Wednesday, December 29, 2010

Models, Models, Models


so it's true.. I did miss you all too much so back to blogging a week too early!
Hope you all had a great holiday and werent stranded in any airports xx

Wednesday, December 22, 2010

All I want for Christmas...


Merry Christmas everyone!! I'm off on a 2 week break and will not be posting (well unless I really miss you guys and there is sufficient internet connection!). Hope you get lots of lovely presents from Santa!

I'm off to the land of snow, woollen socks, family visits and lots of food!
See you all in the new year!! xx

Monday, December 20, 2010

a little bit emotional ...

There is a lot to be said about love .. especially around Christmas time. Love actually is all around :)
Christmas is also the time to be with your loved ones and the ones closest to you. For me the loved ones and the closest ones are spread over two continents and none of them happen to be in London..

But strangely the loved ones are always with you even if you don't realise it...  Last weekend I got a my Christmas present from my BFF*.. all the way from Australia! The good thing about getting presents from the BFF is that you know that the present will never be a stock standard present. It will be always meaningful.. because as your loved one and the one who knows you best, the BFF always knows exactly what the perfect present is...

One of the best things about a loved one is that, with a little bit of luck, they actually love you back :) When someone loves you they believe in you... I personally think that someone's belief in you is sooo underestimated! When I started doing photography I was a little shy about it (because you never know whether you are actually doing a decent job.. I for one happen to be my own toughest critic) and even now many of my friends don't know that I have a blog... But hearing words of support and reassurance about something that you love doing from people you love is just priceless!

This is one of the presents from the BFF and it came with the following message: "...this book made me think that if Facehunter can do it then you can too..."


and here is the man himself.. Mr Facehunter as snapped by me:


Thank you, my wonderful friend A, for being there (across thousands of miles) and believing in me!! Love you always! xx

*BFF - Best Friend Forever (a girl) and not a boyfriend (had to clarify as this has previously caused some confusion among the readers). And yes I love my friends. In case you were wondering.

Thursday, December 16, 2010

Model off duty...


Saturday, December 11, 2010

British Fashion Awards 2010



*Sorry about the poor quality of these photos - took them with my little point-and-shoot which I took with me to the awards ceremony and it was struggling the poor old thing! *

British Fashion Awards is probably one of, if not the, biggest event on the fashion calendar. Of course when it comes to me, something is bound to go wrong!  The problem is that 'passion for fashion' is impossible to align with a corporate job and of course the BFA ceremony had to start nice and early! Needless to say sneaking out of work on a Tuesday is difficult (if not impossible) and of course I couldn't sneak out on time. This basically meant that I had exactly 20 minutes to get ready for the whole thing and my long evening dress (I decided to go all out!) was crinkled from spending the previous 8 hours in a garment bag, my hair was not ready and my make-up was still to be done (what a disaster)!! Anyway, huffing and puffing I managed to get to the ceremony about 5 minutes before it commenced, downed a glass of champagne on arrival to drown the sorrows of missing 'the big celebrity arrivals' and proceeded to ramage through the goody bag.

It was so good to see Phoebe Philo win the Designer of the Year award -well deserved!! Naomi Campbell's speech was long and emotional  (I guess understandably so.. given her 'years in service') and Daphne Guiness' shoes looked extremely uncomfortable (or may be it was caused by the length of her dress - either way she looked like she was about to trip any minute). The ceremony didnt last very long and afterwards the procession moved to the Savoy Hotel for drinks but sadly as I am a mere mortal I didnt get to mingle with the celebrities and instead we opted for a glass of champagne at the Savoy bar which was quite glamorous considering the place was filled with other 'mere mortals' who attended the ceremony and a few up-and-coming models (read: havent quite made it there yet models). The official after party was at Movida and it was surprisingly packed for a Tuesday night but again my efforts to spot a celebrity (or at least a fashionista) did not result in anything and I decided that there must have been a Special Official party for the Daisy Lowes and the Alexa Chungs of this world. Nevertheless, I had a wonderful evening and it is always so nice to have an excuse to dress up (albeit on a Tuesday evening!)

