Time for a tattoo….

I had my first tattoo at the age of 28 (Nearly 29).

I suppose I wanted my first tattoo as something to mark my age, not in a “I’m having a mid-life crisis” kind of way.  I just wanted to mark (literally) the period of time that had passed in the last few years of my life.  I wanted something to represent the wins and the fails that I have encountered and confronted in the last 7 or so years.  This period of time has been very trying.  There have been loses but also some beautiful gains.  Do not concentrate solely on the good or the bad.  Be elated by the good and learn from the bad, everything in moderation and equal balance.

Some people have tattoos when they are younger and maybe don’t know what they want them to mean or even sometimes regret them later on.  For me the time finally felt right, the reason, the money was right, the design, the placement on the body and the tattooist.

I admit that I was a little nervous beforehand as I honestly did not know what to expect of the pain.  Many people have described the pain to me, but every person experiences something different and only the real thing will enable you to experience and describe that pain for yourself.

So the text…

I’m a huge fan of Radiohead and for me “True Love Waits” is one of their most beautiful songs.  The song can be interpreted in many different ways, and even the lyrics are often something that becomes a debate amongst fans.  The actual words “True Love Waits” also mean so much more than just a song, or lyrics.  As I have written above, they mean different things to me and are incredibly personal.  I wanted the tattoo on my wrist so that I could be reminded of it everyday.

Body art and modifications fascinate me, I have had plenty more piercings than the average person that you’ll meet but it has never been about fashion or trends. Obviously when something is trending it draws yours attention to it so you cannot help but be influenced by it to some degree.  Though through all my different styles and stages in my life so far, my piercings have remained.

I previously started a masters degree in art and planned to create a body of photographic work based around this theme.  I photographed people having different piercings in a piercing studio.  There is a whole wealth of different people and “things” to photograph within this theme.

I have read books such as “In the flesh: The cultural politics of body modification” by Victoria Pitts, which is incredibly interesting and eye opening, Body Piercing by Andrew Dunbar and Aesthetic Surgery by Angelika Taschen.

Unfortunately the masters degree went “down the pan” and due to a career change from working part time in a clothing & piercing shop, to a full time career elsewhere, I no longer had access to people being freshly pierced so I suppose a body of work on this theme has been shelved for a while.

A little about the tattoo studio - It’s called Alpha Omega Tattoo and is based in the centre of Cardiff.  It’s quite new and you should pop in if you’re passing as the interior is pretty cool and the staff are friendly too.  I chose to be tattooed by Chris Collins as I really like his designs and the quality of his work.  He didn’t design the tattoo for me but I have seen his talent and would definitely consider him designing one for my next one…and there probably will be a next one.  Check out their website and his blog.

Whilst having my tattoo, I could not miss the chance to document it in some way as it was important to me.  So I asked the tattooist Chris Collins if he minded me taking some quick shots whilst he continued to work and the resulting images are below.

Part of me can’t believe that I was able to look at the tattoo whilst it was being done.  I’m normally someone who always turns their face away when there is a needle approaching.  This has been tried and tested many times with my piercings and suits me fine, I like the art and the pain, I just don’t usually want to look at the needles.  With the tattoo however I was incredibly calm, which goes to show that it can’t have been that bad!

Did it hurt? – Yes

Was it worth it? – Yes

Do I love it? – Yes

Can I live with it forever – Yes?

So now you know, xx

 

“In a misty shroud or just pea soup?” – A day at the beach in Wales

In the last few weeks we have had some incredible weather.  We have had almost a mini heat wave for the month of March.

Without a doubt we thought the best idea would be to head to the coast one beautiful sunny sunday.  It was so hot and bright in Cardiff that I could almost imagine a swim in the sea.

We packed the car with a picnic, swimmers and towels but also some blankets and warm jumpers.  You never can tell with British weather!

We drove about 20 minutes out of Cardiff, only to bump into Bridgend, who seemed to be hiding in amongst some heavy heavy fog.  Naturally we assumed that as we approached the coast this fog would have been blown away.

How wrong we were….

I have never seen fog like it.  It was almost magical, if it wasn’t for the freezing temperature…and the wetness of it.

