From one extreme to another. We go from a road trip to the Inner Hebrides to a sporty, winter warmer in Lanzarote! We went to an old Roscoe family favourite; Club La Santa on the far side of the Island. The La Santa bubble is something that is very easy to get sucked into. Once you’re there, it’s quite difficult to leave! In all honesty, you don’t really need to! I guess we found that it was so easy for us with Frank and Helen’s parents there. Club La Santa is very familiar once you arrive and get to know your bearings, it’s very easy to navigate and this was clear for Frank too. Within a few days he was ruling the roost, dictating his direction to get us back to the apartment, the track, the play centre or the pool. It’s minimal design means you feel like you’re walking through a giant sculpture at times. But it’s hard not to be drawn in by the busy schedules of activities that are on offer, after all this is a holiday!

Dave and I really enjoyed having time to do various forms of exercise that we wouldn’t usually have time to do. This included tennis, paddle boarding, squash, ariel yoga, a duathlon and a triathlon. Add to this regular running and swimming and we were feeling pretty healthy by the end of 10 days. We had that glowing feeling that neither of us have felt for some time. The grandparents took turns to look after Frank so that we could go off and do things and we took Frank swimming every day as well as got him a balance bike to get used to whilst we were there. They also have a play group for children, although one of us had to be with Frank because he is under 3, for most parents this means that they can leave their children there and go off and do their activities. The latest facilities that have been built are amazing at Club La Santa; two Olympic sized swimming pools and a bike centre to get any cyclist salivating! We were spoilt for choice!

So while Club la Santa is expensive, once you are there all of your activities, lessons, bike hire, equipment hire and coaching is included. The only thing you have to pay for is food really! Although we did decided to do an excursion and went surfing for the day in Famara with La Santa Surf. This cost around 45 euros each for about 5 hours worth of instruction and it was well worth it. We felt that the instruction was very clear and we basically managed to surf almost every time we got onto the board! So all in all we loved it! This happened the day after we got engaged so it was an excellent way to celebrate together.

With an abundance of warm weather, and so much to do it’s difficult to get bored at La Santa. Evening entertainment is there if you want to dip into it and the kids just love it! The big kids do too! We enjoyed Halloween without all of the commercial stuff that comes with it and Frank loved watching his first magician’s show. Coming home as a fiancé definitely made it for us all! We loved it! An interesting fact told to us whilst we were there; 4 out of 5 people who visit Club La Santa for the 1st time will return. Looks like we’ve got our winter sun holiday sorted for 2016!

(All images copyright to Roscoe Rutter Ltd, shot using Nikon D700 with 35mm f1.8 and 50mm f1.4)

We had our first ‘family holiday’ experience towards the back end of the summer, taking advantage of the Roscoe cottage in Llanberis, North Wales.  We spent a lovely, relaxing week away which gave us a chance to explore the area with an 8 month old baby. We’ve always traveled as Helen and David but now there are 3 of us there is a lot more to think about. The car was full to the rim with walking gear, wet gear (this is North Wales we are talking about) a pram, a carrier, food, drink, toys…I wont go on.  Yes we definitely are more organised now it has to be said.

A week in Llanberis and here are some of our highlights…

Walking through Newborough Warren to get to the glorious Newborough beach on Anglesey, where Frank experienced his first handful of sand, and very nearly a mouthful! We managed to sit down for our first picnic of the holiday only to be threatened by a big, dark cloud which was heading our way. There was even a little tornado on the horizon. If it had swerved a little more to our left we would have been okay, but we sat it out a little longer and suddenly started to make a dash for it only to get absolutely drenched. It was good fun though. We managed to keep Frank nice and warm under our make-do picnic blanket shelter.

So beach time scuppered by the weather we drove down the road to the Anglesey Sea Zoo, which was money well spent. Frank again had another ‘first’ experience, this time of sea life and was mesmerised by the fish following them with his newly found pointing finger, at last he had something definite to point at and follow. It’s £7.50 per adult but the ticket lasts for 7 days and under 3′s are free.

When Nanni Barb joined us for the next few days we ventured over to the Llanberis National Slate Museum, which is free and a good option for half a day of ‘sight-seeing’, not that we were expecting anything else but you have to be open minded when it comes to finding activities that not only appeal to us but may also engage Frank’s ever increasing imagination. And so the Slate Museum did this for us, we even attended a slate cutting session which again was enjoyed by us all. So that Frank could have a bit of play time we took him to the village play-park which definitely helped him to work up an appetite for some dinner.

Another trip over to Anglesey, to Beaumaris saw us take in the Puffin Island cruise, which although there were no Puffin’s on the Island as they had all migrated for the winter, was still a really nice ‘family-activity’ to do. Having said that Frank snoozed the whole time, so perhaps we’ll come back when he is a little older and the Puffin’s are back from their travels. We did spot all sorts of birds though and a lonesome seal popped up to see us too. The boat trip costs £8 per adult and we were out at sea for 2 hours, along with lots of other families and a really fun tour-guide/boatman who was informative enough. On this very beautiful day we had clear views across to Liverpool.

