I read a blog post once - I think it was written by photographer Dana Pugh, about working from home with young kids and all that it entails. It talked about working in ‘snippets of time’. The more I do this job, the more I realise that is exactly what it is.

Snippets of time.

I do bits and pieces of work between getting up and having breakfast, between getting my daughter dressed for school and getting her on the bus, as I steal a quiet moment while my other daughter is distracted with something else but me, when I stick a movie on to entertain the kids so I can get 45 minutes of editing done, and sometimes midway through cooking dinner I’ll find myself sitting at my computer to quickly send an email. I’m lucky enough to have 2 full days (well, 6 hours each day) when my youngest is at preschool - these days are absolute bliss - and it’s amazes me some days just how much work I can get done during these 6 hours. And my second biggest chunk of uninterrupted time is after the kids have gone to bed. A lot of my previous families can probably attest to the fact that they have received their gallery link emailed to them late at night.

This is in no way a whinge. I absolutely love what I do. I chose not return to work after I had my eldest. I chose to stay home and be with her. I chose to stay home and while I was there, may as well have another kid to add to the mix. Then after 4 years at home my business slowly grew shape and form, and it was a conscious decision to not return back to my old life in an office job, and try to make a go of working on my own business from home. This suited me perfectly, I had 2 young kids at home and what better way then to be able to work around them. Except that as the business grew and my kids grew it was no longer really possible to just work during nap times - especially as my kids dropped their day naps at the ripe old age of 2.

Which leads me to working in the snippets of time. Often I’ll open up my email only to find a half written email to a client, which I clearly got distracted - likely by one of my kids and completely forgotten that I hadn’t hit ‘send’, or in this case, I logged into the backend of my website to write a blog, and found these photos which I had uploaded 3 months ago and never ended up actually writing the blog… So here it is. Finally. 3 months later…

And would you believe that I’m writing this while my youngest is at her gymnastics class - and I find myself with a whole hour of an uninterrupted snippet of time, with my laptop on my lap I sit here tapping away.

My brain is like an internet browser with 1000 tabs open part way through all the things I need to doing, and usually get distracted or interrupted before they get closed. Thanks some good systems in place, thankfully I don’t have to rely on my brain to actually remember all these 1000 things I have to do.

I’m going to leave you with these gorgeous photos, taken last Spring at Black Barn Farm of Jade and her family. This was such a fun shoot, with one of the most genuine families I’ve had the pleasure of spending time with. Incidentally - keep an eye on their socials - they will be opening up their apple orchard for pick-your-own pesticide free at Stanley starting mid February 2019