As a lover of horror movies, this was all I could imagine walking to the sea.  You could hear distant voices echoing, you could see shadows and shapes of other people moving in and out of the fog.

There was a point whilst walking to the water that you could  no longer see the sea, waters edge, or the cliffs.  It was completely surreal and even disorienting.  I really felt inspired by this experience, I will have to write some poetry to accompany the images, just haven’t had the time yet.

Clearly there was no swimming to be done, not on this day.  We made use of the blanket as Bearface, being a boy n’ all, didn’t bring a proper jacket.  I quite like the portraits of him, he always photographs best when he’s not really paying attention.  Don’t we all?

One image at the end was of the Lifeguard Hut, where for some reason there was actually some blue sky above it.  It was in a different weather system alltogether!

Here are the images I made, taken on my Canon S95…still doing a lovely job for a “happy snap” camera, as I call them.

Enjoy!

I’ve also made a short film with some of the footage that I took on the camera.  It’s turning out quite nicely so far.  This will be shown online soon….

Crispy Cinnamon Cookies – Yummy yummy!!!

Crispy Cinnamon Cookies

Here’s a lovely recipe for the above!
I made them today and they are delicious and really quick and easy to make!

Excellent to have with a cuppa tea or as an accompaniment to a fruity creamy dessert.

Makes: Approx 20 dependant on size

Preparation time: 10 mins

Cooking time: 15 mins

Ingredients:
300g / 10oz Self Raising Flour
250g / 8oz Softened margarine
125g / 4oz Caster Sugar
1 Tablespoon Milk
1 Teaspoon Ground Cinnamon

Method:

Preheat oven to 180c / 350f / Gas Mark 4.

Lightly grease your baking trays, number depends on size of them.

Mix all ingredients together in a bowl by hand or with a mixer until it has passed the breadcrumb stage and has blended well into a dough.

Roll small pieces of dough into balls. Place on the baking tray and flatten into 5cm discs with your hand.

Bake in the oven for 15 minutes until lightly golden.

Dependant on your oven you may need to give these a few extra minutes.
Mine looked quite anaemic and undercooked but hardened as they cooled so don’t worry if they look really soft.

Leave them to cool on the baking tray for 5 minutes and then transfer to a wire rack to cool completely.

Enjoy!

I AMsterdam

I visited Amsterdam at the end of January. It was my second time to the beautiful city….and no..I’m not a pot smoker…nor am I a visitor of brothels…

I do get quite frustrated with the stereotype that people place on Amsterdam and the people that visit there. Yes there is a tolerant attitude to the smoking of cannabis in cafes that purely serve that purpose and Yes there is also a tolerant attitude to the sale of sex in the Red Light District (RLD) but that is not all there is to Amsterdam…

Did you know that there are more canals in Amsterdam than Venice? A whole 47 miles of them…. There are also 1,500 bridges crossing said canals and 90 islands! Wow!

I love strolling for hours along the watersides, seeing the floating flower markets on the Singel and looking at the fantastic and unique views of the canals from the bridges.

There are fantastic parks, the museum quarter, galleries galore, bike rides, tram rides, cheese tasting, beer drinking…the possibilities are endless.

Of course you still have to have a good look around the RLD, it is of course one of the many things that Amsterdam is famous for. This is a strange experience, but don’t be embarrassed as there are many tourists taking a look! I noticed that the RLD seemed to have been downsized from the first time that I visited. Some or all of this is because of Project 1012

 

 

Project 1012
“Named after the postal code for downtown Amsterdam. Project under which the city’s rulers are attempting to clean up and gentrify the Red Light District (RLD). Many brothels in the Red Light District have already been replaced by fashion galleries, designer studios, and jewelry stores. Parts of the Red Light District will have to go. The legalization of prostitution in 2000 has not led to the desired results, in the eyes of the city. Smaller prostitution zones outside the main Red Light district, such as along the Singel canal and along and around Spuistraat, will be closed. Also, the area around the Old Church (the oldest church in Amsterdam) will be made free of ‘windows’. The latter is being gentrified by the city council, whose Project 1012 (involving ten key projects) has already closed down the windows run by criminal gangs. The fashion ateliers left in their place bring an incongruous air of routine living to the area.”

