Festive Baking

As some of you more avid bloggers may remember, this festive time last year I made one of my usual Christmas cakes decorated with my own Christmas theme. Last year it was a Gingerbread party, complete with intoxicated Gingerbread men. This year, after another 6 hours labour my Christmas theme is... Hogsmeade in Harry Potter. Yes you heard right, a Harry Potter themed Christmas cake made entirely from scratch (of course) meaning I had to bake the cake, cover it with marzipan and icing, then make my figures, dying the white icing various colours and moulding it into shape.

Anyway, this year I think it is a pretty damn good one but let me know what you think compared to my last Christmas cake (which of course was blogged about December 2010).

This year I have also included making a Gingerbread house for the Christmas festivities... Have a look and let me know what you think... don't think it'll be eaten as that is a hell of a lot of sugar for one treat, but the gingerbread tastes good!

The end of another project...

As the end of another project looms I have finally decided on a final series for my project to do with identity and the feelings of being overshadowed and insignificant. Whilst the images shown below are not necessarily my final prints, as I have a few more too take, I am really pleased with them and feel they make a strong series to end my Major Project Planning and take me into my Final Major Project. But don't take my word for it, I'm biased, let me know what you guys think.

Thanks again Bloggers!
Click on image to enlarge

Paris Photo 2011

As another November comes and goes so does my third annual trip to Paris for Paris Photo and so here is my third annual blog of photographs from my trip to Paris. Armed of course with my Canon film camera the only difference this year is instead of heading to Paris with my usual motley crew of University friends, I went for a romantic trip with Matthew. We stayed in a hotel the other side of Paris to the normal Republique side, opting this time to stay in the Trocadero, near the Eiffel Tower.

I had another fantastic trip visiting the Musee d'Orsay to see the new Surrealist exhibit as well as many wonderful little shops and cafes and of course the Grand Palais for Paris Photo itself. The weather could not have been nicer, and was unseasonably warm meaning we could walk everywhere allowing for many photo ops. So here you go avid bloggers. Another year of another wonderful weekend in one of my favourite cities in the world, Paree!

Schilte & Portielje

Well it was that time of the year when I jump on to the Eurostar and journey to Paris for Paris Photo weekend. It was held in the Grand Palais this year and I thought it was the best one yet (well out of the three I have seen).

Whilst I could talk about the many beautiful photographers I saw there I want to mainly focus on the works by Schilte and Portielje, who I saw at the Kahmann Gallery stand. I had never heard of the photographers before but fell head over heels in love with their work. The dark black and white portraits were so beautiful, photography and styling wise. They have really inspired me with my project dealing with identity or lack of it and got me straight to experimenting with long exposures. I am absolutely blown away by their photographs and hope you feel the same. So here are a few of my favourites that I saw... I know you'll love them too!

Constructing The Self

Bloggers I need your help. As you may recall a few posts ago I did some self portraits of me hiding behind curtains in an everyday scene for my current University project, which is all about dealing with my issues of lack of self confidence and the feeling of being overshadowed and insignificant. I have come up with a couple more shoots dealing with this idea but in different ways.

The first test shoot is me hiding behind people who are participating in pretty mundane events and laying an arm or other limb across their body, so that this is the only part of me you can see. At first the scene looks pretty normal until you spot the extra limb, it deals heavily with this idea of me feeling overshadowed and insignificant. So here are a few examples let me know what you think!

Click on image to enlarge

The Second test shoot is again based around the everyday scene. Using a long shutter speed I move while the shutter goes of so that everything else is in focus but my figure is blurred and thus unidentifiable. Again this focuses mainly on the feeling of being insignificant as well as blurring my identity and body showing the lack of self confidence that I deal with everyday. Again here are some examples and feedback would again be appreciated.

So keeping in mind the curtain images as well, I'd really like to hear which idea you think is best and I should carry on with!

Thanks bloggers!

Viviane Sassen

This month I am loving Viviane Sassen. I first discovered her after seeing her incredible In Bloom shoot in Dazed and Confused (see blog post 10th July) and fell in love with her work completely after just seeing it at HotShoe gallery in London. I find her work is so contemporary and different to a lot of the fashion photographers out there. Seeing her work exhibited has really helped inspire me for my current project. Having achieved great success as a fashion photographer, publishing work in avant-garde fashion magazines, she has established a unique visual vocabulary all her own. Her aesthetic combines a sense of childhood memory, where scenes are crystallized and highly saturated with color and shadow, with a photographer’s sensitivity to the body and surface.


I absolutely love her fashion work as well as her personal series and I hope you do to! Here are a few of my favourite photographs of hers but I encourage you to visit the Hotshoe gallery before the 27th November in order to see her work along with Alec Sloth and WassinkLundgren.

Quote

- That's not real life, lad. That's just pretending.
- But 'real life' is how well you pretend, isn't it? You. Me. Everybody in the world...

Jack Rosenthal
Ready When You Are, Mr McGill

Third year begins, and with it a new project is born.

The start of my third and final year at The Arts University College at Bournemouth (mouthful I know) has begun and with it has come a lot of work! But, even with the mountains of pressure, fear and self doubt I am feeling good about my final year and have started my project much earlier than normal and with a lot more determination and pleasure! Although I am aiming for a degree, at the beginning of last year I feel I forgot the passion I have for photography and only aimed to please my tutors, forgetting what I like to photograph. But with my last few projects that passion came back and now I am determined to do a project that is personal and is for me.

So with this is in mind I came up with my current project. My strongest work lies within portraiture and thus I decided to do a project dealing with the constructed image and self portraiture. I wanted to focus on self portraiture because within the project I wanted to deal with the personal issues that I have about myself and especially my body. I have always lacked self confidence, feeling particularly (like most women) critical of my body, wanting to loose more weight, have better skin, nicer bum... I could go on and on. I also deal with the pressure of constantly feeling overshadowed by an older brother and sister (youngest child syndrome I know) so with all these issues in mind this project was born... Have a look at the images and let me know what you think, as opinions help a project grow and develop.

Cheers bloggers!