A week in the life of a top British Film Photographer (who’s also my big sister!)

There are many places to draw inspiration in life. One of them for me is my big sister.

Like me, she took the plunge of leaving a life with a regular pay check behind to follow her dreams.

Quitting her job as a lawyer in London, she decided to make a career out of one of her biggest passions – film photography.

It has been amazing over the last few years to see the stunning images she has captured, and to see her become more established in the industry.

This is a short film she created using Premier Pro to capture a week in the life of a film photographer. It doubly amazes me that she has made this momentous career move whilst also having a baby. My nephew Noah is now 2 and features a lot in the video, partly just because he’s such a cute model (not a biased auntie talking I promise!)

I’m just getting into the world of making mini videos. The one I made from my time on music cruise Cayamo was done on iMovie (http://youtu.be/RE7Z5AVFbxU) and I’ve also heard of a program called “Vine” that takes 3 seconds video clips that can be edited into something cool.

I’m looking forward to doing some more experimenting!

If anyone has any other cool programs you like to use for this kind of thing, I’d love to hear about them!

For more information about Stephanie Callaghan-Smith’s photography, visit http://www.callaghansmithportraits.com

The countdown to “Life In Full Colour” begins!

 

Blog #1 – BEST YEAR 

My album, Life in Full Colour, is going to be fully released on May 1st!

It feels fantastic to be able to say that, as it’s been a long journey that has brought me here. Some of you may be wondering why I’m announcing that the album is out on May 1st when you’re already listening to your copy! Well, to begin with I made the album available only at live shows and through a very limited preview order from my website. Because I am a completely independent musician putting the album out as a limited release for a while has allowed me to raise some money and spend some time building the team I need to get the record out there. So the good news is that now I’m getting a lot of press coverage, my single Best Year is getting a lot of air play across the USA and I’m gigging all the time. The best news is that from May 1st Life in Full Colour will be available on iTunes, Amazon, my website, live shows…everywhere you can think of!

So thanks a million to all of you super keen music fans who bought Life in Full Colour at a show, as I really could not do this without you, and for those of you who don’t have your copy yet, there won’t be long to wait now!

Leading up to the release date I am going to write a short blog about each of the songs on the album, why they were chosen and the stories and inspiration behind them.

And thinking about my earlier mention of journeys brings me nicely onto song number one – “Best Year”. This song was written about 6 months after moving to the US from London. It was a big decision to “fly across an ocean, move 1,000 miles from home” as the song says. It was definitely not easy leaving friends and family behind and taking the plunge to start my music career over in the USA, not knowing how successful I would be or what welcome I would get.

Thankfully I couldn’t have asked for more. The welcome here has been absolutely amazing and I have been encouraged and supported by everyone I have met along the way.

I began recording my album after moving here in 2010 and “Best Year” was one of the later songs we recorded. I was making a short list of all the songs that would end up on the finished record and knew that I wanted to include a few more uptempo songs to balance out the overall sound. “Best Year” almost wrote itself really – there were so many different emotions flying around at the time – excitement, anticipation, being homesick, wondering about the future, and an over whelming feeling of freedom after making the decision to follow my dream.

“Best Year” is always a great song to sing live because it has such a positive energy. I can feel it going right through me and into the audience. I love hearing people’s stories after the show about how the song has inspired them to take a risk on something or follow a dream of their own.

That line about ‘move a thousand miles from home’ is interesting to me now. When I wrote it a thousand miles seemed like a huge distance, now I’m getting used to the scale of touring the USA, I sometimes travel a thousand miles in a day when I’m starting or ending a tour.

I think that “Best Year” is going to be like a little time capsule for me – each time I listen to it, even years from now, it will always bring me back to the moment when I realised you’re only given one life and you’ve got to take every opportunity to make the most of it!

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“Best Year” is the first single from the album “Life in Full Colour”. It is currently available as a free download from www.noisetrade.com/callaghan