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Hello! Welcome to my new revamped website! It might look a little different around here now since I have decided to jump into art full time! So I wanted to start with a little introduction and the story behind the name Under the Pine Tree.
This is me! Taken by the amazing Nicola Jane Photography
First and foremost I am a mum of three gorgeous boys age 3, 4 and 6 and they are my absolute pride and joy and my biggest inspiration! I started off my creative career as a photographer many years ago after studying for my photography degree when I was 21. I worked photography jobs here and there alongside my job at John Lewis and enjoyed doing this for the next 8 (ish) years. I was made redundant from John Lewis when I was pregnant with my second baby and found that getting a new job while just about to start maternity leave a little challenging, so I made the big decision to really get my business off the ground in photography!
Fast forward a couple of months after my maternity leave ended and starting Nicola Ladd Photography we found out that I was pregnant with my third baby! Not letting this put me off I decided to keep going and practised as much as I could during my maternity leave and continued pushing forward. Jump to January 2020 I decided to go full time into wedding photography, building a website, marketing my work and putting money into various training sessions and marketing materials. Jump again to March 2020 and well, we all know what happened next! My job became basically illegal and everything just felt like it was falling apart. We had started an extension on our house, we had 3 kids at home, one of which needed home schooling while the other 2 climbed the walls and my business turned to nothing. At this point I finished up the wedding editing I already had on and called it quits. I needed to focus on my family and getting our house to a liveable state (we had just knocked the wall through on the extension and had boards for doors and electrical wires hanging down!).
(Bear with me I'm getting to the point I promise!) Once we had doors put in and we could get to the garden I felt like I was taking a huge exhale and took solace in the very muddy wet outdoor space we had. I started to focus on photography again, documenting nature outside, birds in the garden and the few flowers we had. And that's when I decided to start an instagram @under.the.pine.tree
When we first came to buy our house, I knew immediately that I wanted it when I looked in the garden. It had this beautiful big scots pine tree alongside a gorgeous blossom tree and I fell in love. When you look at the house from the back of the garden it almost looks like it could be a treehouse in the pine tree and I love it so much. We have all sorts of wildlife visit the garden, from foxes and squirrels to jays and blue tits and I wanted to document it all. I chose the name Under the Pine Tree as it was an account to show the nature found under our pine tree! I started off sharing photos....
Then Christmas 2020 after not being able to work for months I had an idea to make Christmas decorations! I originally thought I'd just sell a few but they sold like hot cakes and I was so incredibly grateful to everyone who bought one!
During the course of 2021 so far I have slowly gained confidence in my art work and realised that it brought me so much joy and thought maybe this could be the way forward? I had originally intended to combine my two passions and sell photography prints, then I was going to continue to offer photography but after a lot of thought I have decided that focusing on art is truly the right path for me. It's a risk, I have spent years in photography and I still love it so much but art is just right, and when something just feels right, you have to go for it!
So here is to 2022, more childcare (I'll be going from 1 day a week to 3 days!!) and a big and bright future for Under the Pine Tree!
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