Ok lets start with some fun facts this valentines day.

• In medieval times girls would eat some bizarre foods on St. Valentine s Day to make them dream of their future husband.
• In 1537 King Henry VII declared February 14th the holiday of St Valentines Day.
• In the 1800s Physicians commonly advised their patients to eat chocolate to help them stop missing their loved ones.
• 73% of flowers bought on valentines day are bought by men.  Leaving 27% being bought by women.
• The red rose was the favourite flower of the roman goddess of love – Venus

I just wanted to write a short personal post to wish everyone a really happy valentines day. What are you doing today?  I hope whatever it is you are happy.

I hope everyone gets to do something a little bit special for their loved ones today even if it just making a little extra time to spend time together, making an extra cup of tea, doing the washing up, putting the kids to bed.  I think it is the little things that you do today and every day, that do not have to cost money that is important and any presents are a bonus.  Saying that I always love to get a card on Valentines morning.

My husband has took the night off his hobby tonight which is a lovely surprise as life been pretty busy and  and I am looking forward to eating dinner and chilling together with a film or watching something from sky plus later whilst sharing his chocolate.  My husband really spoilt me this year & treated me to a small box of  chocolates (I have already eaten most of them!) and ugg boots this morning – I am soooo happy as I really miss my old ugg boots (which pretty much fell apart!) and did not dare treat myself to a new pair for quite a while.

If anyone has been proposed to please let me know I would love to write a feature about you and maybe photograph your wedding too.  That would be great.

I am off now to make some heart shaped biscuits with my little girl for daddy. She has really spoilt her parents today with cards, paintings and heart shaped models.  So cute.

Luke & Jen are such kind and relaxing people  to be around and truly deserve all the love and happiness in the world.

It was back in October  last year that I photographed Jen & Lukes wedding.  It was a really sunny day (see all the photos outside the church) & a lovely local wedding for me starting off just 5 mins down the road from me.

Jen attends the church weekly so it was a beautiful personal service with lots of laughs as well as beautiful words of course.

I always enjoy photographing the Crowne Plaza too which is a great venue for any reception by the Thames.

Jen, Luke all their friends and family where a pleasure to photograph.  Ollie behaved brilliantly.  Jen and Luke are a made for each other and the wedding ceremony & speeches where beautiful with so much emotion and love and laughter.

Set in 4o acres of gorgeous landscaped land the white house makes a fantastic backdrop for your wedding day.

If you are thinking of getting married at the Beaumont Estate  or would like to see some images from a recent wedding I have photographed here please feel free to contact me.  I would love to discuss your wedding photography.

January was a lucky month too which see me winning a competition on twitter giving me a free advertising in the look in local magazines. I got all my admin organised & planned a new way of working that should improve the way I work as well as giving me some time off too to recharge my batteries each week.  The idea is stop the late night editing that was a huge part of last year giving me a chance to breathe and look at the business and how I can continue to improve it.

I did my first and only wedding fair that I do on Sunday at Easthampstead Park in Wokingham.   This fair is always a friendly and popular fair and this one was the busiest one yet.  I met so many interesting couples and look forward to photographing some of their wedding in 2012 and 2013.

Tomorrow I visit a bride and groom in Old Windsor at the venue I will be photographing their wedding next month and on Sunday I will be photographing a local family in Purley down the river.

Look forward to blogging some favourites from these soon.

As a wedding venue for the modern couple this hotel is really worth considering and as a documentary wedding photographer I found the layout very fun and interesting to work in.

The Village Hotel  in Farnborough is based within the IQ business park in Hampshire.

Please feel free to take a look at some of my favourite imaged from Paul & Anna’s wedding at the Village Hotel.

If you are thinking of getting married at the Village Hotel Farnborough please feel free to contact me to discuss your wedding photography.

The beautiful country mansion  is normally booked up all year with weddings and I have enjoyed photographing many weddings here over the years.

The first thing to impress most people is the stunning half mile tree lined drive leading up to the entrance.

In past times Easthampstead Park has been reserved for Royal hunting & a refuge for a boys school during the war.

I personally would recommend Easthampstead Park as great venue for your wedding.  Please feel free to contact me to discuss your Easthampstead Park Wedding Photography.

Please feel free to look through some of the Easthampstead Park related posts to see some of the weddings I have photographed there.

Below I include a small selection of some favourite images that I have taken at Easthampstead Park.

