i don't really know how to introduce this one obviously you know i'm just sat in the woods on a
stump and we're going to film some youtube videos and do kind of like normal stuff but it became
quite obvious when we introduced five minute fridays which have been a massive hit which is
fantastic but it came obvious on that first five minute friday kind of an introduction video that
nobody really knows what we do so i wanted to sort of introduce some form of like a little
vlog to just outline what we do here on kind of a day-to-day basis the majority of the comments were
positive on the whole but there were comments on that five minute friday introduction video
along the lines of you're getting burnt out you spend all of your time on the membership now
i hope that you make sure that you make time for youtube with the premium membership
and so on and so forth and it was almost as if everybody on youtube thought that all we do
is youtube videos and premium membership and that is so not true that is so so so so so not true
and so kind of i wanted to kind of go through you know what we've been up to the past couple
of months give you guys a bit of an insight it's going to be kind of a vlog because i've got
footage of most of everything that i'm going to talk about and this is a very very small portion
we have a very very busy schedule here both myself and Dan and we also have Sharon in the office who
helps us with everything and a number of other individuals who assist us most of some of or
a little bit of the time and so i thought why not bring you guys behind the curtain almost
the premium membership guys you guys know kind of all of this anyway because we go through it in our
behind the scenes stuff we go through it in our q and a's we go through it in the live edits and
the calls and also in the facebook group so kind of keep you guys updated but for everybody on the
general internet it seems as though you don't know any of this exists so i thought it would be fun to
show you guys a lot of what we do we can't talk about because of client confidentiality ndas and
so on and so forth the other part of what we do we can't talk about because it's not released yet
so i can only show you guys a little bit and obviously all the way through this we're doing
weekly youtube videos and we also do the premium membership bits and pieces too so that's at least
another day maybe a little bit more so you've got to think of this squished around it now we also
have four dogs and a horse and dan has his own hobbies i do things with the horse and so you can
kind of get the vibe that there's a lot going on in the background and a very very very very very
small part of that is youtube and so for youtube i thought i'd just show you guys a little bit about
what we're doing so let's start things off with if you're new here consider hitting the subscribe
button i'm Jessica McGovern international multi-award-winning portrait photographer amongst
other things and basically we sit here and we chat about stuff so we'll start at the beginning of May
because i think the beginning of May is kind of a good place to begin it's usually a reasonably
quiet month for us here May is not this May this May was definitely not quiet so May kicked off and
the first week was a commercial photography and video job and we had to essentially do
super late nights early mornings and four days in the middle it was a really really really really
long week great for everything that we were doing and so that was at the start of May so that was
kind of May week one because that took a day of prep and then two days of editing afterwards so
that was a full kind of five to seven day job in that now on that same week on the weekend
we went and we set up and started a second job and there was a challenge review video
will have gone slap bang in the middle of that on a sunday we went over to a private exhibition
which we can't really discuss too much but basically we have it's like an invite-only
event and we're there for three days and meet loads and loads of wonderful people and some of that
led to some of the other bits that we're going to talk about really really really good event
for us but at this event i left Dan solo for day three and he's looking at me like don't say it
on day three essentially Dan Dan didn't damage it but Dan was there in care of our artwork
right that we had at this exhibition and it was like really strange weather and there was a big
gust of wind and one of our artwork pieces which was weighted blew over in a dramatic fashion and
scratched all the way down the middle of our massive Freki piece which was up for sale with
interest at that event and somebody was coming back to potentially purchase it and unfortunately
the whole thing then just had like this scratch all the way down as a big diagonal it was about a
two foot scratch maybe a little bit longer and so the piece was then damaged and had to be removed
and it also damaged the piece that went into it so that was a bit of a a bummer for us because that
piece would have sold on that day and that would have been really nice right but never mind so that
was that event and we had a piece that was created specifically for that event in an auction lot it's
a charity event they raised about half a million pounds at that event which was super really really
really good causes so that was a week one of May and a little bit into week two so the same week
that all of that happened we were home for maybe a day i think in the middle so this is May week two
and right in the middle of that the next thing that we had on was a one-to-one up in north
yorkshire but it wasn't just a one-to-one so this individual had traveled all the way from wales
up to yorkshire north yorkshire nonetheless and we had a photo shoot with their dog so it was
a booked client session but after booking the session the client decided that actually they'd
like to incorporate a one-to-one so we went up there for the whole day we did a client shoot and
then straight after that we had a little bit of a mini break and then we did a student one-to-one so