It is also worth having a look at the “Coffeeshops” in Amsterdam, there are lots! It is quite a surreal experience seeing people smoking drugs in a cafe…certainly a sight you don’t see every day….they do actually serve coffee, tea, hot chocolate that are “drug free” too! Some of the coffeeshops have been done out with incredible decor.. De Dampkring being one of them…This particular coffeeshop was featured in Oceans 12.

Normal coffee shops in Amsterdam are written Koffiehuis…just to avoid confusion…and “brown cafe” that you find in Amsterdam are usually laid back pubs with low lights, intimate atmospheres and lots of locals, this is the real place you want to visit for some excellent beer choices!

During our visit to Amsterdam we walked around Oosterpark, and around miles of canals, we visited the windmill De Gooyer, we went to the Amsterdam Tattoo Museum, Artis Zoo to see the monkeys. We wandered around the RLD and poked our heads into a couple of coffeshops. We drank 9% and 12% beers…which was probably more dangerous than if we’d been on drugs!…and best of all we had chips with mayonnaise and lots of pastries…. We saw cows on the ceiling of a shop, cats everywhere we went, drank hot chocolate to keep warm, took long exposure night shots of the canals, looked in the supermarkets at their vast array of cheap beers, saw some funny looking cars, went to an outdoor market, ate Febo fast food, dodged trams and bicycles and rain, saw some great graffiti, saw lizards in the park, saw some sculptures, saw some ducks, saw a two headed fox, listened to some jazz, played with some monkeys and butterflies but not at the same time…and went home….pheeeewwwww!

Exhausting…now enjoy the pics!

Londinionioioio oh oh ooooh!

Hello….

I’m trying to catch up with all that I seem to have been doing since the new year started!….I’m not doing a very good job so far!

At the start of January we wen to London for a couple of days.  Just to have some time there to look around and enjoy ourselves.

We stayed in London Victoria in a very cheap hotel (Squat) but it did the job, especially when we used Megabus tickets for about £11 return…Bargain!

In the last few years I have stopped taking the tube as much in London.  It finally dawned on me that a lot of the key places you may like to visit are withing walking distance.  The distance between 2 stops on the tube sometimes is a little a a 5 minute walk!  Unfortunately during this particular visit the weather was not on our side for some of it!

We did a lot of exploring in Soho and Oxford Street.  There are a lot of great shops, music, vintage clothing and a Hummingbird Bakery!  We stumbled upon the street that featured on the cover of Oasis’ Album (What’s the story) Morning Glory.  I had my first Hummingbird Bakery Whoopie Pie!…Very tasty indeed!

The great thing about this area is that there is a high number of Samuel Smith pubs.  This is my favourite brewery and they keep their prices pretty cheap…which was a refreshing change when compared to other normal London prices!

Thanks to our friend Claire who took us to see the Gerhard Richter: Panorama Exhibition. (Tate Modern 6 October 2011  –  8 January 2012).  I had forgotten how familiar some of his work was, and also how fantastic.  It was definitely an incredible exhibition and I’m very glad that I managed to catch it.  We also saw The Unilever Series: Tacita Dean (Tate Modern 11 October 2011 – 11 March 2012) as it was in the Turbine Hall.

We went to see Piccadilly Circus at night where I made some of the images below.  I enjoyed testing out the night shot capabilities of my new compact camera.

The following day we frequented Tin Pan Alley, Covent Garden and the Natural History Museum…purely for the Dinosaurs!  We then retired to drinking holes in the Victoria area…The Cask…and amazing pub with an insane selection of beers from around the world…I seriously recommend this pub to anyone with the slightest interest in beer!  We also visited one of the most beautiful Sam Smith pubs I’ve seen…Windsor Castle..No website but the address is 23 Francis Street, SW1P 1DN.  Definitely worth a gander!

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Tea and Cake in the Snow

Tea and Cake in the Snow

As you know I love Tea and Cake….I LIVE for Tea and Cake….and on Saturday we went for Tea and Cake.
Looking forward to going to Waterloo Gardens Tea House only to find that it was busy…which is often the case as it is so amazing…
We then went on a mission to find a replacement….we ended up grabbing a seat in Tea & Cake on Wellfield Road.

