylish and relaxed):

Love this one of Panna and her mum:

If you have a late afternoon wedding, you can have photographs outside the museum when the doors are shut!

A beautiful day:

This guy was an amazing dancer!

Thanks for being such a pleasure to work with guys, enjoy your slideshow.x

I'm off to London this lunchtime, and then Brussels tomorrow to begin our big trip. Might have to go and do some packing then...

My life at the moment

2008-05-22T15:31:00.000-07:00

I obviously lead a very glamourous life going out for cocktails all the time, ahem, but at the moment it feels like all I do is get up, do some work on the computer, talk to utility companies on the phone, then tackle a room in the house armed with some boxes and a bin bag. After a few days of boring packing I learnt to be less sentimental, but I still cannot come across an old magazine or a photo album without sitting down and looking through EVERY page, like some kind of annoying OCD. Anything is more interesting than packing.

Here are Matt and Steven drafting up our house:

Steven told me not to post this picture because he thinks people won't realise how exciting our new house is going to look when they just see the frame. I think its more exciting because this is the beginning, and hopefully in a year we will have a whole proper house that will look amazing!

Ugh, our tiny little Cardiff house filled with boxes. And lots of disturbing paperwork.

(by the way, I realise the white balance on these photos is not good, but I am too tired to a) use a flash, and b) sort out photos in photoshop later.)

Webber family portraits

2008-05-19T09:02:00.000-07:00

I said to these guys as I was leaving that their photography session was just perfect. And I don't always say corny things like that, I meant that we had perfect light (around 5pm), a great setting, an entire family that is not only very chilled out, but also super-smiley, up for anything, and full of energy. The boys, Chris and Adam are very into their football, cricket and rugby, and new addition baby Seren didn't stop grinning once. I have also never seen a 6 month old stand up for such a long period of time - she must have been standing bobbing around for about an hour - amazing! We had a great time, and got some relaxed family portraits as well as shots of everyone playing sport. On to the images!

Phillipa and family

2008-05-12T07:49:00.000-07:00

These are Phillipa's gorgeous grandchildren, Bethan, 3, Corum, 2.5, and Phoebe, 9 months. Corum and Phoebe are siblings, united with their big eyes and the longest eyelashes I have EVER seen! Bethan is a real girl, and loves her teddys, twirling in her dress, Angelina Ballerina and arranging things in order. Corum her cousin is a real boy and is very laid back, loves cars, tanks and chaos (i.e. destroying the line of teddies that Bethan is carefully laying out). Phoebe is like her brother - very chilled out and just hangs out blinking at the world with her big eyes. On to the photos:

Corum:

Bethan:

And Phoebe:

Bethan looks like an accomplished flamenco dancer here:

And Corum looks like he's trying to reverse out of a difficult road traffic incident here:

Boo!

What is it Phoebe? Is it your older cousin coming to attack you with a spider....??

Ha ha, I put a photo of Phillipa on my blog!

Thanks guys, it was great fun xx

Our house!

2008-05-06T14:36:00.000-07:00

Thanks to my clever husband and talented friend Matt Phillips, here are the first plans for the structure of our house in New Zealand! I think it looks GORGEOUS. Its a simple design (as you can see), a wooden open plan structure that will have strawbale infill walls. That sticky out bit is part of the bathroom and front porch, and the large floor space upstairs will be one of the bedrooms. This time next year it should be built! Stay tuned for more house news as I'll post anything interesting on the blog.

My beautiful friend Rhiannon

2008-05-06T08:26:00.000-07:00

We did a photoshoot just for fun, but also because Rhiannon will look AMAZING on my website. She's even better looking in person! Not to mention clever, elegant, creative, adventurous, generous, confident, hilarious- I could go on. Its quite hard to capture someone you know so well, but good fun trying.

Nia

2008-05-04T12:49:00.000-07:00

This is Nia who is just 8 months with her parents, Simon and Kate. We did a photo session in the house and then ventured out to the park. Nia was struggling with a cold but was such a little trooper, now and again she would find something random really funny and have a little giggle.

Reading about ducks, which can be worrying of course:

Getting ready to out - how cute is the green coat?!

Hanging out with mum and dad. I love these, and hopefully in years to come Nia can look at photographs like these and see how much her parents loved her from the start:

Bye!

What a gorgeous baby - I think she looks so patient here - "thanks camera lady, I've put up with you long enough but now I need a nap." Thanks guys x

A list of how I could do so much more with my day...

2008-05-01T09:35:00.000-07:00

1) Get up earlier
2) Don't check my email 14 times a day
3) Ignore Max when he drops his toy football at my feet and stares at me longingly
4) Finish one job before I start another one
5) Stop staring out the window and daydreaming about all the things I have to do before we leave
6) Don't visit the fridge every 20 minutes and then eat one grape/bit of cheese/peice of chocolate
7) Trust the Ipod to choose music rather than getting up after every song to choose the next one
8) Remember why I walked into the spare room
9) Remember why I walked back into the living room
10) Stop writing lists on my blog and do at least one of the things on my things to do list...

Annabel and Isabella

2008-04-30T07:22:00.000-07:00

These two are cousins, Annabel is 18 months and Isabella is 2 months old. Isabella has the cutest little active fists - she has older brothers so good job really- and loved being photographed (well, I presume anyway). Annabel was a little shy at first, but soon got into the photos with peekaboo games, which is a good job because look how lush they both are!

You can't get much cuter than a baby in a basket:

Right, I'm ready for my brothers now, where are they?

So cute!

All babies love the feathers! (before they try and eat them that is..)

Phew, all this modelling is hard work.

Annabel with her family blanket:

A bit of a cute overload on the blog recently, which is good - imagine how boring it would be if I was a heavy machinery photographer...

The Lyles

2008-04-28T15:20:00.000-07:00

It was such a gorgeous afternoon for photographs of the Lyles, we headed out to climb some trees and throw petals around. Here is everyone in the branches of a beautiful tree. We did other family portraits but this is my favourite:

Here are the kids, Scott, Ellis and Tom:

What a bunch of pros. Tom couldn't stop smiling for the camera - even when he was meant to concentrating on how to climb a tree, he kept pausing and flashing a look to the camera. I had to employ all my stealth skills.

This is Ellis in her bamboo hiding place:

Some nice cwtchy ones of Shelly and Steve together, they compliment eachother perfectly.

Oh and here is Tom being my photography assistant - how cute!

Thanks guys, I had great fun, and you were all perfect models. x

Baby Abi

2008-04-27T05:36:00.000-07:00

Abi was 15 days old when I photographed her, and already she is quite the model. She has the most gorgeous head of hair and a whole range of facial expressions. Her first-time parents are naturals and her dad already knows how to lull her to sleep and stop her crying. She was a pleasure to photograph. Here she is resting in a little bed of feathers. Look at her little mohican - I love it!

Here she is in her dad's arms having a little yawn:

Little newborn feet of course, I have a small obsession with baby feet:

A nap on dad's knees. She likes to be rocked to sleep here:

I love this series! I asked Abi to work a few different expressions for the camera - playful, surprised, happy, coy - the usual kinds of things. She's not bad really for 2 weeks old...

With her mum and dad having an outfit change. She's so tiny!

Another nap. She is just ridiculously cute!!!

After all that modelling she'd had enough really, but I thought a simple wave goodbye would have been more polite...! :)

Wow, I could work on these images all day. Its lush working with babies - everything in miniature is somehow about 20 times cuter.