One Saturday a group of women met in a London space to jump around, proclaiming their love and support for one another and themselves.  And I was there to join in!  In fact, photographer Sarah Shattock and I leapt at the opportunity to capture their energy and find a little bit more out about their plans.

Selina Barker and Vicki Burtt have been drumming up attention for their new project – PROJECT LOVE – where they encourage women to try a new approach to dating and relationships – including that most valuable of all – our relationship with ourselves.

It’s a cliché but so true: women often put themselves under immense pressure to achieve in all aspects of life – including love.  The Project Love crew encourage us to be a little kinder to ourselves.  In developing positive habits, we can very naturally build on our emotional intelligence and improve our interactions with others*.

*Others may or may not include that hot stud from across the office/road/supermarket aisle.

It makes total sense.

Their ideas have already captured the attention of Psychologies magazine and The Huffington Post – so Selina and Vicki were on the lookout for photographs to illustrate their online content.

They invited a group of women who’ve supported the project so far and arrived armed with silver balloons, sparkling wine and 70s disco.  There was little left to do other than line ’em up and throw props at them as they paraded their joyful faces in front of the lens.

It proved to be an inspiring and very fun shoot.  DO check out the Project Love website for more information.

Admission: A number of helium balloons were harmed in the making of this album.

August 2015.  It was a three day adventure; I wasn’t entirely sure what to expect.  On Wednesday lunchtime I set off alone in my little silver Renault through relentless rain.  I’d not long had my driver’s licence so this turned out to be my first solo motorway trip.  I drove with my shoulders hunched over the steering wheel, squinting through the storm, steeling my nerves with a continuous supply of Murray Mints.  It seemed to work – that and the occasional gasped swearword…

Sweet wrappers collected on the seat next to me, around my recently acquired Canon 5D mk II camera.  And what a great opportunity to take it for its first run.  I was booked to cover Fairport Convention’s Cropredy festival for BBC Oxford.

I prayed the rain would stop soon.  It would be my first time shooting from the photographers’ pit at an event.

Exciting!

Ok so it WAS exciting and all – the torrential rain even calmed down a bit – but things got off to a shaky start.

There was an embarrassing moment early on where I misunderstood instructions.

A band was already playing the main stage, so I gripped my camera, climbed some wet stairs and bounced joyously in my wellies onto the stage from behind… before security gripped my shoulders and firmly escorted me from the area.

The pit was fine but the stage was off limits.  I could see the backstage team eyeing me up, trying to gauge whether I was:

a)    Well sneaky

b)    Well dumb

I was actually:

c)     Mortified

I think they could see this and let me off, warily.  It could’ve so easily ended before it even began.

I soon got up to speed.  The festival has taken place every August since 1978, so I was 37 years late to the party… but it didn’t matter.  The performers were enthusiastic and warm and the staff welcoming – despite my initial transgression.

I bobbed about singing along and photographing in the pit – learning quickly to never go anywhere without a pair of trusty earplugs.  (Turns out even folk music gets loud by the stage.)  The crowd beamed at everyone from behind the barriers.

Backstage security and fellow photographers took it in turns to relay to me the history of the festival and the stories behind many of the performers.  There were tales of alcoholism and incredible talent and arguments never resolved and DEATH.  It was a brilliant window into the world of British folk music – a world I was previously pretty oblivious to.

Many people involved with the festival take a real pleasure in being a part of it, leaving their day jobs to volunteer, to escape to this family in a field.  It felt incredibly free – just me and my camera, photographing people, chatting to people, adapting to the great outdoors, taking in each hour at a time.  For the first couple of days it rained intermittently, but it really didn’t matter.  I became inseparable from my trusty Dunlop wellies and my hair inflated to twice its normal size.

The crowd’s a fair bit older than at your average festival; I have never seen so many mobility scooters at a public event.  Obvs in the wet weather I nabbed one to put my new driving skills to use.

(They accelerate faster than you’d think.  Also the terrain was rugged in places so I screamed.  A bit.)

But when the sun came out in the evenings – it was glorious.  The mud dried fast.  The crowd laid out on rugs, drunk on real ale, nostalgia and sunshine.  It all felt incredibly… British.

This was the moment I got the shot featured above.  A girl blowing bubbles in golden light, before the main stage.  A chap came over to me hour later, saying he’d seen me photographing and asking ‘did you get it?  Did you get it?’  I must’ve looked crazy, I remember being utterly mute but ridiculously hopping excited.

It was my favourite shot of the festival; one of those moments when you see the photo in your mind’s eye before you’ve captured it.

And ‘click’.  It’s done, I have it, it’s mine.

I’ll leave you with that and other photos from Cropredy; an unforgettable few days.

What do you get if you cross singer and guitarist Steve Ferbrache with a team of blues musicians?

Achievement!

Steve and the band are dear friends of mine who put on a fantastic show, so  allow me a little plug for them.

At one gig they were adopted by a tres glam hen do – beautiful young ladies in 1920s attire who insisted on booking them on the SPOT for the forthcoming wedding.  2 weeks later, there they were, on stage, playing their signature Rhythm & Blues for the ladies and their fellas, friends and family.

Their website is here: http://www.steveandtheachievers.com/

In pictures, this is how they do it:

Some people just make things happen.  This… is Tom.

He’s looking pretty smug in this pic after a successful Saturday night.  Tom wanted to put on a festival a few years ago, and so he scoped out what he’d need to do.  And did it.  The result is WildLive, a teeny tiny festival that’s been running for a few years, with us, our mates, music, guaranteed sunshine and rain and rainbows every single year.  Without fail. We use it as an opportunity to let loose in a field for a few days, eat bbq’d food and dance around like mad things.  Last year there were events: live music, the quad bike obstacle course, the poi challenge, the Not In Hill Carnival… and many happy smiling people, like these…

The boys played a stormer.  Their last gig, after 8 years of the band.  It was late 2004 when two of them and the P1000 (Piet the drummer) launched the band down The 12 Bar on Denmark Street, London.

I just asked Tim why Piet was called the P1000.  He eyed me up suspiciously, said it was a Terminator 2 reference, and that I should never write ANYTHING about popular culture.  But I digress.

Tim, my old friend, and new boyfriend at the time, was singer.  Adam, his oldest school friend, bass.  And drummer Piet was a sound engineer they’d met on London’s acoustic circuit.  Because of the stage setup we couldn’t see the tops of their heads, but that didn’t matter.  All our mates danced around with pints of beer like mentalists and it was great.

The band changed, grew.  The boys spent years developing their sound, enlisting Tom and Andy, the brass section.  Leon took over from the P1000 – he was the only man who could.  Together they played festivals, sent their EPs to radio stations, sold CDs at gigs.  I saw how much work it was – practices and lugging equipment and plugging gigs and recording over and over.  But I could see it was worth it after each gig.  Tim would walk over, pupils dilated, smiling sheepishly, T-shirt almost too drenched with sweat to hug, almost…

He had the hunger to take the band to the top.  He planned for no other future.  It’s what he’d always wanted to do.

So I thought the last gig would be a sad thing.  But it wasn’t.  This music had been the soundtrack to many major events in our twenties; house parties, gigs, festivals, weddings – it was a celebration of the good times.  Friends old and new, family, everyone was there to share it.  It was great.

They never got a record deal.  But they did fulfil musical ambitions solo.  They found meaning in their day jobs.  They made homes with the women they loved.  They had daughters.  They all got what they wanted.  And for that night on stage, they were what they’d always been: the band, rocking out with their friends, just like every other time before.

I took pictures of the gig.  Here they are.  The band are called Running Club.