The McGuinness Family

I have a feeling that this family will crop up alot on this blog. For a start they are family! But they live across that mote into that other land they call “The North Island”…so 8 months on from Ciara’s last photo shoot, she can not only hold her own head up now, but crawl, spit and laugh like crazy! She just keeps getting bigger and bigger and shes not going to stop here!

She is a bundle of joy… but NO I’m NOT clucky! Just making that clear! lol

We got to spend a week with these guys and I gotta say… 1 week just isnt long enough! MOVE TO CHRISTCHURCH GUYS!

Starting out…

The few wedding photographers I’ve spoken with have told me their story of how they got into wedding photography. They seemed (being the operative word) to have just fallen into it without trying. One person asked if they would shoot their wedding one day followed by another, followed by another and slowly a business was built. The power of word of mouth is underestimated by all.

I have a full time job. And it has absolutely nothing to do with photography. I am a carer in a home for 10 intellectually disabled adults ranging from Down Syndrome to Autism. I’ve been doing this for 4 years, so about the same time I got into photography. I left this job to go traveling and was welcomed back with open arms when I came home. They granted me 2 and half months leave for my trip to India. The hours are fantastic, I’m a night owl so I do evening shifts, but it’s so lenient to change shifts and get time off if needed.
They completely support outside work goals as well, so needless to say I think I’ve been treated very well in this line of work.

However, as much as I appreciate this job I don’t want to be doing this forever.
June 2009 is when I took the step and started promoting my photography. I took the step to make this into my way of life.
It started with a simple web page through freewebs.com. That wouldn’t serve me as far as blogging goes, so I swapped to wordpress.com, where I’ve remained.
I’ve tried Flicker, Redbubble, Twitter and Facebook, but it was all too much to keep up with. So excuse the pun, I gave Flicker the flick . And Twitter is hooked up to Facebook, so when I update my status on my Heather Ellis Photography Fan Page, it updates Twitter as well. Easy peasy.

Now this brings me to why I’m blabbing on about this. As much as I’ve been trying to “promote” myself (and others as well, so thanks to anyone who puts out a good word…I love you all!) I think I’ve done a poor job in saying that I DO WEDDING PHOTOGRAPHY. I’ll be honest with you, I don’t have ALOT of experience. But I WANT to do more. I love weddings! I love all the little details especially put in and thought over. The ciaos is exciting and its great being able to be amongst it. I want to be apart of your day! Everyone has to start somewhere and it makes me think of those ads for jobs where they want someone ‘with experience’. But my question is… How can you get experience if nobody will hire you?!

I do Weddings, I do Portraits for you and your family and I sell my Travel and Landscape images in Prints and on Canvas.

I hope I can be apart of your life, capturing any moment, big or little.

Love Heather xoxox

Good Times

Well… its been a very busy and hectic weekend full of fun!
Doug and I had an Engagement Celebrations in the form of us cooking an Indian meal (and an Italian dessert) for 23 people in our family from scratch I might add! And I have to tell you that Doug and I don’t do alot of cooking past toastie sandwiches! My marmite on toast is pretty epic as well!
So cooking 4 main dishes and dessert was really putting us in the deep end! But thanks to the help of some people and this wonderful recipe we aquired from Udaipur in India – it was a SUCCESS! Nobody that I know of got Delhi Belly! Yay!

With family visiting from the North Island and Sydney, housewarmings and engagements to celebrate its been a great weekend of tight kinships, red wine, cheese and the discovery for me of the most intensly fun game ever – Mafia!

Lots of Love

Best Friend

Now that I’m back to my Mac Book Pro, I’m going to be blogging like crazy!

Just a quick one now compared to my novels about our trip! I wouldn’t blame you if you didn’t get through it all!

Anyway, ok, so I know I’ve probably said it a million times. But who wouldn’t be excited to keep announcing the fact they are marrying their best friend!
Yes I, Heather Michelle Ellis will marry Douglas Martin Richardson April 2011.

And heres the gorgeous ring to prove it!

Please feel free to put a comment, I’d love to know the people visiting my sight.

Engagement party this weekend, moving house Monday and we’ve just be given some very questionable 70′s style brown flowery cooking pots that when I saw them it gave my stomach a good ab workout from laughing so hard. But beggars can’t be choosers! We will take them! lol. Thanks heaps future Mother in-law!

Heather xxx

Trekking in Nepal

Hey Everyone,

I’m so pleased to FINALLLLLYYYY be able to share our experiences trekking in the Himalayas with you.

We started in Nepal on Feb 22^nd, arriving in Kathmandu after a very long trip at midnight.
The kind bag assisant at the Kathmandu Guesthouse carried our bags to the 4^th floor and got us some water…I was sooo tired, I wanted to give the guy a tip but we had nothing smaller than a 20 so I stiffed the guy completely…in the morning I realised that 20 rupee is a mere 40cents. I felt pretty bad!!!

On Feb 24^th we met our Intrepid Guide and tour group for the Trek to Base Camp of Everest.
All men and just the 1 girl- me. A good group of Aussies and NZer’s.
Feb 25^th we took a very early flight over the Himalayan Mountain range into the shortest runway strip ever, on the side of a mountain to a place called Lukla. The wings were clipping sides of mountains and the plane was a small 12 seater..turbulance frightens me in 737’s or Jumbos, so you can imagine how it would feel in such a small plane.
1^st day was a small 3 hour trek past small villages, children with no pants on, schools that Sir Edmund Hillary funded to Phakding. There we met a group of British who had just come down the mountain, and too be honest they scared the living crap out of me. They whinged that is was -25 degrees at the top, that their bottles froze at nights next to their bodies and that batteries were bound to die.(that one scared me, because what if I got to the top and I couldn’t take any photos because my batteries were dead from the cold-just so you know from there on in I kept them snug in my bra cup and in wolleen socks between our mattress at night.lol.)

