It’s tough to be eco conscious in Abu Dhabi – a city where not much grows and so much is imported, with such a heavy reliance on oil, and with such dramatic shortages of water… but we do reasonably well in our family – possibly because I worked in the environmental field for so long pre-kids!  

My kids are pretty eco aware and these are just a small number of things off the top of their heads of what we do to care for Mother Earth – they love to hear me tell stories about her and about how they can help look after her… 

In the spirit of the day I decided to update my own company Eco-Statement and post it here under the “Details” tab for all to see. It may not be much, but it’s my own little baby steps to reduce my own footprint and that of my work…..

What are you doing for Earth Day? I’d love to hear… Kirsty x

Yesterday, for Chinese New Years eve the girls got to dress up in their special qipao’s and perform at a CNY dinner – I had such a proud Mummy moment as they bravely stood in front of 200 strangers and sang away in their second language and received the hugest cheer

I thought in celebration of Chinese New Year it’d be fun to share some pictures from when the girls and I spent a month in Shanghai last summer…..

It’s been a year where I’ve been able to spread my creative wings and take on more editorial and commercial work – and more charity work to help causes important to me.  I’ve worked with truly incredible vendors who have trusted me to showcase their beautiful work.

It was a year where I’ve marvelled at the incredible importance of what I’m blessed enough to do, with photographs, in holding memories for families who have lost loved ones, seeing babies I photographed go off to school and I’ve felt humbled watching the strength of one of my families who are battling cancer with amazing grace.

I get to capture connections, I get to capture emotion, I get to capture precious moments in time, I get to capture realness…. I’ve shed tears, lost hair, lost sleep, not to mention lost my marbles a few times – but I’ve had so many smiles and so much laughter too – I pour my heart and soul into what I do and I can’t thank you all enough for your incredible support, and for opening up your homes and lives to me…

Enjoy some of my favourite moments….

Thank you for an incredible year – I can’t wait to see what 2012 brings….

with love, thanks and blessings and peace for 2012, Kirsty xxxx

Kirsty Larmour Photography will be closed until mid January but don’t go away, there will be an end of year sideshow celebrating all the wonderful things 2011 brought this way…

Until then… Kirsty x

Yet again I had to resort to doing our Christmas cards on the self timer – but we had a lot of fun doing them… here are just a few of the results and a pretty amusing video showing the making of it all….

Hope you enjoyed – have a wonderful holiday season – and see you all in 2012,

Kirsty xxxx

Now I should enter a disclaimer that I do think I must be ever so slightly crazy to mix 2 kids, lots of glitter and 3 expensive DSLR cameras, so use your own judgement on this…..

First of all, take a sheet of card, sprinkle thinly, but across a wide area with glitter, sequins, sparkly shapes etc, etc…. let the kids choose their own – we did one each and then lined them up so we could take pictures of each others

For some simple and pretty bokeh fun and patterns just meter the camera yourself, or put on A mode with the lowest aperture your camera will go to – set it to the middle focus point and hand over for the kids to experiment…

The kids did really well – they loved playing, then using a paintbrush to rearrange their sparkles and taking again….

For some extra fun follow this tutorial on how to get shaped bokeh – we made a lens cover with a heart shape cut out and played some more – super extra pretty…..

They may not be the best most sparkly bokeh pictures ever but I think they’d look great printed for Christmas cards or gift tags – and the girls were so happy with their sparkly pictures.

Have fun…… Kirsty xx

If you’ve followed this blog you’ll have seen something of the UAE and the celebrations of National Day before here and here.

This week has been filled with parties, fly pasts, concerts, singing, dancing, competitions, fireworks and the whole city has taken on an air of celebration.

If you’re on my Facebook page you’ll have seen my girls all dressed up for their school party and getting into the fun of the celebrations.

For us it’s more than a 1 day party – this is the country where one of my children was born and she’s incredibly proud of it – and just as we celebrate Chinese New Year for Saffy who was born in China, we are thrilled to be part of the celebrations for National Day here in the UAE for Indy.

She may not be Emirati, but UAE will always be part of her identity. 

The girls indulged me a little photo shoot for 5 minutes after school while they were still dressed up in their kandora’s and with some of the gifts they’d been given by their Emirati class mates.

These are just outside our flat – we live slap bang in the middle of the most congested area of town – it’s not the prettiest part but we love it here

So, to all my fabulous friends – Happy National Day – hope you’re getting into the spirit of the celebrations (yes, we even have flags on our car!) and enjoying the long weekend… until next time, Kirsty x

We use my instax camera – which is basically a modern day polaroid which produces instant pictures – kids love getting a picture in their hand within seconds of taking it!! Because we may move sometime we decided to use a large canvas to put the pictures on – stuck on with drawing pins.

Some pictures are wacky, us in moustaches or wigs, (lots of the girls with food on their faces!!) some of the girls striking their model poses, some just of them in pretty frocks before a party – whatever they are they’re fun pictures that make us smile! 

It’s set on a huge chair by our front door – it’s our dump it ground – where school bags, handbags, teddies, skipping ropes, colouring books, crayons, lunchboxes and all sorts of junk gets dumped every day – so we pass it lots – and we admire it lots… because after all isn’t that what creating pieces of art is about??? And I know it’s no Van Gough, or Ansel Adams, but it’s art for our family – and that’s what matters after all…..I totally encourage you to go do something similar, create your own piece of family art – no instax camera who cares???? if it’s just pics from your phone printed on your home printer, or a few holiday snaps printed at the local printers it just doesn’t matter – if it celebrates YOU and your family and YOUR fun then do it; create it; celebrate it; and smile at it lots!!!

If you’ve created something similar I’d LOVE to see – post me a link so I can check it out, Kirsty xx

Petite sessions announced on Facebook on Thursday are filling up fast – if there’s enough interest I might schedule one more date too….

Kirsty x

I’ve mentioned before how I love the quietness and calm that spreads across the city during Ramadan – that I love that we get to spend more time together as a family and my hubby is home earlier. It’s a quiet time for my business too with it being summer and so hot outdoors and that allows me to work on some other things. Every year I challenge myself to a Ramadan photo project (although I never actually got around to posting it last year – oops). This year was simple – after the fun of capturing my family on my iphone for my Project 10 last month – I decided to capture snaps of Ramadan on my iphone too. Sometimes it’s fun to just take photography back to its bare bones – where the things that make a great photo are not your about your settings or your camera, but about choice of subject, use of lighting and composition. So, here are some of the things I found interesting this Ramadan, via my iphone…

I have a real love of patterns and food, so pictures of dates and sweets are the kind of things that make me smile. We also went to Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque for iftar as we do every year and every year the building amazes me more. We spent time at the beach where we could hear the prayer call echoing out across the city right as the sun went down. 

I hope you all have a wonderful few days with your families. I’ll be up and running and taking bookings again soon  (with some changes in my fees due to a change in family circumstances – keep on eye on my Facebook page for more on that).

Eid Mubarak to one and all, Kirsty x