meet the densmores

One Sunday morning, back in the middle of a Melbourne winter, I spent the morning with some dear friends. Some of my most favourite people on the face of the planet.

Kate and I met over ten years ago when we were both legal PAs in a big, fancy, stuck up law firm. She had just said goodbye to her new fiancé, as he set off for a six month deployment at sea. She planned the wedding while he was away. It wouldn't be the last time he was sent away for half a year.

Kate had been saying for the past year.. We must get you over to take our photos! The kids are getting so big! Kate struggles to say no - to anything. She is one of the busiest people I have ever known. We tried to work out dates.. the months would pass.. finally, we locked it in the diary.

It was that very morning that we realised why it had taken us so long to get ourselves sorted. Joe, their cheeky, naughty, loveable beagle, had ailments and illness creeping in over that last year. His behaviour had changed because of his condition and he was no longer the carefree Joe Joe they once knew.

Three days after our shoot, Joe passed away.

closed

Yeah, we're THIS happy - we're at the beach! No school! No kindy! NO FUCKING DOCTOR'S APPOINTMENTS OR DRUGS! Woop!

All you'll hear when you visit over the next fortnight is crickets chirping. So I wouldn't bother stopping by for a while.. we're far too busy sleeping in, celebrating birthdays, playing at the beach and visiting every playground we can find. Woop again!

XX

the arthur family

I was going to share this film with you next week, with the full stills collection. But I'm so happy Ellen and Regan love their film so much - I want to share it today! The stills can wait until after the weekend..

Meet the Arthur family..

meet the herrett family

Last month I flew to Sydney to photograph some families and catch up with old friends and new. Busy and full, with a very strict schedule to fit it all in, including driving all over Sydney (no mean feat!) but my goodness was it wonderful! Sydney turned on the weather - two days of bright blue skies and sunshine warmed my bones and whisked the cobwebs away. Winter.. what winter?

I spent late Saturday afternoon with Michelle and Matthew, and their four beautiful children Aston, Stella, Archie and Lucy. Climbing trees and searching for every pipi on the beach, and swinging as the sun dipped below the horizon and we farewelled the day.

This film is sitting high up on my list of favourites - to make and to watch. I spend a lot of time on these, and so, become quite attached. I never know whether my clients will view them the same way I do.. will they love them as much as me? A little while after I had emailed it to Michelle, she responded..

'Oh Tahnee, that is soooooo beautiful, I am crying! Crying even more than I was last night when Offspring finished, and that's saying something! Thankyou SO much!!'

You can see the full collection of stills over here.

SOS

I'd been treading water for a while. With the solo parenting and end of term commitments, work building up that I had no time to concentrate on because I was carrying the load of both parents and collapsing in a heap once the kids were in bed and I finally had the house back in order. Only to get up and do it all over again.

The most frustrating part about working from home when you are never without your children in their entirety, is that my uninterrupted work time is from 7pm onwards. Some nights by 7pm I could fall face down on the couch and stay there. Who am I kidding? Some days, I could do it at 5pm.

I hadn't felt this way before. Nearing seven years of motherhood, I had never felt so broken. Like a little mouse on a wheel. Round and round.

My mum called one Saturday morning and said that she and dad thought it would be a good idea if she flew down to help out for a week or so. She stayed for ten days, including Easter. She was my saviour.

The few weeks prior to her arrival, I was not a nice person. A horrible mother. Snappy, shouty, bossy, cranky. Zero patience at the beginning of the day - a recipe for disaster. For the first time, I felt like I needed a decent amount of time away from being a mother. Not necessarily from my children, but from the responsibilities of parenting them. You know? I didn't want to cook another dinner. Pack another lunchbox. Clean the kitchen for the twentieth time that day. Pick up another bloody toy. No reader, no breaking up arguments, no washing, no screaming to BRUSH YOUR TEETH! The monotony was too much. And my wingman was MIA with work.

The husband and I were like ships in the night. He would leave before the kids were awake and tip toe in, in the dark of night. Both miserable, both carrying on miserably. Because that's what you do. You just keep going.

As with every visit from the grandparents, we parents become obsolete and are no longer needed 7362 a day. I had time to catch my breath. Mum took the kids out for small snippets of time, and then big. Like a WHOLE day. Holy shit. I had no clue what a whole day without your children felt like - without taking time away from your children in order to see other people. To not hear MUU-UUM yelled in your direction between 9 - 5 and concentrate fully on what was in front of me. To just be your own company for an entire day. To edit, uninterrupted, for an ENTIRE day.