Day 2: We acended to the mountains biggest township called Namche Bazaar… I’m not going to lie to you… I hate uphill…it was a little hard. Here we stayed at 3480m for 2 nights with day 3 being an acclimatisation day. On this day we acended up the hill to 3800m and then back down. This was our first view of Mount Everest.

Day 4: From Namchee Bazaar we took a massive 7 hour ascend up some pretty steep hills to Portse, 3810m. This was exhausting but you just feel yourself refusing to get tired, which was good because there was still alongggg way to go. In Portse was my first wash since Kathmandu. It was cold water out of a tin bowl in a small tin shack.lol.
We saw Everest again today.

Day 5: Portse to Dingboche, 4410m. Dingboche was one of my FAVOURITE places, made especially special by the fact that that evening it started snowing and it snowed right throughout the night. Waiting for us when we awoke was 6 inches of the softest, most powdery snow which featured in making a winter wonderland. Lucky for us this was our 2^nd and final acclimitisation day, so we trek through the village and up 400m to the Ama Dablam Base Camp. It was tricky going up, a bit slippery, but reaching the top was amazing! We had snowball fights, I made a snow angel and the view of surrounding mountains was unbelievable!
This snowfall also made a difference to the landscape in the days to come.

Day 6: Dingboche to Loboche, 4910. Well over the highest point Doug and I have ever been, no altitude sickness what-so-ever which was great, but a couple of the other guys did have constant headaches.
I asked our guide Ratna what ‘boche’ meant as alot of towns end in boche – Loboche, Dingboche, Tengboche, Pengboche etc. The best answer I got was “a man sent his sons to each town…. So I’m guessing there was once brothers named Lo, Ding, Teng, Pong and they set up the townships … lol.
From Loboche we climbed another 100m and we could see the point of Everest Base Camp and the massive glacier that runs right to it. The landscape at this point we are right in the mountains, snow covered land, it was breath taking and the weather stunning!!!

Day 7: This day was a longggg day. We made it to Gorak Shep, our final tea house, 5140m.  And then to our intended destination that was The Base Camp for Mount Everest. This was another favourite day. Not neccisarilly for Base Camp itself but for the walk to it. With white mountains and blue skies, the glaciers were massive and phenominal and it felt like the mountains were an ampi theatre which was breath taking. We could see Everest nice and clearly and I didn’t realise how closed in the mountain was. I guess that’s why it took them so long to realise that it was the worlds tallest mountain.

That night Doug and I stood outside and Doug said to look up… a million and one stars filled the clear night sky, it was quiet, there was no technology, there was a faint sight of the mountains in the nighttime and it was obvious that this was as perfect as a moment can be!

Day 8: Wow… the big march up Kala Patthar, at 5550m we were warned that there is 50% less oxygen. I’d agree with that… I was racing up the mountain against the sunrise which comes perfectly over Mt Everest… but at 5500m I was slowing down rapidly..I could barely breathe and at that moment I thanked above for the fact I don’t have asthma! It was hard to enjoy Everest from such a wonderful angle considering I couldn’t blimen well breathe! Ironically I’d specfically saved my batteries for this moment and when I got up there I was a huffy cry baby who didn’t wanna take a photo or do anything. Not to mention it was the coldest we had had at -10 degrees. Doug, nicknamed “The Snow Leopard” didn’t have any probs.

What I haven’t mentioned yet is that we went at the perfect time. The tracks were practically empty and all tea houses we had to ourselves. Coming back down we noticed a lot more trekkers being it is March. Aparently people barely touch Feb, which was great for us. In the busy season, a walk that should take 4-5 hours can take up to 7, 8 or even 9 hours waiting for Jopaks,Yaks and other trekkers to pass.

Anyway so we trekked up Kala Patthar and then trooped onto Orsho, 4190m, man did it feel good to be decending. As we saw people coming up we couldn’t help but do a little chuckle…like haha your going u and we arent.lol. One of the guys said and I qoute “On an island holiday you pity the people leaving and on a mountain trekking holiday, at the end you pity the people arriving!”

Our guides were sooooooo awesome! Indra was the main, he looked like a cheeky monkey, such a great guy and then there was Ratna who started every trip with “Jam, Honey, Peanut Butter” – “Jam Jam’ means ‘lets go’ in Nepalise.
Then there was Ashok, 22 years old, nicknamed ‘Fabio’ best looking man in Nepal.lol. I wont deny that, however I havent met every man in Nepal.

Orsho-Namche, then Namche to Phakding. I got some gorgeous shots of some kids in Phakding. Although I wonder about the parenting, one little girl was running with scissors, two others were playing with plastic bags fully covering their heads.

Our final night in Lukla we drank Everest beer, played pool with cocktails, had Starbucks lol and all the porters, guides and team had Dal Bhat with our hands. Dal Bhat is Rice, curry poppa doms and lentil soup. OMG sooooo good after you’ve been living in soup for almost 2 weeks!

We had the most amazing time in Nepal and would recommend to anyone, especially the trekking side of it. I’d love to do the Gokyo Lakes and Annapurna Circuit some other time…but for now I reckon I have Kilimanjaro in my sights… I wonder what Doug thinks to this?..

Heather xxx

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