Right, time for a catch-up now I've got the hang of this!

Since the start of the year we have been soooo busy!

Sharon passed her qualification panel as in previous post.

In the middle of last year we took the decision to open a studio and stop the ridiculous miles we were both covering to meet all our clients.
After much searching for the right place, Sharon found a space in the grounds of a local manor house. It needed quite a lot of work, but the landlord was cooperative and let us do what we wanted - so long as we paid for it!
Several weeks and a lot hard work later, The Old Smithy Studio was born!
Now all we needed was a new name and logo to match our modern and contemporary studio.
FNS Photography won out in the end and the morse-code inspired logo was created too!
New prices, new album suppliers, new business cards and stationery all followed!
As I type this the finishing touches are being put to the website, giving it a fresh new look and giving more emphasis to our portrait photography- where we want to expand our business this year.
In the middle of all this re-invention and redesign, weddings and portraits were still going on, so blogging was a bit neglected - sorry!

TTFN
Andy

Hi All,
Andy here this time... Got to tell the world, Sharon passed her qualification panel a couple of months ago, and is now a Qualified Master Photographer in her own right!!
Well done sweetie!

I'll publish some of her successful pictures here in a couple of days, so watch this space!

TTFN
Andy

One of the nicest things about our job is our ever expanding group of friends. Lian and Mark definately fall into this category. I first met Lian when she was looking around the hotel which she booked for her wedding - and we have since become firm friends!

Lian is another very organised person - she has one of the top jobs in a national company whose head office is in York and her attention to detail is second to none. She has a fabulous family and we were honoured to count them amongst our first family portrait pictures taken. Some of her family can be seen in the portrait gallery on our website.

Lian has to be one of our best adverts - we have received many referrals from her and are delighted that she talks so confidentially about our photography and floristry.

All Lians' family are very stylish and it is hard to believe that Lians' mum is not her older sister when you see them together as she is so young looking and the resemblance between Lian, her sister and her mum is striking. Mark is a really nice guy and they make a lovely couple. We are really looking forward to photographing their wedding next year - keep watching this space for some pictures!

We love this picture of Lian & Mark taken at their family portrait session - we think it really captures the essence of them and how relaxed and happy they are in each others company.

Nick and Frances tie the knot....

Remember my mentioning in the previous post that the wedding coordinator kept changing and things kept getting missed off Nick & Frances's schedule? Well...at the hotel they have a beautiful little bridge - which used to feature in the hotel wedding brochure. The only snag is that the bridge in question is on the hotel Golf course. Now this is one of the major wedding hotels in the area - sometimes 5 weddings a weekend. Bridge in the brochure, advertising lines stating "beautiful grounds for those all important photos" a natural assumption would be that the Bride & Groom would be having their photos taken on the bridge. Not so at this hotel.....the Golfers (God bless 'em) have objected to the management on the grounds that if a couple should be hit with a flying golf ball the golfer is responsible for any injury claim and not the hotel - so couples are no longer permitted to have the photographs taken on the bridge. Unfortunately for the hotel, the very first wedding coordinator who showed Frances and Nick around the hotel promised them that they could utilise the bridge for their photographs.

So, along comes their wedding day and we are escorted to the said bridge for a 5 minute photo shoot. The picture was worth it.

Now lets take a few minutes to tell you about Frances's family. At the head of the family is Frances's mum - Julia. Julia is not a lady to cross. She knows her mind, will speak it at any stage and cares not (or so it seems) what anyone thinks about it and we were warned about her before the wedding....."you won't get a picture of mum - she hates having her pictures taken and has already said she isn't posing for you". Now we liked Julia as soon as we met her. We knew exactly where we stood with her, no messing, and there was a mutual respect between us. Yes - she did make a reverse victory gesture at our camera a couple of times when she noticed us taking a candid shot of her and yes she did nudge us and quip "now see if that is in focus" but we genuinely had a lovely fun day with her around. "You have made me realise how much I look like my mother" she said as she hugged us when we left the reception, late in the night having given them a little preview slideshow of some of the pictures we had taken.

Frances's Dad is fantastic - as unpretentious as you could meet, a real gentleman and extremely successful business man. He had a very impressive fleet of vehicles in the business all with consecutive numbers on the plates. One of the shots on the wedding day was with these lined up. Following in his footsteps, Frances brother Joe is working in the family business with him. Oh, did we mention Frances also drives a wagon for a living??? She's not to be messed with on the road either - her personality changes when she gets behind the wheel, or so I'm told and rumour has it that she can be a bit of a road hog shouting "come on - if you think you're hard enough" to some poor unsuspecting motorist who has cut her up on the motorway!

