Tuesday, 15 December 2009

Virgins

Here are a few of my fruit and vegetable virgins....my computer's being too slow so I'll have to put the rest up another time.

Pomegranate

Melon

Aubergine

Banana

Pink Grapefruit

Papaya

Wednesday, 9 December 2009

My little cousin bump

My auntie and uncle are having a baby.....due in March.....I can't wait!

They don't want to know the sex till it's born. I'm not sure whether I would or not, you can only buy unisex clothes and wouldn't know how to decorate it's bedroom if you didn't find out, but on the other hand it'd be such a lovely surprise to wait and see.

We have the most gorgeous baby clothes at work, that we only sell this time of year. The prices are ridiculous, with some pieces and sets at £66, around the same as an adult pair of jeans! But last year they went into the sale at 70% off, so I might buy my little cousin his/her first pair of Levi's if they do.

Monday, 7 December 2009

R.I.P. Borders

I've had a very jam-packed weekend! Firstly I went to my Calum's night at A Nation of Shopkeepers in Leeds on thursday, came back to Sheffield for a lecture on friday then travelled to Leeds again and went out again. I went all over but the highlight was going to Sky Bar, a bar on the 13th floor of a hotel, with views over the city and very expensive but amazing cocktails. This was followed by catapulting chunks of pumpkin off the balcony of a flat on Call Lane, at lots of people underneath! I have to say, I didn't chuck any myself but it was hilarious, especially seeing some bouncers getting pretty angry. We were worried that they might have called the police!
We had a night in on saturday and watched a film called The Martyrs...a french horror about a woman who has workers who torture young girls to try and get them to see into the afterlife and report back. One of these girls escapes at the beginning, and the storyline's about her and a girl who befriends her. It was quite an interesting if not strange plot, and was extremely gruesome. I still managed to fall asleep near the end though, I can't master the art of watching a whole film anymore, even when it's subtitled and therefore requires more concentration!
Then last but not least, it was the more than likely last ever Borders christmas do last night. They've gone into administration and unless they find a buyer soon, they'll have to close down, and Calum will lose his job. Not good. So even though everyone had high festive spirits, it was quite sad at the same time, with noone really knowing what lies ahead for them. The managers speech was quite depressing too, it sounds like a few of them are really being dumped in the s**t and there's nothing they can do about it.
What I can't understand is why they've had to close, but shops like Waterstones are fine. Borders always has much better offers and reasonable prices, I don't know why people would prefer to shop at the other more expensive options. They can't keep away now though, the shelves are emptying fast and everyone I've spoken to who works there says all the customers are acting like vultures, desperate to grab a bargain while they can. Let's hope everything works out in the end.

Sunday, 29 November 2009

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.............

Wednesday, 25 November 2009

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.

Tuesday, 24 November 2009

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.