So! The holiday season as come and gone with its usual gusto.

As well as enjoying the Christmas and New Year celebrations, I chose to shoot 3 festive weddings and turn 30.  Well, I’m not sure I actually chose to turn 30, but these things happen to the best of us and I’m gonna take it on the chin & embrace the new decade…

So, a few pix from the period:

Xmas 09 [Photography by Barnaby Aldrick 2009]

Xmas day, arriving at me mam’s digs in Leeds, under a lights blanket of snow

Xmas 09 [Photography by Barnaby Aldrick 2009]

A cheers with the Aldrick contingent

Xmas 09 [Photography by Barnaby Aldrick 2009]

A less than subtle hint of a present from Clare…

Xmas 09 [Photography by Barnaby Aldrick 2009]

One of my fave presents, a giant on-the-hop espresso maker + tasty Harrods coffee!  Those sextuple espresso’s’ll get that January engine fired

Xmas 09 [Photography by Barnaby Aldrick 2009]

Christmas lunch!  Joy > gluttony > pain > snooze

Xmas 09 [Photography by Barnaby Aldrick 2009]

Havin’ a listen to what Queenie’s got to say

Xmas 09 [Photography by Barnaby Aldrick 2009]

Family portrait: take 10, cos ‘special’ brothers saw fit to pap my head with snow just before the timer, time & time again.

Xmas 09 [Photography by Barnaby Aldrick 2009]

The Strictly Special has finished, wrapping paper’s in the green bin, washing up’s done & Christmas day starts to wind down

Xmas 09 [Photography by Barnaby Aldrick 2009]

As do revellers Duncan & Fi.

A few teasers from the BAWP winter weddings:

Xmas Weddings 03

Wedding number 1! Sharyn & Maurice enjoy a bit of winter sunshine at Woodlands hotel. [NB: Sharyn’s ace silver wellies just out of shot!]

Xmas Weddings 04

They had a black & white black tie theme, so I thought it wise to snap their rings & rocks on the piano.

Xmas Weddings 05

Wedding numero dos: Vicki & Simon – a Harrogate wedding celebration, who’d recently married at the spot he proposed in Central Park, New York.

Xmas Weddings 06

Vicki had a fantastic vintage theme throughout, with retro 20’s clothes, fab vintage crockery, picture frames & sweety jars, so I thought I’d shoot their rings on her old-school lacy gloves.

Xmas Weddings 01

The last wedding I shot was for Kate & Barrie at the lovely Hazlewood Castle. These cool kids asked me to set up a photobooth for them and their guests in the evening, and we had loads of fun shooting them & their guests messing about in front of my new red curtain!  This is an idea I’m going to offer more to clients, because it’s a great way to get professional and fun portraits of guests that’ll look amazing all packed in over a couple of album spreads.

Xmas Weddings 02

He’s Kate & Barrie’s rings, on a funky metal table I spotted in the Hazlewood library.

My blogs can be a bit straining on the old broadband, so to load the remainder of this post click ‘more’ below

Without a moment to rest, we charged into New Year:

NYE-4W1

Last pic in the series is the party people having a cheeky mosh to the surprise Xmas no.1: Rage Against The Machine’s ‘Killing in the Name’

Round 02.30 Johanna tapped out, and Bex’s dog Lola stood guard

NYE09-70

While Rico took an extended boogie to Live at The Heavenly Social. Good times…

NYE-4W2

Yesterday was my 30th Birthday and my family took me out for a surprise lunch to the Boars head at Ripley.

Ripley is a picturesque village north of Harrogate with a famous butchers, ice cream shop & castle.  I’ve shot a wedding here with Phil Barber and have one of my own coming up here this year.

30th Bday @ Ripley Castle [© Barnaby Aldrick 2010]It was great to have a play with one of the little presents I got myself for Christmas, a Panasonic Lumix LX3 compact camera!

Ripley looked so beautiful in the falling snow & winter light.

Barnaby's first 30 years album - front

At lunch Mum presented me with a truly lovely photobook of my First 30 Years.  Check the cheese burger on the front.

Barnaby's first 30 years album - inside

Clare, the little star, spent most of December beavering away scanning old pics of me right from being a wee toddler, and laying out this blurb book.  Photobooks are such a lovely gift and I’m going to treasure this one.

NB: censorship left middle right! Which is all good, but apparently everyone at Clare’s work has now seen my tackle…

30th Bday @ Ripley Castle [© Barnaby Aldrick 2010]

Here’s a shot of the Ripley store.  I bet it’s looked like this for centuries, so I processed with the Old Skool photoshop action from Totally Rad.

30th Bday @ Ripley Castle [© Barnaby Aldrick 2010]

The Ripley Church, complete with grumpy photographer-hating archaic vicar! It’s a pain when old school vicars only allow pics from the back.

30th Bday @ Ripley Castle [© Barnaby Aldrick 2010]

Ripley Castle, looking resplendent under ice & snow

30th Bday @ Ripley Castle [© Barnaby Aldrick 2010]

It was such a beautiful day for a turn around the lake.

30th Bday @ Ripley Castle [© Barnaby Aldrick 2010]I love this shot of the snow & shadows. This snap is pretty much straight out of camera, cos it didn’t need anything in Lightroom.

The LX3 is a lovely little camera, and replaces my Canon G10 that I just sold on eBay.  I wasn’t 100% happy with it; mainly cos it shot horrifically noisy images at anything over 200 ISO and had a slow lens aperture. As well as it’s wide 24mm wide f2 lens, I love the fact that on the LX3 you can shoot in RAW and chose the aspect ratio of your images, such as 3:2, traditional 4:3 or widescreen 16:9.  It allows more creativity in camera when composing on location. It’s only let down is the short 2.5 x zoom & annoying lens cap.

30th Bday @ Ripley Castle [© Barnaby Aldrick 2010]A still lake at Ripley.30th Bday @ Ripley Castle [© Barnaby Aldrick 2010]This untouched bridge led over to an island on the lake. I love the golden winter sun.

30th Bday @ Ripley Castle [© Barnaby Aldrick 2010]

My brother Murray’s footsteps

30th Bday @ Ripley Castle [© Barnaby Aldrick 2010]

Brother murray, givin it apex on the leading lines

Xmas 09 [Photography by Barnaby Aldrick 2009]

Ma famile (minus Duncan, who’s mincing about in Mexico on holiday)

It’s been such a lovely holiday season; with great friends, dear family & special weddings.

It’s 2010, my fourth decade on this rock (eek!) and a new one for all.  So if I’ve not wished you so already, may I wish you a promising, fun-filled new year.

On a bloggy note: I really enjoy sharing with you kids and since starting this blog in April 09 I’ve had nearly 9,000 visitors nosey through my adventures.  I’m really looking forward to blogging more photo fun over the coming year and have some amazing weddings lined up (including an ace international destination wedding!).  It’s great to see so many of you subscribing to and revisiting my photo blog.  If there’s anything you’d like me to do more of (ie. describing shooting/post production technique, posting blogs specifically about wedding ideas etc/digging back through my travel photos archive etc) do let me know.

Though comments like, “do a striptease” might have to wait till I’ve shaken this winter coat and fullfilled a new year’s resolution.

B

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