The cakes were amazing and so was their vast selection of teas! Just what we needed to get warm from the snow outside.
Here’s some images I made… when we got home I found someone had drawn a picture in the snow at my front gate…cute

I haven’t forgotten about London…I shall put some photos up soon and I’ve also just been to Amsterdam so have some more images to show in the next post.  I seem to have been a bit slow at blogging what I’ve been up to!

 

Book Arts Fayre at Ffotogallery 25th February

Looking forward to this.
I do need o get into gear and try to get a stall at the next one though!
Anyone interested in anything should come along, especially if you love art, illustration, books, zines, photography…self publishing!

That Kodak Moment

Reblogged from opinionehted.com:

Started in 1889, the Eastman Kodak Company has been part of all our lives. Much like today’s generation where terms like “Google” means search, or “Facebook me” means get in touch, the “Kodak moment” has been part of all of our lives, and has always meant a special moment in time that has been captured on film.

Being a photographer, and one who was taught using film and processing my own film (and subsequently spending years in the dark), I can speak from my own experience and say that film is officially dead.

Read more… 751 more words

Really interesting article about Kodak and the death of film by www.opinionehted.com

Continue reading

Penarth in 2012

This is the seafront at Penarth near Cardiff.

This was my first visit in the new year. I love Penarth seafront. It is such a beautiful place to visit, and the chips on the pier are very good! This is one of my favourite places to visit in Cardiff (well next to Cardiff). Anyone visiting Cardiff should definately say a quick hello to Penarth! Especially at dusk when the sun goes down over the sea…. Don’t forget your camera!

There is always photographers around on the beach taking photos of the landscape…or should that be seascape? I often wonder how many photos have been taken there.

The pier is beautiful, with white victorian railings, benches and lights and a 1930s pavillion building at the main entrance to the pier.

There is an ongoing project to try and get the pavilion renovated.

Here’s the link for their “Let’s make it happen” page. They have managed to get a £1.68m grant to renovate the Pavilion > Here

Here are the images I made…using my new Canon S95….I’m very happy with the quality of these images and the final results. I hope you enjoy them too!

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Time for a new camera – Introducing the Canon S95

I bought a new compact camera just after Christmas it’s a Canon S95… See the spec here

I’m incredibly pleased with this camera’s performance so far.

I previously used a Fuji Finepix F31fd. This camera was very good for a Fuji and for a camera that I bought 4/5 years ago. It was a 6m megapixel camera with very good ‘low light’ qualities. I felt it was time to upgrade mainly to a camera with more megapixels but with similar ‘low light’ qualities. It was a difficult task to find a replacement camera for a similar price that I paid for my Fuji. £150 to be precise. I could not consider cameras such as the Canon G12 as £400-500 was largely out of my league, even though these are very nice camera. They are also larger in size than I would have prefered.

What I look for in a compact camera is compact size…to fit into my handbag or travel bag when abroad. I look for a good amount of manual override so that I can have as much control over my images as possible. This is often a quality that is lacking from many compact cameras. I also look for good ‘low light’ capabilities without lowering image quality.

The Canon S95 has the same size sensor as the Fuji but has higher resolution. It also has better image stabalisation for low light, wider f stop (f2 at 28mm) and higher ISOs. It gives me incredible manual control over the images. Some compact cameras do not even allow you to force the flash on and off. This camera even allows you to change the strength of the flash….I think? It has a wider lens than the Fuji, which was 35mm, the Canon is a lovely 28mm. I’m not that fussed about having great zoom on my compact but this one isn’t bad.

Here’s a shot enjoying the wide angle from my recent trip to London.

(F2, 1/60th, ISO 400)

Here is a shot from Picadily Circus…. This is with the zoom fully extended….without using a tripod or balancing on a railing for stabalisation.

(F4.5, 1/60th, ISO 32,000)

Here is another night shot of Picadily Circus and soho

The camera seems to have a good macro function too…expecially with the flash on which often tends to flush out the colour of any close up shots. Here is some examples of macro shots from my friends dog. The camera has kept the detail and the colours very well.

So as you can see I am enjoying this camera and am looking forward to testing it some more, so far it is brilliant! I found this blog really useful for reviews of this camera before I bought it. PhotographyBlog.Com