A Day in the Life

On Tuesday 18th July 2017 I spent the day carrying my camera with me wherever I went and attempted to document my everyday moments in new and creative ways.

I hope you enjoy this rare glimpse into the reality behind my Instagram feed. Which would lead you to believe 90% of my life is spent at the beach, when in reality it's more like 85%. I jest, we do love the beach but this is more my reality...

Disclaimer: Since we keep things faceless over here half the photos I took today I can't share but it added an extra element of creativity to try and capture some aspects of our day whilst respecting my kid's privacy.

Mornings

Mornings consist of getting myself sorted whilst coordinating all 3 kids getting dressed and ready for the day. The older 2 can dress themselves and whilst my 7 year old does require a little bit of encouragement for the most part they get themselves ready. They even make their own packed lunches and get their own breakfast so that makes mornings run a lot smoother. 3 year old needs help with it all and usually wants to negotiate the terms of getting dressed, which makes things interesting to say the least. No morning is the same, we can be ready with a half hour to spare or we can be running down the street 5 minutes late still eating our toast. Predictability is boring though right? It's a 1 mile walk to the kids school and I have to make the trip 3 times a day so Youngest goes on his balance bike in the mornings; He is a speed demon on that thing, but an easily distracted dawdler on foot.

We're a one car family so weekday outings aren't an everyday occurrence but on this particular Tuesday a lovely friend picked Youngest and I up and drove us to the park and we had a cheeky mid-week ice cream by the sea.

You can click on each image to see more but hopefully they are self-explanatory.

Afternoons

Youngest is in afternoon nursery so after lunch I take him to school on my bike for both speed and to spare his little legs from yet another school run. Then I have 2 precious hours at my desk, no kids, and time to write, reply to emails, do marketing, admin, and edit edit edit. And before I know it, it's time to walk that mile again and go get all 3 kids.

After School

The final school run of the day is always the slowest and the least fun. Today was no exception. By the time we are home everyone is ready for a snack and I tend to find the kids are pretty tired. Oldest has swimming lessons on a Tuesday so I tend to let them do as they please, which is usually Mario kart, or Minecraft, or anything on a screen. If they're calm enough i'll try and get a bit more work done, and when it's time to cook I try to maximise that time as much as possible by doing a few household tasks whilst cooking.

Mealtimes are always interesting. There are only a handful of meals all 3 will eat and they are rarely the foods Hubby and I would choose, plus following our "meat free lent" we still only eat Vegetarian food in the house. But we always eat together, at the dining table, and we pretty much always eat the same food as the children, it's just not always presented in the same way.

I couldn't help snap a photo of my very impressive Toms tan line, can you tell I wear those shoes a lot? Also note Middle's odd socks and untied shoes. Every. Single. Time. Broken rucksack; you can tell it's nearly the end of term. And yes that Dinosaur teddy is a big part of Youngest's everyday. Didn't manage cooking or meal time photos as it was all fairly rushed due to impromptu evening plans.

Evenings

Evenings we do two things. When it's the kid's bedtime we have something we call "Exercise Hour" and the Parent who isn't putting the kids to bed has to go out and exercise, or they have to help with bedtime. It probably sounds crazy but the threat of doing bedtime when it's not your turn has got me out on my run in torrential rain in the middle of winter. So that probably tells you all you need to know about bedtime in our house!

Secondly we tend to take it turns to go out. There are nights each week we are both home, but often one of us is out somewhere. When I'm home I am usually working (2 hours a day is not enough.) Tonight I was planning on going for a run and then spending my evening editing a recent wedding I photographed, whilst being entertained by Netflix, but as luck would have it a friend invited me on a walk to a waterfall, not one to say no to adventure I had a fun evening out.

We walked to Sgwd yr Eira, which is a waterfall you can walk behind. Attempted a long exposure using a bridge for a "tripod" and couldn't resist snapping some grass. And yes my friend did attempt to re-create the Timotei advert, because why wouldn't you?

Things I want You to take away from this Blog:

Sometimes I take bad photos. Not all my pictures are perfect, or Instagram worthy. All photographers do, and if they don't then in my opinion they are not taking enough risks and probably not learning very much either.
Getting out of your comfort zone is definitely worthwhile.
My life isn't my Instagram feed. That's just the highlights. There's plenty of mundane stuff in my everyday too, but there is always room for adventure, and for that I do feel very blessed.
If you want to improve your photography then one of the easiest ways I have found to do that is simply take more photos. Pick up your camera everyday, take it with you as often as you can. Not just on the "photo worthy" outings, but in the everyday stuff too. Trying to think of creative ways to capture everyday moments, or how best to frame or compose certain shots is a great mental exercise for us photographers.
Get out more. Doing this made me realise how radically different my life now is to just a few years ago. When my children were younger, and before I re-discovered Photography. My day to day was largely about survival, but these days it's mostly about seeing what adventure's we can have.
And on that note, say Yes to adventure more.
Should you attempt a day in the life? Yes. If you want to improve your photography then it is the perfect challenge, and you will definitely learn something.

Gear Talk

The photos in this blog were taken with my Nikon D750 DSLR camera and my 50mm F1.8 lens. With the exception of the waterfall shots for which i used my Sigma 35mm F1.4 Art lens. And there is one iPhone shot in there too. The photos were all edited in Lightroom, using VSCO presets. I used a remote shutter release for the self-portraits.

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