Fingers crossed

This is the coat I've been searching for. It's perfect....apart from the price (£195 eek!). Why is it that when you love something so much, it's always the most expensive thing in the shop!? I find it so hard to find coats that I like, but now I've found the one and I 100% cannot afford it which makes me want to cry. I'll just have to pray that it goes into the winter sale, but it's a special edition and is exclusive to Topshop Oxford Circus and topshop.com, so it's more likely to sell out.Fingers crossed!

Luscious Loch Fyne

I've just had a wonderful weekend...the highlight being a meal at Loch Fyne the seafood restaurant with my boyfriend Calum. The food was delicious. We went as they're doing an offer of two courses for £10 and glasses of wine for £2 rather than the usual £3.50, from monday to friday. What I forgot to check though, was whether there was a time limit. It finished at 7pm and we turned up at 7.45! Oops. We stayed and just had one course instead, and I'm glad we did because it really was worth the money.
I had a 45 min wait at the station to get home, so I bought Glamour as a final little treat. It was between that and Elle who were giving away a £20 Reiss voucher. Glamour's offering a free nails inc nail varnish, which admittedly isn't as high a value as the voucher but I decided it would cost me more in the long run. I'd have to spend a lot of money to use it, so I decided the nail varnish was more value for money to me.

And it's a gorgeous dark red/plum colour. Shame about my inability to paint it on neatly! Now unfortunately back to another hectic week at uni.............

Mattress it is

I've had to make a decision. I do love the picture of the drug house, but I've decided the mattress is more of an 'object', so that's what I've chosen to carry on using for the project.


Other project titles: Virgin (10 final images), and Tart (1 final image). Got a few ideas but need to write a propsal by tomorrow so I need to make my decision soon. I like the concept of vegetables for the former as they don't have sexual intercourse to reproduce, and therefore must be virgins. I don't want to solely photograph veg though, so my problem is thinking of how to fit it into an interesting image.

Mouldy mattress or abandoned drug den?

New technical assignment.....a mix of all other past ones! We have to take photographs of an object we pass nearly every day, for five days. Firstly we have to take a light meter reading and take a photo using this accurate setting, then bracket up and down. We have to change the F stop then the shutter speed.....but that's boring so I won't go on. It's a bit complicated, and I took the first lot today and forgot to do most of the things. Mainly because I was just concentrating on taking a good night photograph, and these are the best two that came out:

I wasn't sure which would be better to use; the old mattress/skip above, or the house below that used to be inhabited by drug dealers. My sister told me the story behind it... Something about how the guy who lived there got people to beat up the person who snitched on him to the police, who got admitted to hospital and then paid someone to 'repay the favour'. They smashed all of his windows in, which is why they're all bordered up. I'd like to find out the complete story.

I've been spending all evening trying to convert them from RAW to JPEGs so I can upload them on here, but unfortunately they've come out with the converter company's name printed on it because I'm just on a free trial. It's a bit annoying, but at least it's only small so you can still see the image. I'm quite proud of them, even if I haven't followed the brief correctly! Which one should I keep photographing? Hmm, I'm a bit worried the skip may disappear before the project ends, so I'll probably keep taking both just incase, and then I'll have a choice at the end.

Fairytalesque

Whilst looking for more photographers for my sketchbook, I came across Jacqueline Roberts, and this image:

The Rag Doll
It's delightful, even if the emphasis is more on the girl than the doll. It does show how close young girls are to their dolls, which is what my work is based on. I like how the background is darker in certain areas, which is something my teacher would probably complain about, but as I've said many times, I like photographs that bend the rules slightly.

Merry Go Round
This one is great too, with the reflection in the window. I wonder how much of the image is real though, as they are obviously digital images and it looks like she changes the colour slightly. Is the carousel really there or has she put it there herself? Not that it matters, it's a lovely picture, I just like to try and work out these things.

The Red Bird
Like this one for example, you can immediately see it has been worked on. But it compliments her style. It's sort of fairytalesque, which needs to be bright, quirky and magical.

I then had a look at Doll Photos on Flickr, but most of them were taken to look 'pretty'. I wanted examples of ones that looked a bit odd, or unusual but there were very few like this. The ones I did find tended to have quite a lot of digital enhancement done to them. Here's a couple I liked though:

Untitled, by Elisa Savignano
I'm not sure if this one was meant to be scary, but it has something strange about it. It may be that it's shot in black and white, or perhaps it's the dolls glare, but it is somewhat disturbing.


Blonde Ambition Massacre, by SammyDoe

I'm not too keen on the general idea of this one but I like the composition, the nails sticking out give it an interesting shape. The short depth of field gives the impression that it goes on forever too, that the pile of doll heads is huge, because only the foreground is in focus.

