Wednesday, June 30, 2010

a little bit yummy...

pantry


cupcakes


Tuesday, June 29, 2010

the cabbage...

Last weekend I went to Melbourne to visit my good friend M and celebrate her birthday. M is an interior designer and has lots of cool-little-quirky things in her house. Unfortunately, I only had my old point-and-shoot (which you cant even buy anymore) with me and the photos from it are complete rubbish but I thought I'd share this one anyway...

M had a number of flower arrangements in her house and one of the flowers looked like a ... cabbage! It looked much nicer than it sounds but I thought I'd check it with M anyway in case I was going mental.. Turns out - cabbage.

Cabbage or not, I think it looks different and really cool so here it is....




Monday, June 28, 2010

a very long post about favourite things...

so I have a bit of good news to share with you all... HUGE NEWS actually! I will shortly be making a move to London and I cannot tell you how excited I am about this! Unfortunately it does mean that I will have less (much less) time to blog :( 

 I do however promise to do at least one post a week.. more likely than not it will be on sundays.. which will also in a way validate the name of this blog (state of sunday.. get it? get it?).. Actually that was the idea originally (not taking into account the fact that I do really like the name Sunday) - to write a sunday blog but turns out - i have too much time on my hands!

Anywho.. I digress...

With every move there comes packing... and with every packing there comes cleaning... As I was sorting through my stuff.. trying to pack the last 10 years of my life into 5 little boxes I found my old stationery box.



I bought it when I was still at school and once I used up all the stationery that came in the box, I started using it to store birthday cards, letters and other sentimental rubbish. You could also say I kept it for things that I love unconditionally and things that make me happy. As you already know I'm big on things that make me happy - I've done a post on 'happy' books and 'happy' greeting cards previously...

So I thought to myself, what the hell! Lets take it up a notch and do a post on ALL the things I hold near and dear to my heart (shoes, bags and alcohol will be covered in a different post - just kidding :))

So here it is.....


  • obviously my favourite books which you have met before
  • obviously my favourite birthday cards which you have also met previously
  • my teddy bears: Andy and unnamed
  • one of the many Sex and the City DVDs I own
  • Russian Matreshka doll (did I mention I was Russian? No? Oh well.. now you know :)
  • A framed front cover of The New Yorker magazine (here is another piece of trivia - I am NY obsessed)
  • An old polaroid picture of me and my good friend F
  • A lense cap - this supposed to represent my camera but clearly I couldnt have my camera in the picture because it was busy taking the picture...
  • A letter from my cousin from ages ago
  • An old photo of my mum and I (this is not that time nor the place to be modest - I was a damn cute chubby baby!... overinflated ego anyone?!)
  • My mum's engagement ring - my sister had it and then i got it when i turned 18.. it's kind of like a good luck thing - hard to explain
and there you have it.. until next time xx

p.s. needless to say arranging things and then taking photos of them and then taking them onto the balcony because the light is better and arranging them again did make the packing process a little longer than I expected...

Wednesday, June 23, 2010

to process or not to process that is the question...

If you have been following my blog for a little while you would know that I am not a huge fan of processing (by processing I mean various Photoshop magic) my photographs. This is partly due to me actually preferring the photograph in its 'raw' form and partly to me not possessing any Photoshop ability whatsoever...

Having said that, I do very much enjoy the vintagey yellowy look in photos.. I think it can sometimes give the photo character and tell a story in a certain way... On the other hand every time I do it to my photos I cant help but feel like a bit of a cheat. A typical dialogue in my head would go something along the lines of:

"ooh that looks pretty! .. actually that looks reaaaally cool. i like it."
"uhm! yeah.. anyone with a bit of training can make a photo look cool in photoshop... what, you couldn't take a good/interesting/exciting/[insert adjective] photo to start with so you now have to process it?"


this is probably the reason why a lot of those 'processed' photos don't actually make the blog.. what do you guys think? and i guess, what do you enjoy more?

p.s. just to clarify I do occasionally adjust exposure and the colour palette (but not in photoshop)

Tuesday, June 22, 2010

Sunday lunch at Watson's Bay, Sydney






Monday, June 21, 2010

smile...


I really like cards. Postcards, greeting cards, thank you cards. I have kept pretty much all the birthday and christmas cards I got in the last 10 years. I also sometimes buy cards for no reason or occasion just because I like them. These are some of my all time favourite cards. The one in the front I bought myself and it is my favourite. It hangs inside my bathroom cabinet and every morning as I reach for my toothbrush, I look at it and it makes me smile...

Hope you all had a wonderful weekend!

Friday, June 18, 2010

behind the lashes...


The very lovely Heather from Behind The Lashes beauty blog has done a feature post on me :)
Not going to lie - I am very flattered... It's so nice and rewarding to not only share your thoughts and creative expression but to realise that someone out there likes what you do. You can check out the interview here
Have a wonderful weekend!!


the unlikely....




My friend A (who also happens to be my housemate) brought this huge sweet potato from her boyfriend's mum's garden... It was so huge and ugly that I couldnt help myself but to take a photo! I love photographing interesting textures in B&W... I dont think of it as ugly - think of it as texture and form...

Thursday, June 17, 2010

make me happy books...


