Black and White

Just a few images from a film I neglected last year. Enjoy!

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!

Laila Muraywid

As you regular bloggers may recall, last October I went to Paris for the Paris Photo weekend, whilst I was there I went into a little art gallery and came across an artist, that I recently rediscovered during the daunting process of packing all my belongings up and moving out of my student accommodation of the past three years. When I saw Laila Muraywid's work I found it breathtaking and took a brochure home (which is how I rediscovered her again) and so I thought I would share her work with all of you out there. She is a photographer, sculptor and painter and her work is fabulous. She hand makes all the bejeweled props that you see in her images and also paints over the top of the photographs to add bits of colour.

Her work is daunting, powerful and most of beautiful, exploring and celebrating the various female form. She is a huge inspiration for me and I love her work so I hope you do to!

Primitive

I finally scanned in my primitive project images onto my computer so thought I would share them with you all. For my project I found old postcards from various cities like Paris, London, Bournemouth and Brighton. I then went to the places on the postcard and re-photographed how it looked now. Most of the original images were taken a hundred years ago and it was really fascinating to see how much had changed and how much had stayed the same. I tried to use landmarks so people would recognise them, and what had changed around it. In the darkroom I combined the two images together to create the mixture of old and new. The original postcard has come out as a negative over my image which makes the old look very ghostly, which I loved, especially if people were pictured. I then made them into my own postcards.

I really loved this project and has to be my favourite that I have done so far. Since doing the project I have begun to collect old postcards from places I visit, I especially love to find ones that people have written on and now have quite an impressive collection. I hope you like my postcard versions though. Let me know!

Click on image to enlarge

Bournemouth










London








Paris








Brighton

Weekend in Paris

I took a little holiday to Paris over the weekend to see the annual Paris photo, which this year I have to say was exceptional. I fell in love with so many new artists and ended up buying the catalogue again. For those of you who have not heard of Paris Photo, it's a MASSIVE photography exhibiton held in the Louvre for a weekend that major galleries go to, to show various artist's work. You have current photographers such as Martin Parr, Nick Knight and Nan Goldin alongside some of the traditional photographers like Juliet Margaret Cameron and Muybridge along with up and coming artists. (For all you photography enthusiasts it really is worth a visit next year!)

Anyway, back on track, I adore Paris it is such a beautiful city full of culture, art and romance, which led me to take my Canon EOS 300 film camera, with my 50mm f1.4 lens and some expired film to take some hopefully romantic, "arty", Parisienne shots. As I done the main touristy features of Paris, i.e. the Eiffel Tower, Notre Dame etc, over the several times I have been, we decided to see less mainstream parts of Paris opting instead to visit several flea markets, small galleries (as well as the Louvre) and many little streets with gorgeous French cafes to eat a lot of cheese and drink a lot of wine and generally get some real photographic opportunities.

I loved the results from the films and wanted to share some of the best ones with you all. I hope you like them as much as I do!

Click on image to enlarge