At The Kitchen Table

This week, Olive sat in her shiny new high chair and took her first chomps of avocado, carrot and sweet potato. Although we don’t want to wish time away, this is one thing me and Suzi have been really looking forward to. Sitting down at the table in the kitchen and eating our food together.

I’ve been creating a body of work ‘At the Kitchen Table’. I’m not sure yet if it might be a chapter in our book or an exhibition in the future, i just felt it was the right time to start talking about it, and to ask you for your stories, and if you’d like to take part?

It all started a couple of years ago when I did a shoot with jeweller Toby Cotterill and he told me about the history of his work bench. His Dad is a furniture maker, and he made their childhood kitchen table. It became the centre of their family life, as it is to many families. But this kitchen table evolved, and after some alterations, Toby now uses this table as his work bench.

It felt very poignant as my Mum and Dad were just moving out of our childhood home, and I remembered all those times sitting at the table. We had a set time for tea every night. While Mum cooked, me and my sister laid the table and Dad hovered. After tea, we’d clear the plates, and I’d sit down back at the table to do my homework, and Dad would read the paper.

Since doing our family shoots, I’ve noticed how many photos I take of families there. It is so central to life. We usually start shoots at the table, having a chat and a cup of tea before the camera comes out of my bag. It’s good to see the family interacting around the space. I guess I’ve become a bit fascinated by them, these places where we’re nourished both in food and conversation. Since chatting about it on Instagram, I’ve had people sending me stories of their kitchen tables. A common theme are the rules of the table. No phones, all sitting down at the same time to eat, chatting about our days. Family feasts where spare tables are brought down from the loft. This reminded me of our own family get togethers at Grandma & Grandad’s house. The adults would sit at the big table, and the children would sit at the kiddies table. As the oldest cousin, I was still sitting at the kiddies table until I was around 18!

I’d love to hear from you if you’d like to be involved in my project (Yorkshire area for now but there may be a table tour later this year!). What do you use your table for? Is it a place you sit and watch the world go by? Have your tea, work, read? Plan big adventures? Play table tennis, look at your family photographs? Have arm wrestles, play board games, craft, chat? If you’re in the Yorkshire area, I’d love to add to the collection of images I have. Would you like to be a part of the project?

Here are a collection of shots and ideas so far.

The tables themselves also have a story to tell. The grains and stains, the chips, the marker pen that doesn’t quite rub off. We swapped our kitchen table with our friends, and on there are felt tip marks from drawings and crafting projects, we don’t want to get rid of them.

These tables are where we eat together, talk together, take time to be alone. Laugh, play and plan. Would you like to be a part of it? We’d love to hear about you and your table.

Falling Back In Love

I remember the day a few years ago, I woke up and realised the business was causing more angst than joy. I’d fallen out of love. Not with the taking photographs side of it, but the stresses of running a small business were keeping me awake at night. I felt I’d let it down, that I’d ignored some niggles I’d had. I was trying to do too much, and trying to be too much to too many people. Something had to give.

We’ve talked about it before on our blog, about our business being our first baby before Olive. I don’t want that to sound overly dramatic, but it can really feel like that as a small business owner can’t it? These businesses we’ve grown and nurtured over the years. Those all consuming first few months. You might hit the terrible twos, I know I did when I was running the business by myself before Suzi joined, and I really wasn’t sure what direction to take. I know for us, that we’ve taken a few ‘wrong’ parental decisions along the way, but it’s a learning curve. And a few years ago we had to make a difficult decision about not doing weddings anymore, but we knew we wanted to grow the family photography, retreats and the working with brands side to Sarah Mason Photography. We looked at what we could/should be doing to feed this little business, and it can be quite a scary proposition going it alone, believing in it, and doing what’s right for you. They need nurturing, care, and good old TLC. I still have the odd broken night’s sleep worrying about the first baby. It had been pulling me in so many different directions. But when I woke up the other morning, I realised that, over a period of time, I had fallen back in love.

There have been a few things that have been helping. I’ve realised I need quite a lot of structure to my days (as much as I may have fought this feeling).

Morning Walks.

Monthly, weekly , and daily planning in my Ponderlily Planner (I love the layout).

Making space for cooking good food, and actually building it into my planner.

Trying not to fall into the comparison trap, which can be hard I know!

Doing projects and creating something daily (I’m going to write a blog about this over the next couple of weeks with some ideas you might like to try).

I feel like I’m feeding this baby again, and giving it some heart and soul food!

I guess it’s all stuff I already knew, but it’s been about allowing myself to do them. Even my Frazzle intake is down (my go to stress crisp!)

This year, our word to work towards is CLARITY. Clarity in what we’re offering as a business. 2019 is all about building on our Filmmaking and our Family Photography work, and growing our Retreats and community. And leaving space for experimenting, project work, and writing our book! But more importantly, above all this, is making time for adventures with Olive.

It’s good to talk business. It can sometimes feel lonely out there, but having fellow small business owners to chat to can really help. I know it’s helped us. Just the other day we were sat running some photography retreat ideas by our friend Hannah as we had a cup of tea. We chatted about her business. She said something that really resonated with me ‘I look after it, and it looks after me’.

So we’ve had an idea brewing for a while, we’re going to launch a new retreat - The Business Of Photography. We’ll take you through what we’ve learnt over these last ten years, how to find, and then work with your ideal clients. Finding clarity in where you are right now, where you’d like to be, and how to get there. The 3 P’s - Portfolios, Pricing, Products. This is for you if you’re just on the cusp, or thinking about setting up your portrait photography business. Or maybe you’ve been running your business for a while, but feel you need to give it some of your attention, a warm hug, so you can fall back in love.

Does this sound like something you’d be interested in? We’d love to hear your thoughts. You can email us here if you want any more information before we launch the retreat. And if you think anyone could benefit from this, please do feel free to share the post.

Ethel & Mabel

Ethel and her sister Mabel, have such a sense of old world charm and style. I started documenting their life, (well actually at the time it was just Ethel), back in early 2015. I’d heard Ethel liked a cup of tea, and I wanted to record a Saturday morning with her at her house. If you’ve been following my new project on Instagram, I guess she was my first Tea For Two! And then, a year later, Mabel came into the world. Spending a morning with them was the first step into filmmaking for me, and the film I made still has such a special place in my heart. Roll on three years, and I went back up to document their morning together recently. I hope they’ll cherish these photos of them in their childhood home as much as I’ve loved documenting their life there. My style and edit choices might have changed a bit, but the sentiment remains the same. Here’s Ethel and Mabel, a story in mornings, so far.

It starts with Ethel. When I first arrived at her house, she took me by the hand, sat me down, and started to recount stories about her summer holiday. Her morning unfolded - reading books, dunking buttery biscuits into steaming cups of tea, all to the soundtrack of Saturday morning tunes on the record player.  

And then, along came Mabel….

And our latest shoot together…

This is what we love about our portrait shoots, documenting these moments in life that may feel insignificant at the time, but looking back, are so poignant.  Beauty in the small things, beauty in the everyday.

If you’d like us to document your family life, we’ve just added some new packages. If you’d like to take a look, just click on the photo link below. We’d love to tell your story.