Tie-Dye Hair

An interesting short article about Jeff Wall, in December's issue of Dazed and Confused:

Interview by Sarah Fakray
Photo insert: Siphoning Fuel, 2008, courtesy of Jeff Wall from Jeff Wall: Complete Edition, published by Phaidon Press Limited, phaidon.com

In it he explains how "I like to drift around the city, waiting to see something that strikes me. When it does, I get the feeling that I have run across a starting point for making a picture." He doesn't like to think about what the subject is portraying or what they're doing means, because it removes the emotional connection between the two of them. This is really good to know, because I often just want to take a snapshot of something I see, without having to think of a meaning behind it all. Often, a photo is fascinating enough that it doesn't need a reason for it's existence. He also says that at times, he will have to recapture a scene he has come across, when he hasn't got a camera on him. The one in the article is an example of this. "I realise that that original event is gone forever and can't be recovered. All I can do is work in terms of my own reactions to its loss or disappearance." Usually, a photographer either captures real events, or completely creates their own scene. To try and reinvent and capture a previously real event, is quite unusual but I like the idea. At least he's not losing out on an image, just because he was caught unaware, which most people would do.

Wowee, look at these....

I've always loved tie-dye, but have never considered it for my hair! (I still don't, but it produces some brilliant fashion shoot pictures)

This one below is great, she reminds me of a mermaid.

Photography by Mark Pillai
Styling by Katie Shillingford

Au revoir Wrangthorn

I've officially moved out of my house in Leeds!
Last day of rent today....handed my keys in yesterday.
It's quite typical, it was the first time I got the best room since moving to university, and I have to leave it early! I will miss living with friends, but on the bright side at least I'll have more money to spend on whatever I like. I've not had enough money to just go shopping for a long long time, so let's hope this'll now change.

Stayed an extra night in Leeds and went to a gig at Brudenell Social Club. I'd never heard of the band before, but they were really lovely. They're called The Cave Singers, and there's only 3 of them in the band. The guitarist was doing the bass line on pedals with his feet! I always get inspired to start up drums again whenever I see a really good band. I was watching this drummer in awe, he was fantastic.

http://www.myspace.com/thecavesingers

Uniform

I got to choose my uniform from work last week, and on top of that got to choose a free outfit! I won an incentive where there were two lists of girls products, the 10 worst sellers and the 10 best sellers. Whoever sold the most from both of those lists won, and got to pick any top and any bottom of their choice, and it was me! For my uniform I got a pair of blue cord 479s, which are booty flares, and a maroon girls cardigan, which add up to my budget of £140 exactly. For my free outfit I chose the slightly more expensive things I've had my eye on, that wouldn't fit into my uniform budget. A guys navy knit jumper (because it gets soooo cold during winter, it'll be nice and cosy and it's also slighlty military style so is pretty grunge and beautiful), and some girls 501 boyfriend fit. I NEVER wear anything other than skinnies, so to be buying two non-skinnies is quite strange. I was however, planning to sew the flares in to make them skinny. Quite a task, but they're the only style we have in cords on girls and I haven't had any in years so fancied some. I went for the 501s because I've slowly warmed to them since seeing customers try them on. When they first came in I wouldn't have considered them at all because they're so different to what I normally wear, but now I love them. (Probably more of a summer jean but oh well!) I also have some rollovers that I can still wear, including a guys denim shirt and my dark indigo high waisted skinnies, so I'll have quite a lot of choice seen as I only work 2 days a week.

My list I had of things I needed to do today...

• Dye my hair: tick
• Sew my 479s in: tick (I wish my camera hadn't broken, I could have put up before and after pics!)
• Do some sketchbook work: tick
• Pick my 35mm colour film up (from the doll shoot): tick
  

All done! My film seems to have come out well. I prefer the images to the digital ones, they just seem a lot more crisp. I'm going to start printing those in the morning, then will hopefully have chance to finish them next week.

I also found an interesting artist.....his work looks just like photographs, even though he uses oil on canvas.

James Rosenquist

They're pretty freaky. I like them!

Studio time

My booked studio time was this morning, so I've managed to get my doll pictures done (it wasn't easy though....)! It took forever to get the set up right, but in the end I had a light under the table, with a light box on, shining up, and a light with a light box on, shining down. I needed the light boxes because without them, I was getting darker corners on my images because the light wasn't spreading far enough. I had my wonderful friend Philippa helping me too which made life much easier....she sorted out the dolls while I tried to work out why nothing I was doing was working! But considering it was the first time I've done studio pretty much on my own, I think it went well. These are the best images I got on the digital camera:

Geek

Pregnant Girl
(I changed from the fat/goth idea because I didn't have any black clothes or ones long enough to pad out)


Slut


Drunk


Rock Chick


Transvestite

I'm happy with how it went, although there's things I'm noticing now that I wish I could change. Maybe I'm too much of a perfectionist. I've also taken some on a colour 35mm film, so I'm hoping to use that for my final images. These digital ones are just a back up incase the others don't come out right.

