Fashion is an Art

Hey Surfers!

Wow it's been ages since I've posted, I haven't been feeling very inspired blogwise and fancied a bit of a break but now I'm back and raring to write!

So this the long promised continuation from my trip to London with my friend and fellow blogger, Josie of A Pretty Post It. After we finished with the Topshop event, which you can read about here, it was far too early to go home so we decided to head over to the Tate Britain and check out some of the artwork which was soon to be moving on. After jumping off of the tube we spotted a picturesque side street and Josie asked me to take some pictures for her blog. It was my first time attempting fashion photography and I had a lot of fun with it. I especially loved having a model for the first time, it took me a little while to get used to but soon I was ordering her to pose all along our route!

Had some fun photoshopping these. The light flare for example :)

This has got to be one of my favourite pictures of the day! I love the colour splash setting on my camera, I've used it for London pictures before which you can see here and it always gives great results, of course it helps when you have such a gorgeous model :)

After a stroll along the Thames we arrived at the Tate Britain Museum and had a very artistic afternoon taking pictures of, and with the pieces on display. The Tate has such a wide collection of art, ranging from classic paintings of the Greek gods to modern, thought provoking sculptures. It's most definitely worth a visit.

This was a picture of the beautiful domed roof, I had to lean very precariously over a spiral staircase to get the shot which is why it is slightly off centre. I so want to go back and shoot it again in the winter, get the night sky and also get the angle right!

More fun with the colour splash

Poor Josie being papped again.

The two pictures above are of the fantastic artwork to which the museum is home. I took quite a few photographs but these were two of my favourites; especially the one with the cameras. 

Unfortunately I'm not very well educated in art so my comments are limited >.<

We finally left the Tate in search of food, and a short tube journey found us near Trafalgar Square; all of the restaurants were packed but we managed to squeeze into Bella Italia for a delicious dinner and to rest our aching feet! My pedometer said we had walked nearly ten miles in one day.

We had a brief stroll through the square on our way to the station and I got some of my final shots of the day. I would have liked to have stayed longer but we still had to get back to Paddington and get on the long train journey home.

I hope you enjoyed this post. I have a little stock pile of pictures ready so I'll hopefully be back next week, I'll leave you with the fountains until next time.

Love Lily

Instagram Inspiration

Hey Surfers!

So I have a mini post for you this week. I was going to write a continuation on the Topshop and Olympus pen feature but the last few weeks have been insane; my lovely cousin announced his engagement and the wedding was to follow just two weeks after!! I was also asked to be his official photographer (helped out by my two beautiful little nieces) so with everything going on I haven't been able to edit the London pictures...sorry guys.

I still wanted to put something up so I thought I would show you all a couple of things I've been playing around with.

 In my photography course we have been learning about composition and the skills involved. I always see these amazing flat lay pictures on Instagram from famous YouTubers and Bloggers so wanted to try my hand at it. I've coupled what I've seen on Instagram with what I have learnt from my class and came up with these pictures. Enjoy!

If any of you are wondering the lipsticks are Mac Matte Lipstick in "Taupe" and Revlon Super Lustrous Lipstick in 477 "Black Cherry". 

The sunglasses are from Toyshades. I picked them up from their stand in the Oxford Circus Topshop; amazed to find prescription sunglasses for only £40.00! 

I used my make up for these shots but might try books next time. The pictures are all photoshopped just to brighten them up as my kitchen doesn't have the best light; I also enhanced the colours.

I had no idea how to get the white background that I've seen in other pictures, so I constructed a make shift studio out of layers of printer paper! 

I hope you enjoyed this little post. I'll be back soon, you never know when a new post will appear!

Love Lily

X

Shoot like a Pro with Topshop and Olympus Pen ~

Hey Surfers!

So this week I met up with my friend and fellow blogger, the lovely Josie of A Pretty Post It, headed up to London and took part in the Photography Summer School hosted by Topshop and Olympus Pen. The hour long workshops were held in the flagship Topshop store in Oxford Circus hidden amongst the racks. There were several different options to choose from but we went with "How to Shoot A City Scape" which was led by Mademoiselle Robot and R.Cleveland Aaron

We were given the option of borrowing one of the Olympus Pen camera's to try but as I had my own camera with me I declined, though I do wish I had had a chance to have a play with one. The Olympus cameras had a lot of functionality and produced some really dynamic shots with the press of a button that you would have to spend quite a while setting up on a DSLR; they're also wonderfully compact which would be perfect for trips such as this one. Josie and I soon had aching shoulders from lugging a pair of DSLRs around London.

