Wednesday 31 August 2011

Day 14

Some more photos I took at my bro's wedding on Saturday! :)

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Tuesday 30 August 2011

Monday 29 August 2011

Day 12

Meet my new sister-in-law, Stacy :D


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My bro got married at the weekend, so I couldn't RESIST bringing my camera along and getting some snaps!

I will post more later :D I have two weddings & this one to edit up before the 10th Sept, so all will be madness :P

Rosie x

Sunday 28 August 2011

Day 10 & 11

Couldn't update yesterday, as I was at my bro's wedding :D It was a really lovely day, made me miss Iain but was awesome to meet my new Canadian family!!

Here are some shots from the morning of Katy's wedding which I found on my laptop :P


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i'm also now introducing a new section of services to anyone who likes my editing - i'm taking peoples' pictures they've snapped themselves and editing them up from £30 per picture (less if in bulk). Here's a before/after example on a picture sent to me by my lovely friend Sarah:

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This is just some light editing, but I figure I may as well put it out there :D

Hope everyone is having a lovely week, I leave at 7am tomorrow for the flight back to England so hopefully it will be nice and smooth and no delays re: hurricane! :P

Bye all!


Rosie xx

Friday 26 August 2011

Day 9

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“I have had my dream - like others -

and it has come to nothing,

so I remain now, carelessly

with feet planted on the ground

and look up at the sky.”

- William Carlos Williams



I love this quote, one of my favourites. This shot is from Rachel's wedding earlier this year! Looking forward to posting more from it when I get back on tuesday!


The next Manchester Levitation workshop is now going full steam ahead for the 23rd September! For more info shoot me an email to georgiarosehardy@gmail.com. I'm also crazy excited to announce that in a month or so i'll be releasing some editing tutorials! They'll be between 30min- 1hr long and super cheap. So stay tuned for more info on that, and feel free to leave any suggestions of what to do them on!


Have a lovely day all, heads up! :D


Rosie x

Thursday 25 August 2011

Day 8

Hello all :D So, it was an early start for me - at 4.30am Iain was the best boyfriend ever and took me to the airport, as myself and ma famille are off to Canada for my bro Dave's wedding! I'm currently sat in Toronto airport, which is actually a pretty awesome airport.

I'm here until Tuesday and have forgotten to pack a USB of wedding images to post, so here are the only few I can find! :P These two are portraits I took at Katy's wedding this summer! She was AWESOME enough to sit in this massive flower bush! :D


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Hope everyone has a lovely day/evening! My time frame is pretty messed up right now :P

Bye all :D

Wednesday 24 August 2011

Tuesday 23 August 2011

Day 6

Wedding formalities...

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50mm 1.4
1/500 sec.
(f/1.8)
ISO 125


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50mm 1.4
1/400 sec.
f/1.8
ISO 160

post group shot I LOVE to get everyone to just RUN at me! this was the best one yet....

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24-70mm 2.8
1/320 sec.
f/2.8
ISO 125

The Perils of the Real World

Today I got a message from an anonymous internet user, telling me I was struggling to make money and pretty much laughing at the fact that lately I've been offering shoots and workshops more directly lately.

Nasty online stuff like this stings at first. For about a second. Then you realize; you know what - living on your own is hard! Running a business IS hard, making ends meet IS hard - especially when you're 20, especially when you're 25, 30, 40, 50. Everyone is going to run into this at some point in their life, I can now look back blissfully at the days when I lived with my parents and had no rent, no bills, no food needed to be bought for me. My parents worked SO hard, and it's only now that I feel terrible for the fake tan stains I left on the carpet they paid for.

I'm not going to lie, or put up a front or go on and on about what I charge for what. I don't need to make myself expensive to know that my work is getting much much better in quality - I don't need to charge thousands of £££ for a shoot or even a wedding to feel like I am successful.

behind the scenes shooting a wedding - when you don't have a ladder nearby...
photo by Debbie Merchant


I am a big believer in that being self employed is not only a great way to live your life, but to earn money as well. I encourage everyone I meet to consider it, and I tell them the things I wasn't taught but wish I was when I was 16 or so.

