After a good trip up to Scotland and a busy couple of days I took things easier today and spent a couple of hours in the office phoning around a few clients and booking up a couple of photo shoots. I then ran the first two projects from Scotland through DXO (the RAW image conversion software I use for architectural work) and that was about it. The rest of the day was spent dog walking and looking after Harry (my little boy). I did spot a really stylish wedding dress in the charity shop in Winslow which I bought for £30. This might sound odd but I'm going to do a shoot on Saturday with one of my regular models Amy for a Limo hire company at Horwood House and she'll look great in it in the back of the Limo. When were finished we're going to head down to the old disused railway line at Swanbourne station. I think we'll get some stylish shots with an unusual twist using the wedding dress and we'll end up ripping it up or throwing paint on it or something. I'll post some pictures when I get them finished.

In terms of commissioned work things are really getting busy now and the rest of February is pretty much fully booked which is great news - we haven't been booked up this far in advance for a while so I'm sure the economy is on the up again - hooray!!.

I've got quite a few models asking me to photograph them in the studio which is a good sign that our studio work is getting noticed. We've launched a competition in the local Style magazine this month with a 4 hour photo shoot as the prize and this should also help to spread the word. If I can get some more product work too that would be superb and I'm hoping that a new flick book style brochure that we're about to print and send out will help in this respect.

Being a successful photographer is about marketing yourself as much as possible and I can't stress this enough to anyone looking to start a career in photography. I've been too lazy in the past few months in terms of marketing so now I'm really putting in some extra effort to address this. Now we're busy again time is tight but I've learned that marketing is so vital that I've just got to make time to do it.

I've attached a picture from one of the reception areas I photographed on Monday in Glasgow. This was quite a challenge to photograph due to half the area being bright reflective white and the other half black.