Everything you need for a day out in London ;)

Once the introductions were over we were split into two groups; half went with Mademoiselle Robot and the others, our group, went with Cleveland. Before we left he gave us some instruction on what we were to take pictures of: Old meets New, People, Reflections and Shapes (either circles or triangles) we were then set loose on the streets of Oxford Circus.

Oxford street in selective colour

Cleveland was an amazing teacher, he pointed out things on the street that I would have never noticed, let alone thought to photograph. Looking for triangles made me see so many new and interesting angles and buildings that would make stunning photographs such as the one above; it's actually the top of the Boots store! I was in Oxford Street just a few weeks ago and had no idea that this was even there, Cleveland showed us his own picture of this building before we left so I had to try it out myself. 

Twins

We were accompanied by a representative of Olympus Pen on our excursion and she pointed out to Josie and I how our reflections in this building's window would make an interesting picture. We'd unwittingly worn similar colours which worked really well in the picture.

A little bit of old meets new.

More experiments with reflections

I really love this shot; it truly captures the insanity of Oxford Street. When I saw the bright yellow awnings I had to stop to get a shot; even though the picture is grey the yellow screams summer.

Triangles :)

I'll have to admit that I cheated on the "People" part of our assignment. Having a willing model for the first time I asked Josie to pretend to be taking a picture and snapped a shot with one of the effects on my camera.

This cafe was located down one of the quieter side roads; the sandstone building and the woman in her sunglasses paints a picture of the chic side of London. Almost feels like the opening of a movie.

"make MINE yellow"
Name courtesy of Cleveland :)

Our final stop was the BBC office, yet another building I had no idea was just down Oxford Street. When we had first headed out Cleveland showed us an effect on the Olympus cameras which made the dull British sky look stunning. I wanted to see if I could replicate it on my Nikon and managed the above using the "Low Key" effect; not quite the same but still pretty cool.

The stone tiles around the BBC building was dotted with the names of cities, I wanted to get more pictures but unfortunately we had run out of time and it was time to go back to the store.

Once we were back we were presented with an amazing gift bag! It was a complete surprise and filled with some awesome goodies. The Olympus Pen cameras actually had WIFI capabilities so you can send your pictures directly to your phone (after downloading the app) which meant Josie was able to keep all of her pictures from the day without having to wait for them to be sent over to her.

Having a look at our goody bags whilst enjoying an iced coffee.

I have to say I am quite sold on the Olympus Pen camera; while I love my DSLR it would be nice to have a camera with so many amazing capabilities but a lot less bulk! 

The Topshop Summer School was an amazing experience and I cannot recommend it enough. We both learned loads and had so much fun! Thanks to Cleveland and everyone who came with us around London, you were all brilliant and so friendly.

I believe that they still have some workshops coming up,  I'll put a link to their website here definitely go if you get a chance.

As the workshop was quite short Josie and I were left with the rest of the day to enjoy, but I'll save all of that for next week! 

I hope you enjoyed the post, Josie's blog is linked at the top of the page, make sure to pay her a visit!

See you next week.

Love Lily

x

My Crucible ~

Hi Surfers,

I have been so busy lately! I have a huge project that I'm working on which has had me travelling all over the place, not to mention one of my cousins is getting married in the next few weeks so my world is full of dress shopping, family dinners, speech writing and the like.

 I'm sure you can guess that, although my camera has been accompanying me for my project work I haven't been able to shoot anything blog worthy, but still wanted to put up something for you all now that I have a day or so of down time.

The reason that this post is called 'The Crucible' is because it is just that; a melting pot of pictures from different years and cameras which I wanted to share. I hope you enjoy them.

This was taken on my nephew's first birthday party which had a red and black colour theme. I was having a lot of fun with the selective colour function on my camera to really make everyone's red outfits stand out. Some of the little ones abandoned their shoes after we ate and I thought they made a pretty adorable picture.

One of the few times I have been up before the sun, most likely from pulling an all nighter! The fields near me always have this haunting mist covering them in the early hours; that, coupled with the eerie blue tones made this something I just had to get out and capture.

This was one of my early pictures from when I was just becoming interested in photography. I called it 'Vanity' and borrowed my sister's camera to take it. It's quite interesting to look back at this and see how far my work has come :)

I have always been quite proud of this photograph. It was taken on my bridge camera on a trip to London with a friend; other pictures from that trip can be found here. 

One of the reasons that I hadn't posted this previously was due to the disgusting amount of frog spawn which covered the leaves surrounding the water lily and a large fly which was resting on one of the petals. However now that I'm much more proficient with Photoshop I've managed to remove a lot of those flaws and am finally pleased with the final image.

This final one was taken shortly after I purchased my DSLR and was just a test of one of the effects. The colours really jump out at you and I love my cat in the background with her glaring eye.