Photographing Nick and Frances's wedding was a pleasure and we wish them every happiness in the future.

What to tell you next? I guess Nick & Frances would be a good starting point - not forgetting Nicks' son Jamie - who is a little star in his own right. All our couples are special to us but Nick and Frances were one of our first bookings when we decided to "go it alone" (well someone had to be first didn't they??). It's been a bit of a journey with these two - they were getting married in a hotel very local to where our business is based and by the time their wedding day arrived they had changed wedding coordinator in the hotel several times. Each time a new one took over it seemed that important details from Nick and Frances's day were missed off the schedule.

Not a good idea - missing things where Frances is concerned. Frances's Dad owns his own very successful haulage business/enterprise and "chip off the old block" (as we say here in Yorkshire) that she is Frances's attention to detail is second to none. NOTHING gets past her.

The above two pictures show Nick, Frances & Jamie during a relaxed moment having fun at their pre-wedding portrait shoot.

We love pre-wedding portrait shoots - if we had £1 for everytime someone tells us "I hate having my picture taken - you won't get a decent picture of me" we'd be quite rich. Pre-wedding portraits are fun. Andy invariably insults me and is rude to me but now I'm getting expert at quick retorts and some of the banter can be quite amusing to our guests/onlookers. It's all very light hearted stuff and makes for great expressions in the photos. What the pre-wedding portrait shoot does is enables our couples to feel relaxed in front of the camera and allows us to notice things that we need to know to produce great images - such as someone who blinks a million times a second just as we are triggering the shutter or who dislikes looking directly at the camera etc. It enables our couples to become familiar with the way we work and to know what to expect from us on the big day. Usually by the time the wedding day arrives we have had so much contact with our couples that is isn't so much like having the photographer around - more like having a friend around.

I'm very happy to say that most of our wedding couples are still in touch with us from time to time, especially at this special time of year when old friends are not forgotten.

This is our first blog - so where to start? At the beginning we suppose is as good a place as any - so here's a little background history about ourselves and our business - Flash 'n' Scents.

Flash 'n' Scents - difficult name, but once you get the hang of it never forgotten. It's actually quite logical - or we thought so in our tiny minds when we banded about suitable names for our new "biz" 2 years ago. "Flash" is obvious - it comes from the photo side of things "n" is because we're Yorkshire and never pronounce our words correctly (don't have the time!) so it's actually a shortened version of "and" "Scents" represents the flower side of our business (NO - It doesn't mean our photography smells!). Put it all together and say it quickly and it's abit like "Fashion Sense" - which is where the confusion begins.

Photos and flowers - we like to think it's a great combination. It all started in a field (well showground actually) in Kelso on the Scottish Border region - where we were both employed as part of the official photography team for the Honda Goldwing (Beautiful bikes but that's another story) UK "Treffen" - which is their annual get together, always held during the August bank holiday.

I had known Andy as a florist (a very good florist too - one of the top in Britain who won lots of awards for his innovative designs) who I knew had been freelancing as a wedding photographer for "a few years" on a weekend. I saw his photography and immediately knew he had a special gift, he saw my photography and for someone who was on the sales side of the team saw the potential. By the end of the week we had decided that there was a business in photos and flowers and we were going to test the water to see how popular the combination would be.

Initially we booked all the photography side through the photographer to whom Andy freelanced with Andy shooting "our" bookings for a nominal fee but soon decided we should be doing this for ourselves, took a massive leap forward and have never looked back since. I didn't intend on becoming a Professional Photographer myself - I was only expecting to carry the camera gear around, be the "brains", admin and inspiration behind the business - but I quickly got suckered into taking a few pictures and, although still very much at the beginning of my photographic career I am assisting Andy and going from strength to strength in my own right - even winning a merit award earlier this year in the Master Photographers wedding photographer of the Year competition (Yorkshire Region). Andy however was awarded the title of "Master Photographer of the Year Portrait Folio Winner" (Yorkshire Region) - along with a collection of other awards.

We have been extremely lucky to have had the priviledge of photographing the loveliest couples this year and over the coming weeks we'll try to introduce you to a few.