Geelong fashion photoshoot – Cassandra Hutchison

Cassandra is  a person who knows her own heart. She followed it as she designed her gorgeous range ‘Pink Rubarb’. She’s always loved the fun and frivolity of Peter Alexander‘s designs, and chanelled a little bit of that (plus a whole lot of her own talent!) in her collection.

I loved this playful shoot, held at The Loft, Geelong. Mel and Stevie looked gorgeous in Cassandra’s designs and were happy to show is their sillier sides.  Thanks to them both for saying yes, and doing a job like the pros.

Behind the scenes. Trying to get sparklers to light simultaneously is not easy task.

The vivacious Cassandra. She’s following her love and her dream. That in itself, is admiral and inspirational.

Mixing business with home

I’ve just spent the afternoon at one of Miles’ little mates birthday parties.  The children and I ate spaceship shaped birthday cake, they played and I hung out with the mummies. The best part about it, I didn’t have to ask the boss for an afternoon off so I could go to the party. If I’d been working in an office like I was when I was a journalist, I wouldn’t have been able to go. The party would not have warranted an afternoon off work. Similiarly though, if I had my business set up so that I  had to be at my desk all the time, then I also would not have been able to go either.

Instead I stood in the sun with blue icing around my lips congratulating myself for setting up my business in a way that allows me to spend afternoons like this with my children. (Did you know it’s totally okay to pat yourself on the back from time to time, even just a little bit?)

This post isn’t about the virtues of working from home, nor is it a backhander at people who work from home but are needed to be at their desk during office hours.  When I was starting the business I saw that there was a way to organise things which would allow me to spend my days with Miles and Ryan. This was my absolute priority.  Photography is a business in which much can be done out of normal work hours. People don’t mind if they get an email at 9pm, printers don’t mind if orders are sent through just before midnight. I’m very lucky like that. So many other businesses do need to be ‘on’ during working hours, but not photography. I saw a window to set up the business how I wanted it, and I jumped through it.

So I’ve got things set up in a way that suits my priorities. In a few years Miles and Ryan will both be at school which will open up an enormous chunk of time for me, so I might rearrange things. I can’t extoll the virtues of taking a good hard look at the way you run things, and working out if you’ve got it all functioning to suit your priorities. It’s all about those priorities being met. If your priority is to dedicate 12 months to pounding the pavement visiting suppliers and making face to face connections with others in the wedding photography world, then you might need to spend more time ‘on’ during 9-5. If your priority is to go to birthday parties for 5 year olds, then you can set things up to do exactly that.

And as a totally aside, Cassandra and Travis’ wedding was featured in the current edition of Cosmopolitan Bride Australia magazine. Tres’ proud.

* Meaghan

(Not) losing heart

It’s so easy to loose your way in the photography world. It is such a vibrant, creative, always pushing forward world that’s jam packed with so many people doing extraordinary things.

Casting my eye over what everyone else is doing, it’s so easy to loose my way.

I forget about my own eye, my own way of seeing things. I lose my own perspective, when that’s the very one thing that I should be holding onto. I think ‘what would such-and-such do with this shot’ or ‘how would whoz-e-bopsit edit this one’. I could waste hours trying to emulate, trying to be, someone else.

But where would that get me? I’d be a lame excuse for a copy cat with little to no original thought, let alone an original photograph. My photographs would lose their sheen, because I would have lost my heart. I would never, could never, take a single photograph that I took justice if I wasn’t shooting with my own heart.

This sort of thing plagued me more frequently when I was starting out and still trying to find my own voice in the crowded room. When I spent some time recently going over my business with a fine tooth comb, I held everything up to the light and asked if it held my heart in it. If it didn’t I promptly cast is aside like yesterday’s yellowing newspaper.

When I pull my camera up in front of my eye now, I know that it’s with no one else’s vision that I’m shooting. It’s mine, all mine. I don’t judge my eye, my heart, or my way of seeing the world anymore. This simple thing, has been so completely freeing, stopped all the noises in my head, and allowed me to photograph with greater purity. For mine own eye, I am grateful.