Whenever we have a day off we try to make the most of it and take a trip out with the family, so Evelyne’s birthday was no exception. The weather wasn’t great so we opted for the National Sea Life Centre in Birmingham where we introduced Elliott to a few creatures he hadn’t met before.

One of Elliott’s favourite parts was the Hall Of Mirrors..

But he loved the weird and wonderful new creatures he met just as much..

The Sea Life Centre is somewhere I’ve wanted to visit for years and I wasn’t disappointed. It was fun to watch Elliott as he witnessed so many creatures for the first time. He may appreciate it more when he’s a bit older but we still had a great day out…

Happy Birthday Evelyne. I love you…

It was a really great wedding with a lovely bunch of people and Liz & Simon are the kind of people we could easily be good friends with. The weather was glorious and in the evening the light was just perfect. Here are a few images from their day…

Simon did himself proud with a little gift left for Liz as she got ready… from Tiffany’s no less!

After the ceremony we headed down to the pier in Torquay for some more unusual shots. I love doing shoots like this!

Enjoy!

The reception venue was 45 minutes drive away nearer to Plymouth..

OK kids, strike a pose!

In October Liz and Simon are off traveling the globe for 12 whole months. I’m SO jealous!! They’ll have such a good time. Thanks for having me at your wedding guys and for making my birthday fun even though I was working

So here it is… The new studio! Still some tweaks to add but it’s looking pretty good already I think..

Evelyne has obviously been a MASSIVE help making the studio look so good. I don’t know what I’d do without her. She really is the BEST!

This man helped a lot too.. Thanks Lee.

The legend that is Chris Unitt..

This is where I’m sat right now…

Following the launch we headed out to celebrate my 40th (!) birthday. My birthday was actually May 10th but, as I had a wedding that day, we decided to have a double celebration on the 4th. First we went for an amazing dinner at Cielo. Seriously, if you live anywhere near Birmingham and you like Italian food, make a point of trying it out. The staff there looked after all 22 of us brilliantly and even went to the effort of making a great cake!

Good food, good company and more champagne.. What else d’ya need?

I’ll be shooting Steve & Steph’s wedding in NEW YORK in December…

Lisa & Roland master the cheesy linked-arms drinking pose..

Tony in rare “Devil Horns” pose…

My nephew Miles gets my brother Paul with the “rabbit ears”!

Rosie drove up from London just to be there. What a star!

Thanks again to everyone who made it out to help us celebrate. We had a great day. Thanks also to Emily & Stef for looking after Elliott for us.

Cheers!

Back in the world of the other Steve Gerrard things have been kinda relaxed and non-work related allowing time for a little distraction on Facebook . For those not familiar with Facebook, it’s a social networking site allowing you to interact and keep up with friends as well as personalizing your profile page with applications, personal info, photos and more. There are plenty of useless and somewhat annoying applications on there (but these can be removed or ignored) and many are extremely useful too, so yesterday I took time to add a few more applications of my own as well as deleting around a hundred so-called “friends”. These were people that had asked to be my “friend”, often due to my DJ career, when in actual fact I hardly knew them and in some cases had no idea who they were. So I decided a cyber-cull was required so that my “friends” really are friends.

As well as Facebook, there are various other networking sites that I’m a part of. These include Last FM, Linked In and of course MySpace. Each is different and useful in its own way but these days it seems that Facebook has become by far the most popular. I have to be careful not to spend too much time on these sites. They are demons for time sappage and I like to be more productive with my time these days.

Friday saw Elliott’s first meeting with Santa and, unlike some other kids in attendance, he remained cool and collected and somewhat unimpressed by the man in the red suit. The party was a fancy dress event for kids held at the local primary school. Elliott dug out his smurf costume (Evelyne wore her Smurfette costume too) and we guaranteed some photos to embarrass him with when he’s older..

Last night the three of us met up with Kerry & Dave from Fused Mag for a great Thai meal at the Bartons Arms in Birmingham. It’s a great old pub which has played host to Charlie Chaplin, Laurel & Hardy as well as Ozzy Osbourne. Not at the same time of course!

Today I’m off to shoot a family who won a competition for a free family portrait session and a framed print. It’s pretty cold out so it’ll be interesting to see if I can coax them outdoors for the photos. Then tonight I’m DJing for the first time in a while at Island Bar in Birmingham.