Interview with Emily Quinton of The Startup Wife blog

I hope you had a lovely weekend…

We’re going to start off the week by featuring an interview with a very lovely lady who I’ve had the pleasure of meeting at London Bloggers Group meet-ups.

Her name is Emily Quinton and as well as writing a wonderful blog called The Startup Wife, she also takes stunning images of flowers which you’ll find below.

Could you tell us about your background? 

My background is quite eclectic, spread between years working and studying in academia.  And then several years working as a professional photographer, specialising in fine art botanical images and wedding photography.

Although these two areas of work were different, in many ways, they were connected by my love of flowers.

I worked on a PhD (sadly unfinished…but that’s another story!) about plant hunting and spent a lot of time at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew.

I shared the images I’d taken for my PhD research journals on Flickr and then began a whole series of botanical images, which I started selling.  And before I knew it, my photography career had started.

Shortly after that, I fell into wedding and portrait photography, which I loved for a few years.

I shot some amazing weddings and worked with some lovely people.  But when my eldest daughter started school, I knew I wanted to change my work and stop working at weekends.

I missed her too much in the week not to spend time with her at the weekends.

Now, I’m a mother of 4 little children, blogger, photographer and crafter!

When did you start The Startup Wife and what do you feature on it?

I started The Startup Wife in January 2012 as a creative outlet for a busy mother of 3 (and now 4!) and to share our stories of the family/home side of living a startup life.

My husband works in a tech startup and I have also had a couple of startups too. We are very much a startup family!

As well as stories about our life and startups, I also feature a lot of craft, stories of motherhood and plenty of photography and flowers.

My blog enables me to be creative every day, which keeps me happy, sane and energised in my rather hectic life!

Could you tell us about your Floral Friday Competition? 

I started my Instagram competition, Floral Friday, a few months ago and I run it every Friday.

I post images of flowers every morning on Instagram and people always say how much they love them and how they brighten up their morning.  

So I took the idea to open it up to everyone to share their images of flowers each week.

I get entries from across the world, which start to come in before I’ve even woken up. I love that!

People just need to upload a floral image on Instagram on a Friday and tag it #floralfridaycompetition and @emilyquinton to join in.

All the tagged images end up in our gallery.

Could you tell us about your photography workshops?

I’ve been running photography workshops for a few years now and earlier this year I started my Photography for Bloggers workshops again.

I love bringing bloggers together and spending the day with them, teaching them great ways to get the most from their cameras, whatever cameras they have.

We look at composition, light, some technical stuff (but nothing too daunting) and some editing.

We have great fun taking lots of photographs and styling images with a selection of props. And of course, there are always lovely flowers and we spend time photographing those.

I like to send people away at the end of the day with new skills that I know they can put into practice straight away.

In the past, I’ve held a Photography & Flowers workshop, and would love to do one again. Please get in touch if you’re interested in attending one in London!

You have a big following on Instagram. Where do you source all the flowers that you feature every day?

I’m totally addicted to Instagram as a way of making my everyday beautiful and finding little moments to create little images.  It’s my favourite form of social media.

I live a couple of minutes from The Fresh Flower Company, one of my favourite florists.  So most of my flowers come from there and when I can make it, I love to stock up at Colombia Road Flower Market. 

I also love to grow flowers in my garden and this year I’ve really enjoyed the plants I’ve had from Sarah Raven.  So I’ll be stocking up from there again soon.

What is your favourite flower?

Peonies are definitely my favourite, but they are very closely followed by Dahlias and Ranunculus.

Thank you so much to Emily for all her help in compiling today’s blog post.  Why not enter her Floral Friday Competition, especially if you’re a florist?

And if you’re looking to improve your photography, her next workshop is taking place this Saturday, 21st September.

Social Media Links

If you’d like to keep up-to-date with Emily’s news, here’s where you can find her on social media:

Facebook : TheStartUpWife
Twitter: Emily Quinton
Instagram : EmilyQuinton
Pinterest : EmilyQuinton

(Images : Image of Emily: Lulu Locket Photography.  All other images: Emily Quinton)