A mother of four, photographer, nature lover. Someone trying to make sense of it all, through photos and stories. 

I try to be free in all senses of the word, so I made the leap and now work with what I love doing; taking pictures, storing this life in moments, both for myself and for clients. My heart is in photographing birth and motherhood, but I take on just about any photography job. 
(See my birth photos at www.birth.no and the rest of my work portfolio at www.mariavatne.no.)

I live on a farm in Norway with my man Nik and my children Ronja, Freja, Falk and Ulv, plus a bunch of animals. We grow our own food as far as the seasons allow it, we don't go to kindergarten, the three youngest ones will be homeschooled.

We govern our own lives, we strive for independence, we want to be in this life wild and free and full of love.

First destination: England.

We do the same tour every summer: First we take England, then we take Portugal (trying very oddly to refer to that Leonard Cohen song here). Mr. Payne is, as you may or may not know, English, so he has his brother with wife and kiddos and his father over there. His mother lives in Portugal, so we always go there after having been in England (with his brother and family joining us).
Anyway. England, more specifically the countryside around Chester, was lush and green and summery, it was beautiful. I find Britain somehow exotic, even though you might think it isn't that different from Norway culturally. I think it is. So going there for me is a real journey, and going there for Mr. Payne is familiar, it's home.
We had lunch at the pub (as one does), went to the Zoo (see next post), and generally hung out and caught up. Lovely!
(Mr. Payne doesn't understand why I want to post the photo below, of his brother's back alley, but you see, I even find the brick houses exotic. So there you go!)
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Chester Zoo: Behaving like animals.

Home again.