You can’t really visit this area and not go hiking, afterall it is one of our favourite activities and with Frank we managed a couple of half day hikes. The first being a trek upto the Halfway house on the Llanberis Snowdon Pass, a moderate hike, probably one of the busier paths up to the top of Snowdon. When he is older we will go all the way up, this route is scenic and it’s nice to wave at the train as it makes its way up to the top. We also walked through Padarn Country Park around the back of the Slate Museum, not too steep, nicely sheltered from the wind and some lovely views too. Closer to the village it’s nice to walk around the lake and take a peak into Dolbardon castle too. Follow this with a hot chocolate at one of the many tea rooms and you will have a nice day planned!

Sometimes we didn’t want to put too much pressure on doing too much as a family. Afterall, not everything we did was free, suddenly there were various admission fees to consider, plus it’s nice to enjoy our time together, watching sheep through the window rummaging in the compost pile, or spending our time eating as a family and photographing it. Frank is used to the camera now and so it’s easy enough to capture his cheeky smile, or document him exploring his toy box. The simple things bring so much more enjoyment now.

Llanberis is a lovely part of the Snowdonia National Park and it’s a really good location to base yourself if you want to explore further. There are loads of family activities going on there too from canooing to rock climbing so we are sure to be frequenting this lovely mountainside village time and again as Frank grows. We did manage some child-free time too with a walk up to and around Moel Eilio behind the back of Llanberis village when the Roscoe grandparents came to stay and on the night time the Mennai Seafood festival was taking place and so we enjoyed our first night out together since before Frank was born.

(Leica M9, Summicron-M 50mm f2.0 and Nikon D600 with 35mm f1.8)

We’ve been waiting to share this project for quite some time but needed to have all of its components complete before we felt happy with sharing it with you.

During the winter months Helen arranged to shoot two of our top UK athletes Kate Dennison and Martyn Rooney, both of whom have competed in two Olympic Games including Beijing and the amazing London 2012. Martyn has been our top 400m runner for quite a few years whilst Kate was  our number 1 pole vaulter. They are a couple outside of sport too which is why we thought this may prove to be a fun and insightful project to work with them on, and they agreed.

The shoot took place at Birmingham’s Alexander Stadium, where for most of the winter months Martyn was training hard in anticipation of the 2013 season still to come. Kate meanwhile has retired from competitive sport and is focusing on other aspects of her life within the work-related arena.

The aim of this shoot was for us to produce a sports-documentary focused project that features the athletes, their training, their personality, their relationship and their environment. As a secondary idea to the shoot we decided to design a small, promotional limited-edition booklet and poster which will be used for our own marketing purposes both from a photography and design point of view.

Helen’s interest in Sports Marketing imagery stems from her background in Athletics, she too has competed at a high level for Great Britain as a 200m runner, training at Loughborough University for many years and as a result has forged close friendships and relationships with some of the UK’s top athletes. Helen trained alongside Kate when they were both at Loughborough together.

When Helen first started thinking about freelance photography she was commissioned by Loughborough University to photograph many of the athletics stars who went onto compete in the Athens Olympics that year. Since then this side of Helen’s portfolio has grown but was put on hold when Notworkrelated formed and along with David they ventured around the world for 15 months. The impact Notworkrelated is having on Helen’s professional practice is obvious when most of her commissions come in the style of lifestyle and documentary photography.

‘I tend to shoot more lifestyle and documentary work with people than ever before and I really think this is down to the travel and documentary side of my portfolio. It has also made me think differently about the way I photograph people. I am interested in sharing something personal about someone and what I love about photographing athletes is I know what they are going through. I think there is so much behind the scenes that is so exciting to document it’s just unmissable stuff for me.’

I wanted to shoot a sports related project without any client pressure or demand and with David joining me as another photographer on the shoot I felt we’d be able to get something gritty out of it, a raw and natural shoot that portrays something about Kate and Martyn, their relationship to sport, to one another and to their environment. We had free reign of the venue and amazing light all day so it worked in our favour to play and create what we wanted to. The empty stadium just adds a further atmosphere to the overall feel of the shoot, usually packed with spectators when they are in competition mode, but silence ensues when the training happens, there is more time to think, more time to analyse and enough space to distance yourself in those quiet moments between step-runs.

It was only when we were editing the shoot that we felt we really had something we wanted to share with people, and between us we brought together a limited edition booklet and poster designed by David.

‘The booklet and poster uses geometric design, utilising a repeated grid structure for the photography and typography layout. This adds form and hierarchy to the overall design. Gill Sans, a sans-serif  font, created in the late 1920′s was used for its clear no-nonsense approach and modernist values.  The front and rear of the booklet uses simple geometric shapes to represent speed, rotation, movement and the competitive need to participate and win. Iconography illustrations represent each sport with simple shapes, lines of movement and colour.’

We wanted to produce something a little different from your average marketing piece by injecting our personality into it, Kate and Martyn have their profile’s as athletes and we have ours too. Because Helen has got personal records as a former athlete it was easy to document her events and add this to her profile, for David though we wanted to add something different so his event is ‘Getting up each day’ and he’s working on his P.B!

We’re really proud of this body of work and as a project that shows what we can both do when we work together combining our photography and design skills, and we do this whether it’s work-related or not.

David has since been commissioned by Martyn to design his new website and Helen recently photographed the UK’s number 1 male Squash player for an editorial feature.

As part of our own promotion we gave away 5 limited edition booklets and posters through a recent blog post with our friends The Printspace.