Mikey & Mia the macaws

On a beautiful, sunny morning in my favourite Wimbledon park a few weeks ago I met Nimal and Claire and their wonderful pet macaw Mikey.

Mikey definitely stops you in your tracks. He’s a large, tropical parrot and not what you’d expect to see in the park at 9am.

I explained to musicians Nimal and Claire that I’d love to take photos of them with Mikey at home. They very kindly invited me round for tea a few days later and let me capture their lives at home with not only Mikey but new arrival Mia the macaw too.

The following week I joined them in the park where I watched Mikey once again enjoying a gorgeous Autumn morning flying through the trees.

Mikey and Mia are blue and gold macaws and can live for over 50 years old. As well as being super bright birds they are also YouTube stars! Their bond with Nimal and Claire is beautiful to see.

All images © Katie Collins for Empics

Reading material (for babies)

We discovered one of our baby's favourite books in a small West Sussex village called Steyning.  Tucked away at the bottom of the main shopping street is a white house which is actually an independent bookshop - Steyning Bookshop. At the back of the shop is a treasure trove of children's books and stylish greetings cards. This shop made me long for the days of high street bookshops as so many independents have disappeared due to the boom in online buying. It was at this bookshop that I spotted Space Walk. It's a simple hardback book comprising bold shapes and colours exploring the planets of the solar system. Even though I knew our daughter was too little to understand, I decided to buy the book anyway and to start reading it to her. It's been a huge hit. She spots it across the room and her eyes light up when we open the first page.  I have since bought this book for other friends with babies as we just love it so much. We have a collection of books which we read to her to get her in the mood for sleep. Here are some of our favourites: 

Space Walk - Salina Yoon

Deep Sea Dive - Salina Yoon

Goodnight Moon - Margaret Wise Brown

Where's Spot - Eric Hill

Not Now Bernard - David McKee

Playing dress-up and pumpkin cooking

We are fully getting into the Halloween spirit in our household, with our almost 8 month-old daughter having already attended her very first Halloween party a week ago! A quick dash to Sainsbury's and I picked up this season's hot Halloween accessories - a spider headband and cobweb tights! We set up a mini studio space in our attic bedroom and did a little photo shoot. What I had not anticipated was each time the spider headband was placed on her head, it was immediately removed and inspected suspiciously,  making it a race against time to get each shot!

I also set myself a challenge this year - to buy a pumpkin and cook with it. Pumpkin carving is not my thing.  I have never bought a pumpkin and therefore never carved one. So this could get messy...

I picked my baby's nap time to do my baking in the hope that she would stay dozing for at least an hour while I braved my pumpkin cooking mission. I don't think I was fully prepared for how tough pumpkins are to cut into. It felt like a full bicep workout as I chiselled away at the firm core. Another thing I was not prepared for - SO many seeds tangled inside a web of orange stringy flesh. Apparently the seeds are good roasted, so after cleaning them with cold water,  I placed them on foil in a baking tray and sprinkled them with olive oil and coarse salt.  FoodNetwork.com  offers a choice of different ways to jazz up your pumpkin seeds and I opted for the Indian spices suggestion adding Garam Masala halfway through the 50 minutes oven time. I then added a handful of sultanas once removed from the oven and voila! - a great, healthy snack without wasting the pumpkin seeds!

Pumpkin seeds with Indian spices

My next stop - a website called Wholefood Simply. After developing gestational diabetes while pregnant, I have taken a big look at my diet and hugely reduced my intake of refined sugar. This website has incredible recipes which cater for my dietary needs. The photography is just beautiful too. I chose the Pumpkin and Almond bread to try baking. The warm comforting aromas of cinnamon, vanilla and Chinese five spice quickly filled the house and instantly made it feel like a slippers on, cosy up by the fire, lazy Sunday afternoon. This bread takes about an hour to bake and is delicious with extra thick double cream. 