Each day that passed, I began to feel a little more like myself. Less angry, less emotional, less horrible. I know my mum knows how appreciative I am of her presence. For her love, and desire to make everything right again. At any cost. For spoiling her grandchildren and putting me back together again.

Strangely, it's only now that the kids are a bit older that I find it harder being away from most of my family. I am sure many would feel the opposite and prefer the help through the sleepless nights, constant feeding and nappy changes through the baby days.. but for me it is definitely the other way around. They are their own little people now, with big personalities, and they understand everything. They love their grandparents fiercely.

But I know the distance won't be there forever. The possibility for change is there, we just have to choose the right moment to grab it.

A few timely calendar dates were dotted through this period that really did wonders for me..
Dinner with friends, new and old. Good food, conversation and laughter is such good medicine.
And music. From my favourite guy. Live and loud and brilliant.
Listening to this (holy shit - dare I say it's better than the original?!). And this.
Watching this (SO much to take from this, never specifically related to music). And this (I never got the Zac Efron thing until I watched this, yes repeatedly).
And re-watching this (for the umpteenth time). Because no matter your mood, the gang will ALWAYS make you feel better.
Reading this. Trying to be better..

If you live close to your family and have their support - grandparents to look after the children at times, or siblings to help lighten the load, or simply to have a regular cuppa and a chat - I hope you thank them. I hope you appreciate them. I hope they know how much you appreciate them. I hope you know how lucky you are. I really do.

good good friday

I hope your Easter weekend has started as slowly and joyfully as mine. Nowhere to be, and very little to do. Hot cross buns and coffee, PJs till lunch time, watching the rain in between movies, dying and decorating eggs, some baking and a lovely seafood pasta for dinner. Feeling happy and grateful this Good Friday. Even more grateful that my mum is spending Easter with us, to lend a hand and ease the load after a very long month. Mums really are THE BEST. Love you mum!

Wishing you and your family a lovely, relaxing, slow Easter X

creating time capsules

It feels like forever since I've been here in a personal sense. I feel like I keep writing that bit..

I plan on getting back here. With real stuff. Stuff that is floating around in my head. All the important stuff. Like why people continually think my son is girl, simply because we choose not to cut his hair shortbackandsides like 90% of the male population. Or why my other son is such an emotional mess lately. Or why I'm envious of other photographers who can shoot on the weekend and blog the photos the very same week (CLEARLY they are childless - duh). Or simply share the shit parenting day I had yesterday. The kind where you cry into the sink at 4.36pm because you've been solo parenting for weeks and finally hit the wall and there needs to be some kind of release to make it to bedtime. A good whinge between friends always helps!

Like most of you, I cannot fathom that it is April. APRIL. The Easter Bunny will be here in a few weeks but before that happens - holidays. Friday cannot come fast enough to give this little family a rest.

Today, I want to talk about girl crushes. Yep. Creatively speaking, I could count on one hand the women in this big wide world who inspire me to the point where I can sit with my mouth agape at the computer, just staring at their work. Xanthe is among them.

I've mentioned Xanthe before. Every time I see new photos, or a new film she has made, I am blown away all over again. Her creativity knows no bounds and she is completely and utterly comfortable with her talent, her ability, her authenticity. The thing I love most about her creations, is the simplicity. Simplicity done right. Every single time.

Documenting my sister's pregnancy changed my photography. Without question, if I hadn't committed to the project the way I did, things would look differently right now. Something happened along the journey and I feel no shame in tooting my own horn on the leaps made along the way.

While I was a shy kid, I have never struggled with self confidence. I was brought up to be proud of who I am. Just because you may not say much doesn't mean you don't know yourself or have confidence in who you are. Baby Love gave me even more confidence with my craft, my journey, this path I have chosen. Confidence in myself. But I think that is just part of getting older too. Becoming a mother plays a lead role.

Late last year I made a couple of decisions to invest in my career. I booked my seat in a room with Jonas Peterson, and I signed up for Xanthe's six week e-course, Creating Time Capsules. Never say never, but I think that will be the extent of my attendance list at workshops. I gained invaluable knowledge from both workshops that could have taken me years to figure out myself. That's why we pay the experts to teach us these things. But there is much to learn alone. With no one to hold your hand or point you in the right direction. And I love that bit too. I'm walking down this road I chose to walk, just by myself. Yes, I surround myself with like minded creatives and friends who understand and support me wholly. But we are all walking alone. And there is so much freedom in that walk.

