A lifegoal achieved...

Hello February! 

I realise I should have posted about this earlier but my busy life got in the way... only joking! I guess I just didn't think to blog about it as I'm posting so sporadically at the moment I'm not even sure if people are still checking in (if you are, thank you).

Long story short, a local magazine contacted Chiddingstone Castle to see if they had any images they could use for their February front cover. Some of you may know that I manage their social media and also create content, so I jumped at the chance to have this opportunity! The brief I was given was that the magazine was hoping for snowdrops, classic frosty scene. 

Having my photo on the front cover of a magazine has always been such a dream of mine. I tried not to get my hopes up as I didn't know who else had been approached and Kent has a vast number of historical places that could have been used.

Mr Poachie and I drove over there on a frosty weekend morning so I could take some photos but, when I was finished, I wasn't overly happy with the images I took. The sun was too bright and the ground didn't look right. I had a deadline of the end of January and as I work full time I was panicking that I didn't have the right image that would be front cover worthy.

It was also too early for snowdrops, so it just didn't have what they had asked for.

So the following weekend, the weather gods answered my prayers and delivered a reaaalllly grey frosty morning and we got up really early so that the sun, if it did make an appearance, wouldn't ruin any photo's.

I spent a good few hours taking photo's from different angles and trying to mix up the composition.

By the time I was satisfied with what I had taken, my fingers had gone numb and my knees were wet from crouching down on the grass. I didn't care though, I was in my element and just praying that I had taken something good enough.

When we got home I then spent another few hours uploading to my laptop and narrowing down the 100's of images to 12 that I liked and began to edit. 

Later that evening I sent my images off to the PR contact at the magazine and then I had to wait to see if I had made the grade!

I heard nothing for two weeks so I had started to lose hope. I thought the process must be quicker and if they had chosen one of my photo's I would have heard by now...

But then I received an email wishing me congratulations and telling me my image had been selected and was going to be sent to the printers and for the next edition, due early February. I was over the moon! I couldn't quite believe it but here it is ladies and gentleman... my first front cover 😁

I feel so chuffed. 

Ok, its not Conde Nast but Beyonce didn't go straight to number one; it can take time! 

It's so funny when you think back about things. For years, I have always said I wanted to start a blog and just never got round to it. I finally started it a year ago and blogging lead to me getting a proper camera, which also led to me approaching Chiddingstone Castle to manage their social media and now I have my photo on a magazine cover! 

Mr Poachie is largely to thank for this too. He really encouraged me into starting a blog and it took a few painful weeks of getting the tech sorted. I was tearing my hair out trying to figure out domains and linking web whatnots but he researched it, organised the blog links to my socials and helping me get it started.

He also bought me the camera that I use and, when I hadn't heard back from Chiddingstone in the first instance, he encouraged me to chase which led to this, so I am always so grateful to have him in my life.

I'm quite insecure but he makes me feel like I do have a talent, a positive role to play, things to work towards. Just love him :)

Anyway, enough gushy talk. Below are some photo's that we took for the Valentines post at Chiddingstone Castle. I am really pleased with how it turned out and we had a lot of fun doing this together.

I drive him mad when I ask him to take photo's. I am so bossy and I'm a perfectionist. I'm also controlling and need to learn to relax but he is so patient with me as he knows how much it means to me! Big boyfriend points to him.

He took this shot which I LOVE and I didn't think of. It's one of my faves from all of the ones we took.

I used this post for the castles Insta account. It has had a good response so far and I'm loving having this creative outlet.

We got some snowdrops in the end....