photography tuition one-to-one in person which was really super the weather was interesting it was
quite sunny and really windy beanie was kind of dropped into a location on the one to one like a
crane coming down and depositing her in in her spot which was hilarious um and then obviously
you can imagine how Dan got out of that position afterwards it was a little bit of car crash but it
was okay and the one-to-one went really really well so did the client shoot so that was great
so then we move into May week three where we kick things off pretty early on i think with a MTog q&a
session so i think there was a live q&a in the morning and then pretty much straight after that
early afternoon we then went out to this location actually that we're in right now and we did a
horse photo shoot so another client shoot so that was with two horses and two people
not quite finished up those pictures just yet just because we've had some of the bits and pieces
um that needed to be ironed out first but hopefully i'll be able to share some of those
with you guys soon because we might be doing some little editing bits and pieces on them so that was
that client shoot which was super we've recorded a lot of bits and pieces from that so hopefully
that will be dropping into the premium membership sometime soon but before that the client needs to
see the pictures they need to have their viewing session that week was also the week that we
what i won we weren't um a strange term here we won the northern pet photographer of the
year award for the of course amazing picture of Peggy which was shot down in London which
has since been viral on tik-tok with 1.8 million views or something like that and then
it's also doing pretty good on instagram so you can go and see it on our social channels on those
bits and pieces there's a little tiny little bit of behind the scenes we do have the full
behind the scenes for that session so probably going to drop that into the membership as well
at some point Charlotte was amazing Peggy was awesome and it was a really really super time so
that was the award so that was i think that's maybe the first title of 202....2 2022
i think that was the first title of 2022. so now where we are where are we week May week four
okay so May week four literally all i have this week because this was like we need to catch up
on everything that we've missed because we've been out been out of the office been away so behind so
this was a grafting week but of course it wouldn't be a normal week with us without going out
somewhere a bit weird so um actually i decided to take Tuna the horse to our very first riding club
session that was really interesting and actually a lot of fun learned a lot at that little session
with an amazing coach who was there so yeah insight into pony life as well we're gonna be
doing a lot more things with Tuna hopefully over the next few weeks so that leads us into June
what happened in June week one okay yeah so June week one was actually a bank holiday
week for us here in the uk because it was the queen's jubilee the queen jubilee had
kind of a special bank holiday so it was like Thursday bank holiday Friday bank holiday
and then Saturday and Sunday so bank holiday weekends basically mean that we have the days off
um of course we don't so we had a bit of a stripped-down week now Sian did view her
pictures she had her photo viewing in June week 1 and selected her images and since then she
has had them delivered and then it was jubilee weekend so we ran off after releasing i think
challenge review video which was a really quick turnaround just because of the dates
i have a feeling that that was the case and uh we went off and of course like pretty much i
think every photographer in the entire United Kingdom went and photographed their villages
jubilee celebrations because it was like such a big deal so we went out and we did our villages
photography of like the competition for the best dressed house and the best scarecrow and the best
bits and pieces and then there was like a picnic at the village hall so we did like a whole thing
with the community i can't show any of those images now because you know privacy and stuff so
i'm not going to put them on here but that was a really fun time as well bit of a busy one and then
a little bit of editing i just did the editing same day no big deal so then we move into june
week two now June week two was a really really busy week again another week where i was pretty
much out of office the entire time we ended up doing a few online one-to-ones which would move
from the friday i'll get there in a sec to the monday um just because of how this week fell
so we did one-to-ones on the monday instead of the friday so we always do online one-to-ones on
fridays but this week they were on monday so we did them on the monday and then on monday
afternoon i drove up a couple of hours up north to the residency of the north with digitalab
you've probably heard me mention this before you've seen it on the instagram stories because
the event was such a good time so essentially it is a couple of days where all your food's included
and your training is included and you can pick different sessions with different trainers and
all of them do different things so you've got like a newborn trainer you've got a family
portraits trainer you've got like a commercial headshot trainer you've got apparently me the
the dog trainer i was there at that point so i took Beanie up we stayed in this gorgeous little
hotel which gave Beanie a little bed of her own and we trained so we did two sessions we trained
and talked so the training was a couple of hours in a woodland location and i've had really good
feedback from that and some great pictures i've seen since then and then the second session was
on the following day another two hour session and that was on theory of creating a wow portrait
indoor outdoors dogs horses kids whatever it's going to be it was just kind of the ingredients
that go into making that so really super talk great feedback from that now came home from there
absolutely zonked really tired and missed the start of a job on the wednesday afternoon now
the client knew we wouldn't be there but then we went on the thursday for bramham bramham horse trails
so it's a cci four-star which is a eventing so it's three-day eventing technically every four
days don't get hung up on that so there's dressage one day cross-country the next day and then show
jumping on the final day but because of how long the dressage lasts there's two days of dressage
right so we were hired to photograph one horse for the entire thing so we were there on all of
the days to photograph this horse doing all of its things including the trot-up on the sunday morning
amazing results the horse actually placed in the money which is super for the owners and all of the
connections and the rider in question so we've got like a bazillion pictures from bramham that
was a super piece of work really long but Beansprout did come on cross-country day to watch
some of the cross country whilst we ran around like headless chickens trying to get from jump
1 to jump 15 which is a little bit chaotic but
great fun great fun nonetheless the last thing that happened that week which was on right at
the sunday afternoon Cassie came to collect her pictures now they were also shot in this location
but they were shot here two years ago so a really really really long time now Cassie
said hold it i don't want to see the pictures i don't want to buy the pictures i don't want
to do anything with the pictures hold it you've taken the pictures hold them until i build a room
that these pictures can go in at my home and i've saved up the money to be able to
purchase some artwork so lo and behold two years later we did a viewing session
and that was back in i think april i want to say that that happened in april and then we did the
delivery of the client product so we captured cassie's reaction again that's over on tik tok
so if you want to go ahead and have a look at that on tik tok cassie came and collected her artwork
which is really really really really really exciting for us because it was just a long wait
for this to be delivered so then we go into June week three which at the time of recording this
was last week but who knows when this is gonna go out so June week three was actually a really busy
week i got my days completely wrong for the equine chiro and got the horse ready and was there at the
yard like where is she where is she and then i get a call back and she's like i think we've got our
wires crossed somewhere because i've got us down for this date but in July turns out that was the
truth and if you read back through the messages i would have known that so i got the horse ready on
completely the wrong day wasted half a day out the office and that was really frustrating but
nevertheless we then had Sophia come so Sophia came up to come for a one-to-one now Sophia did win
the tog awards she won the overall prize and she requested that her winning
cash prize which was 500 dollars was actually put into a one-to-one with us instead so
this was the day the cumulation of that so we had a one-to-one which was really really super got
some great bits and pieces pulled a little snippet out did a live video put that into the MTog group
so that they could also learn from this experience hopefully it was really useful for Sophia Sophia
has since got as a gift not required by the way if you come for a one-to-one really interesting
gift actually to tamagotchi so that's what we're working with on this one which is really fun so
that happened and then the next day we were out of the office again a full day that one
and that was really hot that was 30 plus degrees roasting but it was a commercial job so no animals
out in that heat required gorgeous weather i mean gorgeous weather gorgeous weather to be on a beach
and we did some video and photo again on a commercial job and then came back
for friday full day one to one's like normal normal youtube video released now June week
four is technically this week that we're recording this and it hasn't happened yet but on friday
afternoon is the live edit so every three months every quarter in the premium membership we do a
live edit where everybody has the same picture right we all start with the same raw file and we
all join live on zoom and we work through it step by step so that's really useful the whole thing is
recorded and it's put into the full edit library of the premium membership which must be over 20
full edits now easy easy and actually it is the birthday of the premium membership next month
which is really really exciting so far we've got like 120 videos in the premium membership
so that is crazy busy and some really really really really really amazing premium members
so massive shout out over the past two months as well May and June to some premium members who have
had amazing successes i'm not gonna get everybody i just i can't remember everybody in my brain to
reel off in a situation like this but definitely Frankie Adamson has won some bits and pieces
i definitely Kat De Laet probably has won some bits and pieces maybe that was slightly before
May i'm not sure i can't remember but definitely won some bits and pieces then i think Clara's had
a really successful run as well and Katie as well who's had some really really great
results with both the guild and the societies including gold so amazing amazing amazing work
really really proud of you guys oh amazing and i'm obviously super proud of everybody
who commits to learning with this kind of i don't know umph i think it's great i think it's super so
i'm gonna finish and wrap this up now because i feel like that's a pretty good rundown of
the big bits and pieces that kind of happened in that period of time and yeah hopefully this was
a nice insight let me know what you thought about this because i think this is a really interesting
one to discuss down below so please do go ahead and do that and hit like hit subscribe do all the
good stuff and we'll keep making these videos because if not then we won't see you guys soon