When I decided to take part in the Ford Choose Your Own Adventure Challenge last year, as part of Voices of 2013, I knew I wanted to make at least one film. The thought of doing three identical posts that I could write any other time outside of the challenge, defeated the entire purpose of participating. I had made slideshows before, but a slideshow is nothing like a film. A slideshow takes five minutes to put together and essentially, the computer does it for you. A film takes far more time, effort and consideration. I had never made a film before the challenge. I had never used iMovie. I had never used the video setting on my camera (so I annoyed my clever friend Lou for some answers). As I get older I find myself diving into the deep end willingly, rather than waiting to be pushed.

The films I made were received with great praise. While I didn't win the challenge, my films played on repeat, all night long, projected twelve feet high onto the wall of the venue, at the final Voices cocktail party to end the 2013 season. Looking back, of course I see the faults and mistakes I made, but that's just learning. You have to be an amateur at the beginning. It's the rules.

In the past five months, since the challenge, I've made 13 films (and more in my mind). Only one of them was made after I completed Xanthe's Creating Time Capsules course. More of those films should have been created with the knowledge gained from Xanthe, but I failed - fairly spectacularly I must admit - to complete the course when I was supposed to. I signed up to do the course from late November through to the end of December. Clearly common sense was lacking at the time I booked.. trying to complete all the things that make up Crazy December between family, home, school, kindy, work and Christmas - there was no room left for the course, as desperately as I wanted there to be.

Xanthe is a mother of two beautiful boys. (When I say beautiful, I'm not just being kind. If you've never seen her films, you will only need to watch one to know what I mean. I recommend this one.) She knows things don't always go to plan and juggling real life with online life can be tricky. So she allows another four months after the completion of the course for you to continue reading and accessing all the information online. I just finished it off last week. Yep.

I love her. I really do! When I finally made the time.. I loved sitting with Xanthe, at my computer. Reading her words, written as she speaks. Beautifully whimsical and honest. Hello my lovelies! Her guidance is gentle but solid. Her encouragement to push yourself out of your comfort zone is like a big warm hug. The course is littered with tutorial videos and voice overs. Listening to Xanthe, I can only compare to my old yoga teacher. I think you have to have a great voice to teach yoga. She had the sweetest, smoothest voice that would put you at ease at her first word. Xanthe's voice had the same effect. It was so easy to listen to film after film because I could listen to her talk all day long.

After watching more of Xanthe's films last week, and a bit of a hiatus from filming, I picked up my camera early last Sunday morning and filmed the kids. All of this footage was taken within ten minutes. It's not fabulous, or super special. Nothing interesting happens. I laugh when Eliot falls over. But it is real, and honest, and normal. And that is what Xanthe teaches you in her course - the ordinary stuff is the BEST stuff and it should absolutely, positively NOT be overlooked, waiting for the big stuff to come along. I mean - who thinks to make a film about their kitchen table? Pure genius.

In choosing to invest in my career with both of the workshops I participated in, two things were made abundantly clear.

I trust my instincts.
I am heading in the right direction.

Both Jonas and Xanthe showed me that the voice in my head is powerful and, nine times out of ten, right. Many of the things that were being shared and taught, I already knew, or already saw things in the same light. I don't mean that in a I'm a know-it-all kind of way. I mean it in the way that I spent a good amount of time during each workshop nodding. Nodding because I agreed wholeheartedly with what was being said and giving myself a little pat on the back for having recognised it, and already done it. Whatever IT was.

Whether you want to learn more about creating your own time capsules or simply be wowed by her sheer brilliance, Xanthe is your girl. (You do not need a DSLR to take part in the course. Xanthe shoots a substantial amount on her iPhone and directs specific parts of the course to its use. Creating spectacular films with your phone is achievable.. SEE! Yep, I watched that one on repeat..)


Music / Peter Combe / Green Green Green

weekly stills

soup weather (briefly) / big birthday / birthday (cheese)cake / it must be years since he was clean shaven (no complaints here) / so many showers this week / mess / reading reading / dinosaurs - everywhere - always / well behaved children when it mattered (at the church!) for their cousins' double christening / sandpit and more dinos / me and more dinos / a tired boy (with evidence of a not so well behaved cousin..)

Joining Em for her weekly stills collection