Liebster Award

Laura from Little Travel Bee nominated me for the Liebster Award, so this post will be a bit more personal - keep reading if you want to get to know me better.
Thank you so much for nominating me, Laura!

The Liebster Award is a blogger award, it is a way for bloggers to promote some of their favourite bloggers (with under 200 followers). When you receive a nomination you can pass it on to your favourite bloggers. 'Liebster' is German for beloved, dearest or favourite.

So the rules are:
1. Thank the person who nominated you and link back to their blog.
2. Answer the 10 questions given to you by the nominator.
3. Nominate other bloggers for the award that have fewer than 200 followers.
4. Create 10 questions (or less) for your nominees to answer.
5. Let the nominees know that they have been nominated by going to their blog and notifying them.

Here are Laura’s questions and my answers:

1. Why did you decide to start your blog?
I’ve actually had 3 other blogs before starting this one - initially I started blogging just because I wanted to gather some inspiration, and because I had been reading inspirational blogs for a while and wanted to do what those people were doing.
Once I set up my photography portfolio I wanted a blog to go with it, partly to build credibility and also to have an online presence so that I could build relationships.

2. What has been the best piece of advice you have been given about blogging?
I listened to a podcast with Jeff Goins the other day, and he pointed out that it’s important to keep doing your best work and be persistent.
There’s always another mountain to climb, and when you think you’ve finally reached your goal you can still go way higher - so you have to love the work you do and you need to be able to continue to do it. You’ll only find your right audience if you create work from a place of deep passion.

3. If you could travel anywhere in the world, money no object, where would you go?
Ha, almost anywhere would be cool. Who doesn’t want to travel the world? There are four places on my ‘travel wishlist’ at the moment: Iceland (will share a bit more about my plans regarding this soon), Bhutan, the States, and Morocco. I’ve actually been thinking about trading my photography skills, like this guy, so we’ll see where everything goes :)

4. What has been your favourite holiday/trip?

Spending 7 months in New Zealand and Australia was awesome. I loved travelling on my own and meeting new people along the way, feeling free and independent, and having to manage to survive on my own pretty much (although my parents did support me, and I’m very grateful for that!). It was a great time to explore, work random jobs, such as kiwi fruit thinning (picking the ‘bad fruits’ at an early stage so the ‘good’ ones could grow better), blueberry picking (was probably the worst paid job I ever had, but my friends made it a lot of fun and the blueberries tasted amazing), and working at the cookie shop (pretty cool and yummy as well). Now I actually regret not staying longer. But, well, I was homesick.

5. If you could only eat one type of cuisine ever again what would it be?
I was just thinking of something kind of ‘neutral’, and Italian came to my mind. As much as I love all types of food, I probably couldn’t eat Indian a few days in a row. So Italian seems to be the answer to this one, pretending all the carbs didn’t exist ;) (And it should include pancakes and waffles, too).

6. Which country/city do you think is best for shopping?
London.

7. Which photograph that you have taken are you most proud of?
I love the photo I took of Lady Gaga during my first year at uni. It was at the ITV Studios, and it felt very Paparazzi-like. But I’m still really proud of it, and it always gets people’s attention when I mention it.

8. What is the best hotel you have ever stayed in/visited?
I haven’t stayed in many hotels yet, the last few times I travelled we always stayed at AirBnB apartments. Our Rome Apartment was lovely, very arty, and Rome was great as well!

9.When you go on holiday what do you always have to bring with you?
Just the basics really. No particular item. Clothes, shoes, basic cosmetics, … Maybe lip balm would be ‘the one thing I definitely have to bring’. Did I forget anything really important? I’d love to hear everyone’s answer to this one (feel free to share in the comments).

10. What are your travel plans for 2014?
As I said above, definitely Iceland - and then we’ll see how much money I’ve got left ;)

So, here are my nominations:

Siobhan
Hanna
Giulia
Jo
Kate
Charlotte

And these are my questions for you:

1. What are you really really good at?
2. Where do you see yourself in 50 years?
3. What is your biggest problem/challenge when it comes to blogging?
4. What do you value the most in life? (There’s a cool trick to figure out your true core values: imagine you’re being sent to an island, and you can pick 5 people to go with you - assuming your family and close friends are already there. Who would you chose? And why? What is it that makes you want them to be there? These are your core values.)
5. What do you feel is your true identity? I.e. what do you think you’re really supposed to do in life, what is your dream/true talent?
6. If you were a character from a movie or a different world (e.g. from Space), who or what would you be, and what would your story be?
7. What did you do and play as a child?
8. What does a normal day in your life look like?

Really looking forward to reading all your answers - I hope you’re up for it! :)

P.S. You've got till Sunday to enter the Giveaway, if you want the chance to win a one-on-one Skype session with me, or come along to the Photo Brunch:

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