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.