Shit's expensive. But shit's expensive whether you start now, or go to uni and start after that. That's a personal choice - but this blog post I guess is going to be a frank and open piece of my life, about what I spend and how much my lifestyle as it is costs.

Appetizer (per month):

Rent: £700
Council tax: £118
Parking: £100
Car Insurance: £180
Help with emails: £200
Internet: £80 (I got so ripped off for this one!)
iPhone: £55
Water/Electric: £100
Food: £10-£15 per day (280)
Petrol: £250 (wedding travel mainly)
Tax: 20% of all earnings

Which means that per month, I need to make at LEAST £2300 a month to do all the necessary stuff.

Main Course:

Cleaning Supplies
Cat Food/Litter etc
Make Up, Toiletries
Accidents (like getting mugged, set me back £400)
Props for shoots

This is the stuff that kind of makes all the other stuff a bit more fun, not quite as necessary (except the cat food), but still very useful. This can be about £200 a month.

Dessert (The stuff you shouldn't spend money on, but do because life's for living):

Trips away with iain
Petrol for those trips
Food for those trips
Dinners out
Cinema
Lending money to friends (£450 this month)
Clothes shopping
Buying an external hard drive
Holidays etc
Birthdays
Furnishing a flat

Sadly for me, I haven't had much dessert for the past couple of months. I bought an external hard drive and iain and I have visited York and Wales on camping trips (fuck extortionate hotel prices!), but that's about it for pudding.

When I look at my expenses this way, it makes me feel a whole lot more successful. Because even though my savings don't show for much, and I may have had some "holy shit, how am I going to afford to pay rent next month?!" moments, I CAN say that I have worked SO hard. I am 20 years old, and have made enough money to not only cover my basics, but to go on a holiday to Sri Lanka for 10 days this year! I drive a car. I pay my own way for EVERYTHING I do. I've been able to help my friends out when they needed me.

So even though I'm cutting back, moving to a new apartment where I'm saving £100 or so on rent per month, even though I'm taking on more work and asking people to come on workshops and offering discounts on shoots - you know what, at least I'm trying. And I'm so proud that I'm doing this, and I look around in my flat and I feel so proud that it's ME that's paying for it all.



When I look at things like that, suddenly I don't feel like I'm a joke, or like I'm unsuccessful. Because life is hard whichever road you take. Money isn't the end of the world, and it certainly won't make you happy, but knowing you've worked your butt off to pay for the stuff you enjoy does.

I've had the panics, the moments of doubt - knowing you can only rely on yourself for your income is a ridiculous amount of pressure. My alopecia has come back in full force and I feel it - I've had multiple nervous breakdowns to my mum, and sometimes I feel like a big old failure. Making money will always be tough, and I'm not going to pretend like it's always plain sailing. I work my socks off from 8am, and just because I'm offering a discount doesn't mean I don't have enough work to keep me busy. I'm not one to turn down an oppurtunity, if I feel it's fair.

Blindsided On An Idle Tuesday

I'm lucky enough to be able to do something I love - photography! And today I'm not going to let anyone make me feel like I'm failing when I'm struggling. We all struggle, and it's when we come out of those that we really see what we're capable of!

"The truth is that our finest moments are most likely to occur when we are feeling deeply uncomfortable, unhappy, or unfulfilled. For it is only in such moments, propelled by our discomfort, that we are likely to step out of our ruts and start searching for different ways or truer answers."

with iain yesterday at York Maze!

Thanks for listening, rant over! :)

Saturday 20 August 2011

Day 3

I'm off camping with Iain in York today! We're going to a magic show this evening, and then staying in a TeePee tonight :D can't wait! Here are some b&w shots from Tom & Sarah's ceremony that I've been editing recently! :D

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Thursday 18 August 2011

Wedding 365 :)

A photograph (or two) from a wedding I've shot every day for a year... this should be much easier to accomplish than compiling long blogs and going months without updating :P Here are three from Tom & Sarah's Malmesbury Wedding :D

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editing pictures from a very rainy wedding last month - one of my faves so far: