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We are this week launching a dedicated Makeover website.

To celebrate the launch of the new Makeover site (the link will not work until the site goes live!). We have some very special opening offers:

Why not have a Make Me A Model Hen or Teen* Party?

• A fabulous pampering session for you and THREE friends!
  
• Each girl gets a makeover and her own Fashion Photo Shoot.
• Same day viewing of your images to keep the party atmosphere!
• A glass of Bucks Fizz on arrival and £25 each to spend in the viewing room.
• Bring along extra friends for just £25 each!
• A 10” print of the group for the organizer!
• Special launch price of just £175!

* Please note that any girls under 18 need to be accompanied by an adult to any photoshoot we conduct.

In conjunction with our Yorkshire Wedding Photography business FNS Weddings we also offer "boudoir" photography.

Valentines Offer on our fabulous Boudoir Makeover!

• • Experience a liberating 2 hour boudoir shoot with a makeover.
• • A 20”x16” canvas wrap (worth £385) and a DVD slideshow (worth £125)included.
• • Amazing limited offer price of just £199! SAVE £510!

A little update about the Candlelighters Book Project. We were aiming to have the book done and printed before Christmas. When we came to designing the book however it's clear that we still need a few more families through on the project to make it a decent book worth having.

Several things have affected the progress of this project - most notably the "recession" and the British weather.So we have decided to extend the deadline a little in the hope that more families will participate and support this initiative. What we can't do however is pump anymore of our personal resources (other than time) into the promotion of this project.

Because we run a successful wedding photography business (we are in fact one of the leading Yorkshire Wedding Photographers - see our site www.fnsweddings.com for what we do) we have been able to support the Candlelighters project in this last year by paying for publicity material, newspaper advertising, PR agencies, time and travelling expenses to location shoots across Yorkshire etc.to promote the scheme however realistically in the present economic climate we can no longer afford to do this.

With this in mind we are also happy to include any photographs taken in our studio in the book - so if you have had a shoot with us recently and would like to buy a space in the book for your child/ren (with ALL the proceeds going to Candlelighters for the space you have purchased) please get in touch. Equally if you would like to participate in the scheme and are happy to travel to our studio in Boroughbridge for your shoot please get in touch.

If we include studio photographs within the book then that opens the scheme up to photographs taken whatever the weather and we don't need to wait until summer to get more participating families. So, if you know of anyone who may like to participate in this scheme please ask them to get in touch to arrange a shoot.

These last two weeks have been amongst the most difficult we can remember - Jacob (Andys son and my stepson) has been sick. Very sick. It has been frightening as we have watched the Doctors, baffled by his condition, fight to find the correct treatment to hopefully make him better. On one occasion he had to be resuscitated. We are by no means out of the woods with him and it is frightening sometimes when we stop to think about that fragile thread which keeps him with us. In short we know exactly what it is like to live with a sick child.

We thought when we embarked on the Candlelighters book project that this was a wonderful way of raising money for a charity and cause about which we are passionate. It is - there is no doubt about - that and for our friend in Australia who runs this exact same scheme every year the project is a runaway success - each year he raises from this one project over $10,000 for "Make A Wish Foundation". He is applauded for it again and again in his locality and press. We are finding however - be it the British culture or what I'm not sure - that our efforts have been met with "suspicition" and our integrity has been questioned.

Why are we doing this? (because we are passionate about Candlelighters and what they do). Are we making money from the book itself? (No - it is highly unlikely that we will even break even - the book is costing us literally £000's to be produced and printed). Why are we not including any free pictures - surely they cost us nothing?! (Our time is valuable and our skill in producing pictures which go on to be family heirlooms is priceless. The cost to us in real terms of other "paying" customers which could have taken the place of the free shoot, our time editing and travelling, the cost to produce the book, the cost of PR'ing the scheme, advertising costs for the project, the many hours of design time for the actual book and you have a figure of a real cost to us we estimate of around £700 per shoot.We are not prepared to include extra other than the time and the page in the book, we would question how many others would be as generous as this even). Shouldn't you be offering this free to us as we have a member of our family who is sick? (Whilst this would be a nice sentiment and we do shoot for free for families who are struck by illness on occassions due to all the factors in the previous response this is simply not viable this time round - the whole aim it to raise the money for Candlelighters, if we don't collect any money for the page in the book who loses out? The child won't have a page and Candlelighters won't have the donation).

The media on the whole, with a couple of exceptions, have been equally as unsupportive and questioning of our motives for running the scheme. Having spent years and years building up an honest and transparent business with many, many satisfied and delighted clients we simply cannot afford to have our integrity brought into question like this. So, sadly, we have decided to change the way we are running the book project. The effect on the amount of money raised will be we fear devastating - but none the less we will raise a reasonable sum to add to what we have already achieved. So the project from now on will run in this way: we will continue to offer the free location shoot, viewings of the photos will take place at our studio by appointment and instead of making a contribution to Candlelighters for the page in the book at the outset we will offer clients the option to purchase a space (not guaranteed to be a page) in the book in exchange of a minimum donation to Candlelighters of £25. The book will only be produced when we have enough spaces sold to make it a viable production - clearly it will take longer to fill spaces than pages. It is ulikely now that the book will be published before Christmas - although we will do our best and for those clients already booked and paid on the project we are looking at the possiblity of producing a mini book.

But let's not forget here the value of our "Gift" to you. The gift being our skill in creating beautiful photographs - which we have no doubt whatsover wil be precious. A photographer friend in Lancashire also running this project has met with similar comments and has withdrawn from the project because of that and also because she was involved in a car crash and is unable at this present time to fulfill her commitment for the book. The car crash brought with it a reality check. She realised that she had been avoiding having family photographs taken because she didn't like the way she looked - mainly due to her size. I feel like this too - so can completely identify with her thoughs on this. But for her the reality is that should the unthinkable have happened just now when she crashed her car and her children - aged 2 & 7 - be left without a mum there is no lasting record of her to keep her memory alive in the form of photographs. It is unlikely that her two year old son would be able to remember what she looked like in a few years to come. How sad is that? She has booked a family shoot with us and we look forward to creating something really special for them all in August. But to sum up the extent of our gift to you I'd like to finish this post by quoting another photographer friend:

This weekend I watched my father in law die. Over two days I sat with my wife, her sister and their step mum in a room in a hospice watching his breathing get shallower and shallower, his colour change and eventually his last breaths come. Two days before he was drinking gin and tonic with friends (he was ill, lung cancer which had spread, he knew it was terminal and had made his peace, but the change in those final days was dramatic).

When we got home last night, my wife went to three places to look for some photos of her dad. Our wedding pictures (two months ago he had walked her down the aisle), her sisters wedding pictures and his own wedding pictures (to their step mum).

The importance of what we do isn't measured by the respect we get from our peers. I can honestly say I couldn't identify a single pulitzer prize winning picture, but I can vividly recall a picture of me sitting in my toy box holding onto a car wheel pretending to drive around the garden. The importance of what we do is measured by the impact it has on the families we work for.

Yesterdays newspaper is todays chip paper, the brochure for a new product or service fades within a couple of years. I can guarantee families will still be looking at your pictures in decades.

It makes you think doesn't it? What we do and offer isn't expensive - it's priceless.

Just a few pictures for a small personal project we've been working on this week, as if we didn't have enough on! Along the same lines as the Book Project, but with a distinct Arts and Sports theme, the project aims to portray children/young people from the region participating in their "passion" - be it ballet, cricket, playing the trumpet or gymnastics - to name but a few in a location showcasing the beautiful Yorkshire landscapes we know and love.

So arts, sports and culture but in "different" locations. See what you think....







This is more from the complete shoots apologies in advance at the small picture size - it's the best we can manage when uploading to the blog!




Our thanks to "the cast" (in order of appearance): Natalie, Sam, Chris, Danielle and Rebecca. The pictures were shot on location at Plumpton (sometimes called Plompton)Rocks and Hunmanby Gap.