She blinded me with flash photography.

My husband, Andy, won't mind me admitting this but for the first couple of years I did feel like a single mum. We were like the proverbial ships in the night, only grunting at each other after our equally tiring days. Our sole purpose in life at this time was to keep our baby safe, secure and fed (not in that order). My choice of breastfeeding meant that Autumn was dependent on Mummy mostly and the fact that I could stay at home that first year, with the cushion of redundancy payment helped hugely. I've always been a creative type and would sit with feet up, boobs out and baby attached daydreaming about this idea and that. Some of my ex-colleagues would say that's how they remembered me at work, without the baby of course. Meanwhile, Andy was under immense pressure to work long hours to pay all the bills because, as mentioned in my first blog, that money soon burnt holes in both our pockets.

Years passed and bringing up baby got easier - they say the first 6 months are the hardest, with worn-out parents getting little from the experience (sorry to say this but it's true). Rewind to the day before Autumn's birth and I made a vow. Well two actually. One was to be the best mum ever and, if I was lucky enough, to breastfeed as long as physically possible (2 years and 2 teeth later, if you're interested). The other? To document our little girl's life through pictures. This latter vow was a personal wish for Autumn to have more (and better) memories of growing up than I do. I only have a handful of photos and sadly own only one of me as a baby. In this digital era I count myself lucky that I am able to take so many photos and make so many memories for Autumn.

Having used my lovely Nikon D50 to take some beautiful, well I am biased, photos of my one and only I realised that I had a knack for capturing something and so I decided overnight to become a professional photographer (I'm laughing at this whilst I type). Never been one to concentrate on one thing, nor enjoy courses, revision, you name it I won't read it. Anyway, Hevco Creative Photography was launched. Buoyed by the fact that I'd won a recent Facebook photo competition I began to think this was going to be the 'It' I'd been waiting, and clearly was destined, for. I was going to make a significant contribution to the household income. To further my chances of becoming successful I created a brand (I'm good at that) and set up my first Facebook page. (https://www.facebook.com/hevcocreative)

About this time Autumn had been attending a wonderful playgroup at a local church. The lovely ladies there encouraged me to set up a portrait shoot in a back room. Now my camera is good but not that good. So with the help of a very dear friend with a very dear(!) camera/flash/lens I took part in my first, and to date only, children's photo shoot (see test shot of my lovely girl above). This was partly successful had it not been for my nutty mother-in-law who chose to walk in front of shot just as I'd been able to settle my final 3yr old subject. A scouse mother-in-law is not to be questioned even when potentially ruining your career before it's actually began. Funny now but at the time I was furious!

My short-lived career as portrait photographer is over, for now. But my love of concept photography is always never far from my mind. I've since entered other competitions and either won or been short-listed. I enjoy updating my Facebook page and will eventually, honest, get around to advertising my gallery and hopefully sell some of my work.

There's just one more thing I need to do and that's find the time to back-up the 11,000-and-counting photos already on my hard drive. I can't do everything. But I'll give it a go.