I hope you enjoyed this post, Surfers. I'll be done with everything come May and can focus a little more on some exciting summer blog posts. Don't forget to follow me on Twitter, Instagram and Bloglovin! All of the information is in the side bar.

Love E

x

Impromptu Oxford Adventure (One Year Blogiversary!)

Hey Surfers!

So I have now officially been blogging for one whole year! *cough missed two months cough*
I know my posts aren't as regular as I would like but I am proud to have kept this blog going for as long as I have :) and thanks to all those who have been with me from the start.

Today I'm going to be sharing with you some pictures from my first trip to Oxford. One of my best friends from University moved out there and after a few early morning text messages I decided to hop on a train so we could meet up and explore.

One of the Oxford Colleges

 After a Starbucks pitstop my friend had to go find one of our party who had gotten lost on the way into the city. I stayed behind and  took the opportunity to take some pictures of the near by Oxford University college; I believe this was the History building.

I wanted to try my hand at a bit of street photography and took this picture with the selective colour function on my camera.

After a little while I left my friends to watch the Rugby and decided to have an explore of the city. I finally found a part of the University which was open to the public and got some great shots.

I relied a bit too heavily on the black and white function on my camera for a few of these pictures but they didn't seem to have the same level of impact in colour.

Saying that, I did actually shoot this picture in black and white originally but it looked quite morbid so I switched to colour and made sure to get the flowers in the picture. It came out just as I wanted, though all these signs of spring mean one thing for me: hayfever season XD

Some heavy photoshopping went on here

After a long wander the weather started to turn and I decided to head home. I definitely want to return to Oxford some time soon and have a better look around.

I'm actually planning to start attending a photography course with a fellow blogger in the next month or so, which I hoping not only improves my skill set, but also means much more frequent posts!

I'll see you soon, 

Love E

x

Birthday shopping on the Champs-Élysées - Parisian Getaway ~ Day Three

 Hey Surfers!

Please excuse my long absence, the injury to my arm was worse than I'd realised which means very limited (if any at all) laptop use.

Today I'm bringing you the final day of my trip to Paris; my birthday! It was definitely one of my most memorable. I woke up in Paris to presents and a day filled with shopping, though that was after frantic packing and leaving our suitcases behind in the lockers of Gare Du Nord.

Our first stop was the Galeries Lafayette; an enormous, Harrodsesque shopping mall which had a focus on high end products. Their displays were beautiful and I had to hold myself back from buying everything in sight.

The Galeries Lafayette

Their Christmas decorations were absolutely stunning, but I didn't want to pull out my giant DSLR in such a place so did some incognito papping on my phone.

I had a specific goal in this shopping centre. 

The only souvenir I wanted to bring back from Paris (other than two full memory cards) was the Pandora Eiffel Tower charm for my bracelet; though I was well aware that nearly every other owner of a Pandora bracelet would have had the same idea and...I was right. 

When we finally found the Pandora stand they told me that the Eiffel Tower was completely sold out! but they did have the version which was somewhat more expensive and featured a small gold heart. As I had decided I would buy the charm whilst planning the trip I couldn't help myself and bought it. :)

After picking this up we had a look around the rest of the shopping centre and found some gifts for friends and family. I also found this delicious French coffee which I have been enjoying since we got back. 

In the background is one of the presents my mother bought for me. Pop up map of Paris :)

A good few hours later we decided to make our final stop The Avenue des Champs Elysees to see another one of Paris' most famous landmarks: The Arc de Triomph.

So wonderfully detailed

It was a beautiful and imposing structure; I must have taken a hundred pictures before I realised we were running low on time and still wanted to explore the street for the famous shopping experience.

a picturesque side street

Found the Pathe offices!

Didn't have the time to go in here :(

We thoroughly enjoyed ourselves strolling down the Avenue in the winter wind, choosing presents for my siblings. I bought myself and my mother some small perfumes as I wanted to purchase something that was exclusive to France (later found out that you can apparently get them over here!) The scent was so unusual and intoxicating, though it has to be used sparingly as it is very concentrated.

Caramelized Pear Perfume!
 Mum's gift making a perfect background here :) 

Unfortunately we had to leave soon after to navigate the Metro back to Gard du Nord and collect our suitcases. By the time we got on the Eurostar I was utterly exhausted but was looking forward to getting home and seeing the rest of my family for my birthday.

Overall it was an amazing experience and I will definitely be visiting Paris again as I still have so much to see, though next time I may brave the crowds and make a summer trip. 

Don't forget to check out the blogs at the top of my page, I've added a few new ones ;) and you can

look back to Day One and Day Two !

Love Lily.

x