With my pumpkin well and truly carved to pieces and at my husband's request, I made one more Halloween foodie treat - dark chocolate Rice Krispie cakes. In a bid to reduce the sugar content, I used very dark chocolate, over 85% cocoa, instead of milk chocolate and Rice Malt Syrup was used in place of golden syrup. All you need is:

90g Rice Krispies

60g butter

100g dark chocolate

3 tablespoons of rice malt syrup.

Melt the butter and dark chocolate, add the syrup, mix with the cereal, place in paper cases and leave to cool.

These Rice Krispie cakes are sticky and melt in the mouth and perfect with a cup of tea - bliss! Happy Halloween!

Finding creative inspiration at home

I recently wrote a blog post about how I have been learning online during my baby's nap time. Now we have a loose routine (of sorts) and she sleeps for a couple of hours in the early afternoon, it means a few times a week I get to work on photography ideas, my blog and my website - I generally get to put my creative hat on!

As a new mum to a seven month old baby, I may not have endless hours in the day to visit museums, go to film screenings or devour whole books in a day but there are other things that I do to keep my mind active and find inspiration for my work. I read tons of magazines, mainly fashion and I love the ideas and concepts behind fashion shoots. I quite often rip out pages and keep them for future reference. It could be how a prop is used, or how two colours work together, or maybe the camera angle. They are all ideas that influence me and my work. I also watch lots of films - including loads of documentaries. I recently watched a film called Time Zero, all about the last days of Polaroid film. It inspired me to dust off the two Polaroid cameras I have and order some film from The Impossible Project to test out for a future blog post idea.

People sometimes ask me what is the best way to get into photography and learn about taking pictures. I still believe the answer is practice, practice, practice. I'm constantly setting myself little projects and challenges in order to keep my photography fresh. Sometimes I pick a theme and go off and take shots based around that idea, or I may experiment with food photography or play around with my macro lens. For me it's all about learning and improving.

Another way to help get the creative juices flowing is through online courses. The last one I completed was How to Build a Successful Creative Blog by April Bowles-Olin and it was a huge eye-opener. It has not only given me a whole new way of thinking about my blog but it also encouraged me to totally revamp my website.

April is back on November 10th with another class called Create Digital Products That Sell While You Sleep. As I discovered with the blogging course, April is great at serving up new, exciting ideas and working them into your business. I'd love to hear more from her about selling photography online, advice on creating downloadable e-books, blogger case studies, as well as successful marketing strategies for selling digital products. Most of all, I know April will make the class fun! Here's more:

Are you ready to make your creative work more lucrative, stable, and sustainable in the long-term? Join April Bowles-Olin for an introduction to digital products and how they can enhance your creative business. This course will show you how to produce and position viable products for generating multiple revenue streams and passive income. RSVP right here to watch it live and get access to the workbook for FREE. This post is part of the Create Digital Products blog tour.

A taste of Autumn

As we turn the corner into October, it abruptly feels like Autumn has arrived. Not only is it frostier and crisper in the air,  but the Autumn leaves, a mesh of warm, vibrant colours are already scattered on the ground. The mix of colours and textures makes for a great photo backdrop, so I took the opportunity to head to the local park for the first Autumn photos of the year with our daughter in her sunny yellow fisherman's jacket from Gap (I want one myself!). She's mesmerised by the crunching sounds of the leaves, clinging on to any she can get hold of, not keen to let go.

The sudden cooler temperature has also meant freshening up her baby wardrobe with Winter pieces. I particularly love this cute Love motif jumper from baby Zara (below) which is super soft and fleecy. The checked dress with Peter Pan collar, from Fred & Florence at Tesco, will be perfect with cream tights and ideal for Christmas time.

As the seasons change, I've also noticed our garden offering up new and interesting colours and shapes. I discovered a Japanese Quince bush with its first servings of fruit for the year. I know next to nothing about Quince and what I might be able to make with it,  but look forward to researching and finding some interesting recipes to try.