No matter whether you read a lot of books or pick one up every now and again as a form of sedative.. there must be a couple of books on your shelf that make you happy... I am talking about when you for no particular reason pick that book up and flick through the pages or read a random part and it instantly makes you happy.. For the last ten years I have been a bit of a gypsy, moving from one apartment to the next I cannot really afford (space wise) to have a library.. So I normally give them away to friends or sell them on e-bay. But these babies are not going anywhere. They make me happy... Le Petit Prince is in French and I can hardly understand it but I keep re-reading it hoping that every time I will pick up something new. Oscar Wilde I love for the beautiful use of English - I experience an unexplainable joy from reading (or re-reading) his plays. The Sartorialist - you cant really read this one but although I know every photo in the book I still look at his photos almost every day. I love portraits and to me The Sartorialist is not about fashion but about portraits, hundreds and hundreds of portraits. What are your happy books?

Wednesday, June 16, 2010

Insomnia...

Couldn't sleep the other night.. after couple of hours of tossing and turning I was blankly staring at the window and I noticed a number on the glass. I've never noticed it before....I'm guessing it's the measurement of the window which must have been scribbled on the glass by the builders and then wiped off but the imprint stayed...

Monday, June 14, 2010

sharing the love...

When someone is doing something you like I think it is only fair to share the love.... This is my friend P, who has been doing photography for only a little while and I think has a really good 'eye'. P is also an ACP convert and we both had the same teacher.

I have learnt something very important from P - you cannot fully appreciate someone else's photography style or photography 'eye' (call whatever you want really) until you shot something with them.

This is hard to explain... but when you see a photo on flickr or some blog you think "oh, wow, pretty photo!" but you dont know what the actual subject or the surroundings looked like so you are only given the image from that photographer's perspective. But when you are there to see what the location/subject/person looks like and then you see the photograph you can appreciate the full extent of the photographic ability. I personally think that technical ability in photography is something that is just a matter of time.. but the 'eye' well you either have it or you don't.

I shot at the same location (or the same subject) as P a couple of times now and every time I am absolutely startled by how someone can capture the same thing you see (and capture) in SUCH a different way... You'd think same place, same people, same object.. how different could it be?! Well, works out - REALLY different! Anyhow.. enough of rambling

Check out P's personal phtoto blog: http://apostlekay.tumblr.com/
P also has a blog of things he likes: http://whatsortofthingsdoyoulike.tumblr.com/

Friday, June 11, 2010

Old Sex in a Different City...


So with a little delay, I have finally managed to see the Sex and the City 2 movie... I am a huge fan of the series, I still regularly rewatch the episodes and (not ashamed to admit it) know some the dialogues by heart. I anticipated the release of the first movie like crazy and it exceeded all my expectations. The second movie - not so much....

As much as it is meant to celebrate 'getting older in style', to be honest, the movie just made me even more scared of getting old than I was before!! Lets deal with first things first - where the hell is New York?? New York, as the creators of the series put it, was the 5th character.. I think one of the reasons I love SATC so much is because it is set in New York (I mean lets face it, I even struggle through the ever plastic show The City because it is set in NY). They should've just called it Sex and the Desert... at least it would not have been misleading!

Secondly, Samantha's sexual escapades (or lack thereof) are getting too old (pun intended). Thirdly, the script was very very poor... Somehow, the dialogues went from 'witty', 'funny' and 'daring' to 'predictable', 'bland' and plain 'boring'... I think I rolled my eyes at some of the dialogues at least 3 times during the movie.

Finally, the movie was oversaturated by blatant promos and ads for everything from watches to cars... to countries (Abu-Dhabi anyone?!). All in all, it was sad to see one of my favourite things in life (yes, you heard me - not just favourite movies, favourite things) be cheapened and stereotyped into what essentially ended up being just another chick-flick...

You know what's another thing I realised about getting old? That when it comes to getting old, I am in fact very traditional... I really hope that by the time I hit 50+ I am no longer running around town trying to get laid and stuffing myself with yams to keep me looking younger... I do, however, very much hope that I will have an abundance of other stereotypes in my life.. like a man I love, a fire place and a cosy house full of photos of children, grandchildren, graduations, weddings, soccer matches....

I mean... afterall... what's so bad about traditions anyway?!

Wednesday, June 9, 2010

Rainy days in Sydney....


So as most of you are aware from my constant complaining, it has been raining a lot in Sydney over the last two weeks... Here are some of the random 'rainy' shots...







Monday, June 7, 2010

Aussie birthday...

Last weekend a friend of mine hosted a birthday dinner party. I thought it would be interesting to share some of the photos with you because I bet you this dinner party was very different to any other dinner party you've ever been to... The dinner party was held at a beautiful property about 2 hours drive from Sydney. The tables were set up.... in the stable! And we are not talking an empty stable.. the horses were still there! To make it even funner the dress code was blacktie. Here are some photos from the night...












Friday, June 4, 2010

bye-bye Adelaide...

I am back from my trip to Adelaide and as much as I would love to tell you all about it, I'm afraid you will find it awfully boring because in the last three days I saw a lot of different meeting rooms, powerpoint projectors, my hotel room and not enough daylight. However, I thought that some pictures would be better than no pictures. You will have to excuse the poor quality as these were taken with my old Ixus80 point and shoot (half of its buttons dont work because i spilt punch on it about a year ago and never got it fixed).. Oh and by the way.... it STILL raining in Sydney!

(The office building where I spent most (read: all) of my time)
(Super-Coffee-Man painting on the wall of the coffee shop -  needed that as I had to get up at 5am) 
(Sunset over Adelaide - view from my hotel room)
(Is it just me or does this cloud look like a plane?)