Family weekend in London

At the weekend we all went up to London to see the sights. My daughters were so excited that they were going to London, although I'm not sure the youngest had any idea what "London" meant.
We set off on Saturday morning and started by visiting the Natural History Museum. My daughter loves dinosaurs and she had been looking forward to seeing them at the museum for ages. She was not disappointed and was even a little scared as we walked past the life sized tyranasaurus rex.
Later we went for a walk along the embankment, taking in the London Eye and a visit to the aquarium. What really suprised me was how busy everything was for a cold February day, there were queues for everything.
Our overnight stay was at Think, Tower Bridge, where we had an apartment, very swish. After some tea of both edible and drinkable varieties, we took a stroll to Tower Bridge so we could look at the Tower of London and other sights by night. It was freezing!
Next day we headed to Pudding Lane to see the monument to the great fire of London, followed by a drive by of Horse Guards Parade, Trafelgar square, Big Ben, Downing Street, Picadilly Circus, etc. We then parked up and waited for Hamleys to open, the finale to our trip. The waiting took in some doughnuts and McDonalds as it didn't open until Midday. Once we managed to drag the girls away we headed home.
We had a great time but I think we'll wait until our youngest is a bit older before going again - she wouldn't go in the pushchair as they're for babies, and was too tired to walk far so ended up being carried - my poor arms and back!

Website goes live

I am so excited, I have spent the last few weeks putting together my website and tonight I finally hit the go live button - what a fantastic feeling, a real achievement.

If you'd like to take a peek at what it looks like here's the link:

http://www.victoriahendrick.com

Ye Ha! More Snow!

Just when I thought we'd seen the end of our annual snow the sky opened and dropped 7 inches of the lovely white stuff on us in Guston. My husband couldn't get his van out and couldn't go to work and the girls couldn't get to school and nursery in Sandwich. Unfortunately I had my work laptop and could work from home - lucky me ;-(

At lunchtime we wrapped up warm and dragged out the sledges. Out in the field snow surfing was the game of the day and it didn't take long for us all to be covered in snow. My eldest daughter, Sophie was soon wet and cold after making numerous snow angels. Hot tea and biscuits was the order of the day.

Friday was my day off and I braved the slippery, snowy Guston road and headed out to Sandwich to get Sophie to school. The Dover to Sandwich Road was trecherous in places and I thought about turning back a couple of times but somehow made it all the way to Sandwich, only to discover they's had much less snow than we'd had in Dover. On the way back from picking Sophie up that afternoon we made a short stop so I could get some pictures of Dover Castle in the snow. I sent the one above to theKent Messenger Group and it is now on the http://www.kentonline.co.uk/ website with other snow pictures submitted by readers.

I've included a couple of pictures of the snowmen that Sophie built (taken with Sophie's new camera) as well as a couple of other pictures that make me smile.

However much I love the snow in the way it makes things look and the fun it brings, I am always glad when the roads are clear - the logistics of daily life get very complicated when it's around.

Let in snow

We've just finished wrapping all the Christmas presents and putting them into two similar sized piles for our daughters. The vegetables are all prepared and at last we're ready and looking forward to Christmas Day. Watching the unexciting Christmas Eve television, all I can hear is the pitter patter of the rain on the conservatory. I'm beginning to wonder - did we really have snow at the weekend or was it was just a vivid dream?

To help remind us that the snow was indeed real, here's a few of my family snow photos and snow scenes.

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to you all.

Night time photos in Canterbury

As part of a photography course I'm doing I need to submit a night time city scene as part of my final assignment.

I was fortunate to be invited out to dinner in Canterbury last week with some work colleagues so I thought this would be a good opportunity to get the photos I needed for my course as well have have some lovely Italian cuisine.

It was freezing as I headed from the carpark to Osteria Posillipo Pizzeria. I had my camera and tripod but was limited for time - by the time I'd got to the restaurant I only had 10 minutes to spare. I realised I'd never make it to the Weavers and Westgate Tower on the High Street as planned. I rounded the corner by the wibbly wobbly house at the end of Palace Street and was met by a lovely scene - it was my lucky night!

I set up my tripod and camera and got stuck in - I love night time photography as it's a real opportunity to experiment and I love the effect of cars and people when shutter speed is slowed right down.

I had a few people ask me what I was taking photos for and even my colleagues walked on by without realising it was me. On mentioning to them in the restaurant that I'd been out taking photos they said they thought it was a professional photographer and were pretty impressed :-0)

I managed to get some interesting photos. Take a look at some below and watch out for the ghosts and Harry Potter night bus arriving. Dinner was good too, good company and great food.

When life gets in the way

It's been a nightmare couple of weeks. Two weekends ago my daughter was sick (literally) and over the last week she had the most awful cough which had me sat in the bedroom with her most evenings. The cough has now turned into a horrible cold which has been shared round us all but at least the evenings are now relatively free again ;-0)

Before all this illness struck I was fortunate to have two studio family portrait sessions with two lovely families.

My morning session was focused on a lovely little boy and all his family. The star of the show was asleep on arrival, allowing me to get some photos of his grandparents and also of his Nan and two of her daughters. My original remit was to take photos of each grandparent and each parent with our little star, unfortunately when he woke up he wasn't having any of it and would only be photographed with himself in the spotlight, occasionally letting Mum and Dad share it with him. Although we had a few tears at times, we did manage to get some cracking shots of everyone, albeit not in the original planned groupings.

My afternoon session was aimed at getting some family shots as well as some shots of the two boys together and individually. This was to be interesting from the outset as the older boy decided he didn't want to have his photo taking ;-0) I started the session with photos of Mum and baby and soon moved on to baby on his own as he was having a great time and settled in really quickly. Mum and Dad then joined in and it wasn't long before big brother started to show some interest and decided he might like to have his photo taken afterall. We got some great shots and the two boys had a great time, even having a bundle and rolling round the floor at times and the youngest showing off his newly acquired walking skills.

I really enjoy my studio sessions, children and families are such fun and a pleasure to photograph and it's a really nice feeling when you show the photos back and see the pleasure they give.

A busy weekend in the studio

I had two family portrait photography sessions booked in for this weekend.

For my morning session I had the pleasure of photographing a lovely family in my home studio. The bond between big sister and little sister was fantastic and resulted in some great shots.

The youngest member of the family didn't appear bothered by the strange house or even the studio set up which helped to make this a very successful and enjoyable session for all involved.

If my morning studio session was chalk then my afternoon session was cheese ;-0)

My afternoon session was a tricky affair which exhausted both Mum and myself.

The little girl with the most enormous dark blue eyes who was to have her photos taken had only just woken up when arriving at my house and was not particularly impressed with the strange house, strange lady and even less so with the studio set up. It didn't really get any better as every time I raised the camera to my eye she began to cry. She wasn't even impressed with my lovely flashlights!!

After some time and experimenting with different toys from my studio toy box and borrowing some extras from my children, the little girl relaxed a little allowing me to get a few good shots.