I know that this blog post is going to seem a little random, but I have so many things that I want to blog properly and right now, I just don’t have the time. I can also get twitchy about getting all my details correct and I’m always concerned I’m going to miss something or someone important out, so I would rather wait until I can focus my attention fully on the task, than hash it.

So, as is customary for me to do, I’m going to leave you with a photo and a story to go with it.

 

I have long been interested in photography and my first camera was a £16.99 claret red plastic point and shoot. I was eleven or twelve at the time and I photographed my second hand Girl’s World with it.  Later came my beloved Praktica K10D  given to me by my parents for my eighteenth birthday and boy, is that a merry tale and a whole other blog post.

 

Growing up I used to look at pictures in books and magazines in awe and wonder at how the photographer had captured such a unique moment or created such an exceptional image.

I was allowed my first copy of Vogue magazine when I was sixteen and that set me off on a quest to recreate the stunning effect of quality fashion photography. I have many examples of my efforts which I will show you over time, some of them really hilarious,

There was for example, the time I dressed my friends in coloured bin liners, by literally sculpting the bags into evening gowns around their bodies and securing into place with a stapler (very trusting of them don’t you think!?)  And then there was the time, I wrapped my fellow art student in an astronautical style foil arrangement and laid her on a table and fixed spot lights around her to light her up like a glorious static disco ball.

My sister was nex,t in a mermaid costume assembled from fish and other types of netting, with greeny, bluey thread and wool knotted & tied elaborately into it, to give her a marine seaweedy like appearance, not unlike what’s going on with Davy Jones’s beard from Pirates of the Caribbean!! Oh yeah, there was also, the dress I made as a physical manifestation of the Jasper Johns painting ‘0 through 9’ and… before you ask, it was my long suffering sister again who got the privilege to wear that! And… many many more.

So basically I have always enjoyed creating or preparing scenes or scenarios for the lens; it wasn’t enough to make my crazy costumes, photographing them was the serious icing on the cake.

For this reason, I am always looking for ways to improve my photography, especially those areas I’m interested in.

 

2013 was a peculiar and exciting year for me and in May 2013, I enrolled on an online Tabletop Photography course with Nicole’s Classes, which is based in the United States. One of our pieces of homework, was to produce a mock up of a magazine cover of our choice. We were to replicate the style and fonts used by the magazine company we had chosen, but were to come up with our own cover image, article titles, features, etc…

I chose to do a mock up of a Country Living cover and my efforts are shown above. It was really fun to do and super fun to see how professional your picture could look if you studied carefully how the characteristic appearance of the magazine cover was usually achieved.

Anyway, it’s late and I’m off to bed, but I will be back soon with some pics of my exploits with my friends and dresses made of all sorts!