Hope you all have a great weekend! xx

Monday, December 6, 2010

Sharing the love...sharing la musique

*photo by me*

those of you who are my regulars know that I practically never post non-original content (apart from my love for postcards & greeting cards of course.. I btw have some nice ones from Paris to share with you very soon) .. Anyhow, the point is that to stick something that is not mine on my blog - I REALLY have to LOVE it. So trust me when I tell you that this blog is AMAZING... One of my friends on Facebook posted  a link to it and I fell in love! If you are like me and appreciate good music but are not savvy or 'in the know' about where to find it (in Sydney I relied on my friends for this and have been 'starving' since I moved to London) then you will love this blog. It's not all original music, there are a lot of remixes and remakes but man are they good! Special mention to Anya Marina's version of Whatever You Like.

Now, your mission should you wish to accept it: I dont know anything about who is behind this blog but would love to find out. So if you know anything about this person/people then be nice and share the love.  Hope you enjoy it! xx


Saturday, December 4, 2010

Layering...

Friday, December 3, 2010

get the shackles of my feet so i can dance..

Fridays at work are always challenging.. You can see the finish line to the week and your brain just refuses to function properly and keeps digressing to things which are a little more fun than the endless spreadsheets that dominate the rest of the working week... So in my hundredth attempt to negotiate with my  brain and convince it that 'spreadsheets - good, blogsurfing - baaaad',  the brain refused to give up so I gave in and opened yet another browser window. In my gmail inbox I found an newsletter from Look At Me. Any excuse will do... so I decided to check out the newsletter. There I found an article about what a photographer's assistant's life was all about (I would refer you to it but it was written in Russian so majority of you won't find it of much use). It was a surprisingly detailed article with what seemed like a more or less realistic account (as opposed to the normal sugar coating) of what actually happens.

As I was reading the article, I kept thinking that it sounded pretty cool.. hard work, but still very exciting. As I quite often do, I had the "I wish I could do that" thought.. and then I thought: well, why the hell not? What is stopping me from copy pasting a stock standard resignation letter from the internet and stepping out into the 'unknown' and trying myself as a photographer's assistant? The answer came from the same place where the question did - my head, except this time it sounded a bit like my mother and went something along the lines of "oh, dont be stupid! that is not even a serious job! you need to concentrate on what's important!"

The truth is... I dont think I even know what's important anymore.. I have spent so much time, money and effort on getting an education, then another education, then some other 'very important and highly sought after' qualification, then spent another 4 years proving something to mainly myself and a few sundry others that I can survive and succeed in a corporate giant beast that now looking back it would seem like a bit of a waste of resources to drop everything in a pursuit of a profession that is probably even less forgiving than the corporate world. In the corporate world you can learn things, you can earn degrees and then if all fails take 2 years off to get your MBA and come back and whoop some more ass. In the creative world not many people care what school you went to and what marks you got if your product is rubbish. The process of validation does not entail annual reviews and boxes on a  checklist... It involves luck, connections and talent (in that particular order!).

They say that the biggest walls around us the ones we put up ourselves. If that's the case, then I live in a castle... And yet, Carrie Bradshaw style, you "couldn't help but wonder" what it would be like to wake up every morning and go to a job you absolutely love and which produces something unique, something beautiful.. literally on daily basis. Don't get me wrong, not that I don't think spreadsheets are not beautiful.. they can  be very aesthetically appealing depending on the colour palettes you use. Or not.

And of course I would be lying if I said money did not play a role in this whole internal debate. It does. very much so. The book I am currently reading had a brilliant quote in it: "money comes and goes. lifestyle comes and stays".  Enough said.

So until I work up the courage and earn enough money.. to copy and paste that resignation letter, I'm gonna keep on filling my little knowledge pot about what it's like 'on the other side' with useful information, keep on buying lottery tickets (because lets face it, then i could have my cake and eat it too) and keep on hoping that there are some things in life that are just meant to be. Hopefully it will all work out for me before my 80th birthday!

xx

Thursday, December 2, 2010

Miss Vanilla Scented..

Maria from Vanilla Scented

Wednesday, December 1, 2010

i've got love for you if you were born in the 80's...