Snowdrops

I can hardly believe it - early Feb and I have snowdrops in the garden. It's another gorgeous day today and after this I'm off to ride my neddy (Finn). I'm a bit of a fairweather rider wimping out when it's too wet or windy, or cold come to think of it! No excuses today.

Baby Mia

Baby Mia is going to be a work in progress! This was meant to be a family portrait but with both parents up til at least 3am the night before because Mia was teething neither felt up to appearing in front of the lense! Not wanting to come away totally empty handed I took a few shots most of which involved Mia's thumb in her mouth - I couldn't resist though because she is so gorgeous.

Hani

My lovely friend Hani needed a new headshot for her work ID so I persuaded her to do a spot of modelling for me! The first image is her ID shot the others are just for fun. Hani is an Equine Vet, beautiful and talented - don't you just hate her! Acutally no, I love her to bits and wish I saw more of her.

Happy New Year

Self Portrait!

My beautiful boy.

OK so I know it's a bit late to be saying Happy New Year but it's the first time I've blogged this year so there you go.

I had to take a picture of myself for a photography group that I belong to based in the US (check it out via DaneSanders.net) and so sat in my kitchen trying to get the window light on a particularly gloomy day with my camera at arms length. After a bit of photoshop massaging this is the one I am happiest with. The picture of Angus is just cos I love him.

As this is really the down time in a photographers season I'm going to set myself a project to photograph something a bit obscure to try and stretch myself. As we have a proliferation of electricity pylons in Essex I'm going to try and make them look beautiful. Please if you have any suggestions let me know.

Seasons Greetings

Here's wishing you all a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. I still have errands to run myself with frames to collect and deliver and all my own wrapping (and still some buying to do).

I would like to thank all my clients over the past year together with my family and friends for their support. A special thanks to Stu C, you are a dude!

I'm looking forward to 2008 both personally and professionally with changes coming to my branding, website and blog included.

Love Jo x

The Pet Clinic

As you may be aware readers I have a thing for animals so when the team at House & Jackson's new venture 'The Pet Clinic' asked me to photograph the pets of some new clients I was happy to oblige. They weren't too wriggly, although the cats were not generally impressed but let's face it they never are!

Bill & Monty

I am so very proud of my children today. Little Monty (Arrow in previous pics) was the last of our puppies left and we had taken the decision to keep him, named him Buddy and had an official love in to welcome him to the Pearce clan. The very next day I received a call from Bill's wife Barbara asking if they could have the puppy. Bill lost his own dog about 6 weeks ago and I had asked him if he wanted a puppy but he declined, saying that at his age it was too much work and too soon after Mo going.

Bill is very special to us as a family, he is a kind of surrogate grandad. He looks after my dogs if I'm going to be out all day, picks my kids up from school when I'm stuck and has done other odd jobs over the years too numerous to mention. My parents live too far away to help at short notice and Bill is always there when I call.

We never planned to keep a puppy from this litter but as soon as the switch was flicked in our brains that 'Buddy' was staying with us it was heartbreaking to think about giving him up. After the initial tears and slammed doors, we sat down and had a talk about how we felt and how Bill and Barbara felt and what was most important to us. I knew it had to be a family (for that read childrens)decision and they didn't let me down. After 10 minutes we got in the car with the puppy drove to Bill's house and delivered his boy to him. Later that night when Angus was going to bed he said 'We did a good thing today didn't we.' Talk about setting me off again! I'm so proud of both Billie and Angus for being so grown up.

As you can see from the picture Bill and Monty are very happy together and we are very happy about that!