Telephone: 0118 9422151
Mobile: 07966 031343
email: tina@clearmomentsphotography.com

As much as I loved my old site and received many positive comments about it, it is time to move away from the flash site.  People are just too busy to hang around and wait for the pages and images to open and even worse iPad users and apple phone users cannot access some galleries at all!

A screen shot of my old website below (that is still here for the the weekend)

The new look site is going to be much fresher & more user friendly.  I aim to blog three times a week.  This is my third blog this week – yaaay!   So lets hope I keep it up and become an expert blog writer.  :-)  Any advice or comments are always welcome.

I shall be spending tomorrow afternoon moving all files over on the server and fingers crossed by Monday the new look website will be here.  If you are looking for a gallery and it is not there please bear with me as I will be making daily changes to the site so one day something will be there and the next day either more will be there or it may be gone.  I look forward to announcing the new site is completed.

It is really exciting but lots of hard work.  I will update this page as much as possible to keep it interesting & to keep you up to date of any news.

These sessions are very relaxed and we normally allow thirty minutes for each session – any longer and children will get bored.  The photography sessions are very good value & I make people feel at ease straight away.  Please ring 0118 9422151 or email me at tina@clearmomentsphotography.com for further information or to book a session.

Below are some images from The Hooper family’s shoot, they travelled down from Middlesex to have their family portraits at the end of 2011.  I had met & photographed them at Katie & Marv’s wedding at Easthampstead Park.

Jess one of their beautiful daughters is normally always really happy.  However on the day Jess was not content being in the studio.  Michelle & Darren had lots of patience and tried everything to get Jess in the mood but she was not going to smile much today.  However this added to the portraits and I really love how the family interacted with each other in the images you can see what a young loving family they are.  As a result the images are quite natural and I like the fact that they are not all laughing at the camera in all the images.

Michelle was pleased with the images.  This is from an email Michelle sent after viewing the images on a private online gallery.

 ”Thank you for the photo’s. Considering jess wasn’t very happy on the day, there is something about all of them that I like. So I would like to order the cd of them all please.”

Sammy eyes are just amazing – Beautiful!There where just too many images of Bex and her daddy to choose from – so heres a few

From the first time I met Anna & Paul I knew they where going to be great fun.  Just look at the images to see how lucky I was to work with such a happy and kind couple.  I do not think I could find a serious image of Anna & Paul without smiles and laughter if I looked.

I also loved meeting up with their friend’s Jane & Steve again whose wedding I photographed in 2010. I have been recommended many times by Anna and Paul’s friends and always love meeting up with them at another wedding or portrait shoot.  I am really happy that this week Anna & Paul have some friends enquiring about  a me photographing their 2012 wedding.  So hopefully I will be photographing Anna & Paul again but this time as guests!

The ‘star wars theme’ gave the guests a chance to have some fun.  Anna & Paul where completely surprised to find all the guests in the church holding up star war masks as they exited the church.  Then some of the guests must have got back into the church they came back dressed up as star wars characters making us all laugh.

Anna & Paul have inspired me so much in many ways and I wish them more and more of what they already have – Love and laugher and happiness.

As 2011 draws rapidly to a close .  I would like to take a moment to say a big thank you to my customers, friends, family and fellow photographers for their support this year.  I would especially like to say thank you to my husband, my daughters and parents who support me so much in doing the job that I love.  My family is the best thing in my life & together with my photography my life is pretty good.

I have been kept very busy this year photographing weddings, family portraits, tots portraits and have photographed some commercial photography too.

My youngest started school in September which has meant that I have had some time again to attend some courses and meet up with other photographers.   I attended a social media and search engine optimisation course this year and hope to make some time over the following week to read up on my notes & get ‘seo savvy’.

I hope to be ready to launch my new website/blog in January which I hope you will visit lots in 2012.

My goal for 2012 is to become one of the best female wedding documentary photographers in Berkshire whilst balancing my work and home life perfectly – Got to aim high! .  This is my dream.

I also aim to get more comments in 2012 on my blog, so if you are reading please comment and let me know your thoughts, dreams and goals for 2012.

Thanks again to all my customers.  I am so lucky to have been part of all your lives and to have photographed your loved ones.  I hope to do more of the same in 2012.

Happy new year to you.  I hope your dreams will come true in 2012.

Tina x