Chapman and Miles

The available light portrait workshop was a bit disappointing compared to the big print one, but it was going to have to be stupidly good to beat it. We were just sent out with digital SLR's, reflectors and light meters and told to experiment. Then we came back and showed him what we'd done. It was a chance to practise what I'm not so confident on, but I don't feel I learnt too much. It was worth it just for the teacher though. Andrew Chapman, what a legend! He's a photographer who specialises in portraiture, who's come in to teach a few lessons, and he really is the loveliest guy. Here's some of his work:


He was telling us how it's extremely difficult to get a photo like this right, because they have to have every single bit of their body in the right position. They use them in their portfolios and if their foot is at slightly the wrong angle, they could lose jobs over it.


He also showed me this one. I think the way he's played with highlights and shadows is really effective.


Finally, this one fits in with the style I tend to love. Dark, eery and atmospheric. Good job I looked him up, he never showed me it!

A photographer called Tom Miles also came in to give a lecture. Again, most of his photography isn't really my cup of tea, but he gave some really good advice. The one thing that stuck in my mind was not to worry about what grade you get at University, because the most important thing is to experiment while you still can. If something goes wrong, the worst that can happen is you get a bad grade. If you experiment as a professional and it goes wrong, you stand to lose a lot of money, a job and possibly a client completely. To follow this, he then went on to say that people have asked him if he has a degree, purely out of curiosity, but have never once asked what mark he got! I was quite relieved when I heard this, as I was a bit disappointed after my last project went wrong because I'd been a bit too ambitious and tried to do uneccesary things.

Most of his work is sport photography, particuarly golf. Although, he takes all sorts, like the cover for the Gossip Girl books and posters, with the leg shots in high heels (for some reason I can't find any examples and I'm too tired to carry on looking). These are a couple of others he's taken...

Freak dolls

Hans Bellmer

One word....AMAZING. I love all of these.

Lindsay Brice



Ruth Bernhard

My giant photo

I had the best day at uni yesterday ever. It's specialist week this week, which means signing up for a couple of classes/talks/activities. This one was a big print workshop, where we literally made 6 feet by 4 feet prints in the darkroom, on fibre based paper. There was a whole group of us but only 2 enlargers set up, and the teacher picked me and another guy to choose one of our negatives to use. I chose this one, which I took when I was in Africa a few years ago:


He gave up halfway through the day because he couldn't get his test strips to come out right, but I managed to get mine to look really good. It took all day to get to a point where I could print the final image, and it could have taken longer if I wanted to be a complete perfectionist! We dodged over the women and babies to show more detail, and burned out the sky to get more defintion. The teacher even stayed an hour late with me to wait for the final print to wash. I feel so lucky that I got chosen, because buying such large pieces of paper is extremely expensive, so to get to print one of my own photographs for free was an amazing opportunity, and now I know how it's done, I'm sure I'll do it again. It takes a lot of room, time and effort, so I probably wouldn't do it till one of my final 3rd year projects, but it's an amazing skill to have.
The second one I've chosen is tomorrow, and is a class on using available light to take portraits. I felt I really needed to do this one, as it's the area I'm not so good in. I always find lighting hard, so I'm hoping this will help me in all my future projects.

I bought some dolls today and have planned what I am going to turn them into for 'pretty'...

-naked porn star with long hair over breasts
-tattooed and pierced
-geek
-drunk with sick in handbag and over white dress
-transvestite
-goth OR fat (depending on whether I can find black barbie clothes or long sleeved ones to stuff)

I've chosen these because they're not normally classed as pretty, but they represent the world a lot more realistically. Kids are only ever given the typical barbie doll that has a slim, toned figure, wears girly clothes, likes Ken the male doll (so therefore must be straight, there is no gay barbie doll), and is never seen to be even slightly outrageous, alternative, or 'uncool'. My dolls are going to be the adult version, showing the things that are normally hidden from children, but that is evident in everyday life, and of which is found attractive or pretty by a lot of people.

It was halloween this weekend....me and my friend philippa were going to a party but couldn't decide what to dress up as. We went shopping for inspiration and found some lycra all in ones! We bought a fluffy tail, I made some furry pants and ears, and ta-da.....with a little face paint we became cats.