Holiday snaps...

At the start of the summer, before all the craziness of the summer camps started, I managed to squeeze in a little holiday in France. I finally got around to looking through all my photographs and I realised I really like doors. Or at least taking pictures of doors. We stayed in this very cute old French hamlet, completely in the middle of nowhere and maybe it's just me but the French 'do' little old hamlets really well.

"There are things known and things unknown and in between are the doors."
- Jim Morrison

A demain

xx V

I can almost taste it...

I love photography, and right now I'm loving photographs of food. Beautifully shot, elegantly placed I can almost taste the flavours. These are my favourites of the moment.

home grown blueberries by etsy shop EricaLeaPhotogrpahy

Chocolate Tea Bag Biscuits from French food blog Le Petrin

A 'Still Life' shot by Italian photographer Alessandro Guerani

 Purple tones.

by etsy seller the paris print shop 

I've gathered together more food related fantasies over on my Pinterest Board 'The Kitchen'.  

Check it out here   

Surreal snaps

How amazing is this latest surreal photograph by Etsy seller and Norwegian photographer Sonya Kanelstrad. Look once, look twice, then look again.

Check out the rest of her work here

xx V

This week...

...I discovered a new photographer, Kyle Thompson. Visual News did a good article on him here. The 20 year old takes all the self portraits himself using nothing more than a tripod and a self timer. If you check out his flickr account you'll see he is doing a 'photo a day' project and he's currently on #160.

 Worth watching.

Hideaways...

Whether its in your own home, your back garden or the middle of nowhere sometimes we all need a hideaway from the world.

contemporary kids design by philadelphia design-build Sullivan Building; Design Group

via weheartit

source unknown

This website will make you want to pack your bags and head for the great unknown. Love the name
too.

 found via Wholelarderlove

Can't wait for my holidays!

xx V

Snap shots

Some of my favourite photographers of the moment...

 Thomas Chene

Aernout Overbeeke

 Paolo Roversi

Caleb Charland

Max Vadukul

Natural Wonders

Under the ground, far far below....

I would never have said that a cave was on my list of places to see and then I saw these.

Devetashkata Cave - Bulgaria

Cenotes Yucat peninsula, Mexico.

I can't remember where this little beauty is located. Anyone got an idea please let me know.

xx V  

Well said...

 Every once and a while I stop in on Steve McCurry's photography blog. It is obviously mainly visually based, McCurry being a world renowned photographer and all. And I don't think you need me to tell you that he snaps a pretty picture. But I have to say what draws me back again and again to the site are the quotes he chooses to accompany his photographs. They are always apt, often endearing and never fail to hit just the right note.

If we are a metaphor of the universe,
the human couple is the metaphor par excellence,
the point of intersection of all forces and the seed of all forms.
The couple is time recaptured, the return to the time before time.
– Octavio Paz, Mexico, Nobel Laureate in Literature

 Macedonia (above) 

'The heart has its reasons that reason knows nothing of.' - Blaise Pascal, Pensées, 1670

 

 Dublin, Ireland (above)

A door just opened on a street–
I, lost, was passing by–
An instant’s width of warmth disclosed
And wealth, and company.

 

The door as sudden shut, and I,
I, lost, was passing by,–
Lost doubly, but by contrast most,
Enlightening misery. 

 
- Emily Dickinson

Maimana, Afghanistan. 

 

'Trees are poems the earth writes upon the sky'

- Kahlil Gibran

France (above)

Also on a side note if you happen to be in Rome before the end of April you should try to catch an exhibition of McCurry's work in the cities Museum of Contemporary Art, MACRO.

xx V

On the road to Murray...

Que Bella! I've found a new favourite photographer. Name Murray Mitchell . Discovered him via the sweetest occasion and this photograph

The year of the rabbit

Did you know that 2012 is the year of the rabbit? Well now you do. So with that said, you'll never guess what today's theme is...

photograph by Steve McCurry mentioned here before

Rabbit Lamp from Liberty

from moooi

Cute wedding favours from Etsy shop KaroArt

In studio

This is the first in a new series of posts giving you a little peek into my world - well my studio anyway! I moved into a new studio space recently and one thing I've been struggling with was finding a good 'photo area'. There isn't a lot of natural light at the moment (a whole other story) so I decided to create my own.

Here's where youtube comes in. There is very little that cannot be solved using the wonders of the internet.   

The Aim:To make a Light Box 

 There were a plethora of 'how to' videos but I picked this one below

To be honest once you have the general gist it doesn't take a whole lot of instructing. All you need is a cardboard box, I used a pretty big one so that I could fit larger items in it too, tissue paper, a sheet of white card, sellotape, a marker and a scalpel knife.  

And this is what you end up with.

 As you can see the room's pretty dark but inside you'de never know. 

A Gertrude Jekyll Rose - the perfect antidote to rainy day blues. 

Cute notebooks that kids make at my children's Birthday parties. 

My Christmas Tree Decorations in silver here

One of my Butterfly cards here

Now that I have it I can't understand why I didn't do it years ago.

Steve McCurry

I have always found the work of Steve McCurry to be incredibly beautiful. He manages to make you feel as if he has somehow captured a piece of his subjects soul. I think its the way that the camera seems to focus in on their eyes. Take this portrait (below) which McCurry is probably most famous for.

Some of his best work, in my opinion, are his portraits of children; all looking far older than their years.

His work is often unflinchingly honest in its depiction of children in war torn countries.

He is involved in a scheme called ImagineAsia whose aim is to
 'work in partnership with local community leaders and regional NGO's to help students in Afghan communities to provide fundamental educational and health care resources.'

 

When you look at some of the statistics that ImagineAsia goes into it really is shocking. The level of literacy is only 28% and the average life expectancy is a little over 43 years. There is a whole generation of Afghani children that are suffering for decisions they had no part in making. I love their scheme to translate all the Aesops Fables tales into Dari for the school children to read. 

 

He is not solely a portrait photographer though.You can see a full range of his work on his website and his blog.