personal

It's Hallowe'en today so my son carved our pumpkin over the weekend. We had visited Belsay Hall during the half term holiday to do the pumpkin trail. They were whole pumpkins with fabulously intricate faces carved into the flesh as if it were stone.

We made our Christmas cake at the weekend. I like to get it done early and give it plenty of feeds before it gets iced just before Christmas! The other tradition we do is to all have a stir of the mixture, even though myself and my son tend to do most of the work. I always get my husband to give it a mix as well though. I'm not sure where I heard of the tradition but I love the idea of the love being mixed in and shared with our wider family at Christmas.

This weekend we had a belated 10th wedding anniversary trip to Harrogate. Belated as it was our 10th wedding anniversary last year! Anyway, lots of opportunity for a weekend project photograph. Usually on holidays I just take my Nikon D40 as it is lovely and light but I decided to take my professional D700. The zoom lens that I mostly use is really heavy so I just put my macro 60mm lens on. This meant that I was restricted in what I could take...no wide angle shots!

In my job as a professional photographer, I mainly photograph people. This is a fantastic honour, as I'm recording people for posterity for years to come.

I also enjoy photographing places and events to keep a record of our lives. Obviously, with personal work I have completely free rein on what I photograph and how I do it. My photos are almost always arty.

We have just had a lovely, relaxing holiday to Rutland. As usual, I took my camera almost everywhere we went (and my sketch pad this holiday!). I always love taking landscape photos but on this holiday I was primarily looking for views to paint later. Here are a few of my favourite views.