Invitation to Exhibition

Some of you might already know - as part of finishing my course, we’re having an exhibition at the beginning of June, our final show. If you’re in London I hope you can make it - I’d love to see you there!
Below are the details:

Private View: Thursday 5th June 2014, 6-9 pm

Exhibition open: 2nd – 7th June 2014, 10am - 5pm (except for 7th June 10am - 4pm and late night opening on 3rd June)

Location: London College of Communication, Elephant & Castle, London, SE1 6SB

You can see a sneak preview of our work right here.
There will also be other courses exhibiting during the same time, e.g. BA Photography.

Brainstorm with me

I’m back. Thank you all so much for your patience, and most of all for your kind words, tips, and encouragement! It really means a lot, and I appreciate all of your support!!

Now, I’ve also had a bit of time to think about where I’m taking this blog and where my life is going in general. I’m about to graduate, and have got lots of thoughts and ideas on what to do next. I want to share some of those ideas with you today, and would love to hear your thoughts.

While I love photography, I’ve been interested in psychology for a long time now. The more time passes, the more I seem to be drawn towards topics like psychology in business, perception, branding, body language, marketing, presentation, the subconscious mind. I love understanding how the human mind works, and applying this knowledge to creative business situations. I love presenting something in a meaningful way, analysing situations and people, and thinking on a deeper/subconscious level.
I’ve been taking a lot of branding, presentation and body language courses over the last couple of years, and have watched many videos about the human mind, and how our subconsciousness works and influences situations.
I can’t quite find a general or summarising word for all these things, and haven’t managed to bring it all together yet. I would love to work in this area, and have just been brainstorming ways of how to put it into words and make it more tangible.

I also want to quickly talk about personality types, which relates to what I just mentioned as well. There are loads of personality tests out there, and I believe that most of them provide interesting insights. I wouldn’t call any of them ‘the one and only’ personality test, I think they all have downsides and benefits, but I believe that combined they can give you a pretty good picture of yourself. Let’s quickly talk about the Myers Briggs Test: I’m an ENFP. You can read more about it here and here. If you want to take the test, I’d love to hear what your type is as well.
ENFPs have a hard time focusing - I can tell you that ;) We love coming up with ideas, get all enthusiastic and excited about a project until the next one comes up. And the next one. And so on. While I think I managed pretty well to keep this blog focused on photography, there have been A LOT of ideas coming and going in my head over the years.
I’m mentioning this, because apart from my interest in psychology which I talked about before, I’ve been considering going deeper into food photography and making a baking book. This idea’s been floating around in my head for a long time now as well, but I’ve pushed it away every now and then when new new ideas came up. And then there’s another big idea I’ve got, based around NGOs and business. Well, more on that some other time.

I thought I’d share my what’s going on inside of my mind - I want to be completely open and honest with you, and of course I’m hoping to hear your thoughts and insights as well. Let’s have fun and do some brainstorming. :)

Now & Then

A while ago Hanna invited me to play along in a fun series called Now & Then - it's basically a way to get to know each other better online, and to share some fun facts about what life was like back then. I loved reading Hanna's answers, so here are mine...

Now (2014, age 23) & Then (2006-2008, age 16-18):

READ

NOW: Harry Potter, The $100 Start-up, Contagious, Branding Yourself, Isabel Allende, Rafik Schami

THEN: Harry Potter, Carlos Ruiz Zafon

WATCH

NOW: Alice in Wonderland, Harry Potter, Peter Pan, New Girl, Forrest Gump, The Help, Breakfast at Tiffany's
THEN: Pretty Woman, Harry Potter, Desperate Housewives, Grey’s Anatomy, Sex and the City

LISTEN

NOW: Lorde, Adele, The XX, Lana del Rey, Chase & Status, Lykke Li, Two Door Cinema Club, Macklemore, Marina & the Diamonds, Phoenix, Lianna La Havas
THEN: Kanye West, Chase & Status, System of a Down, Lil Wayne, T.I.

ATTITUDE

NOW: seize the day, simplify life, ambitious, pro-active
THEN: ambitious, believing, big dreams, have to look good

DREAMS

NOW: run a branding business, travel, live a simple life
THEN: work as a photojournalist (preferably for National Geographic), change the world

LEISURE

NOW: yoga, running, eating & drinking tea, baking, painting, church, learning/reading/taking courses

THEN: running, painting, dancing

I'd love to read Carrie's, Ana's and Marta's Now's & Then's - I hope you're up for it :)

Update on current projects

So, a while ago I told you I was working on a project documenting creative business owners as part of my final major project. Well, I started working on it (the pictures in this post are from a cafe I photographed in relation to the idea), then for whatever reason got a bit bored and lost interest in it, just not feeling the passion anymore. SoI started brainstorming new ideas, and put this specific project aside for now.
I just wanted to tell you, since some of you have been really helpful in coming up with ideas, suggesting businesses, and putting me in touch with people. Thank you! I really appreciate your help!
Now I’m focusing on a couple of different projects (and got a third one in mind which I’m not quite ready to talk about yet):
1. Documenting a farm in Iceland
2. Documenting a circus

Both projects have taken a while to come together, but everything is going really well now and I’m making progress. So I’m really looking forward to sharing more with you on those soonish.

While I’m at it, I might as well let you know that I’ve been very inspired by fashion related and more abstract photography & art recently, so I’m hoping to get some personal projects in this direction going at the same time. If you’re up for some modeling, or are working as a stylist or hair and makeup artist, please get in touch.

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:

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Space Party

I’m on work placement at the Sunday Times Magazine for the next couple of weeks, so I prepared some posts which I’ve been meaning to get out there for a while. Today I’ve got some photos to show you from our New Year’s Eve Space Party.
It was so much fun, especially going crazy on the 'dance floor'. I also loved preparing and getting everything ready, really focusing on the details. Luckily Louis wanted it to be just as perfect as me, bought a whole roll of fabric from the market to put up in our living room, borrowed a smoke machine, got a laser, more lights, loads of drinks, and created the playlist (you can listen to part of it here).
I created a secret Pinterest board for inspiration, wrote invitations (sadly don’t have any pictures of them), made lots of food, and was obsessed with my outfit and ‘character’ and coming up with a name and story around it.
I even downloaded the Google Sky Map app (which is pretty cool!), which helped me to come up with my name - Vindemiatrix from planet Alphekka ;) Louis was called Unukalhai (forgot the planet's name).

P.S. Of course we had a lot more people show up than the ones in the photos - but you know, I like things to look good, so these ones are definitely the most spacey looking ones ;)

PPS. Have you entered the giveaway yet?

First Video + a Giveaway

I've been thinking about putting this up for a while, but decided to go for it in the end.
So here you go... (I think I'll need a lot more practise ;) )

Enter the giveaway here:

a Rafflecopter giveaway

edit: Congrats to Alexandra for winning!

I hope you like the giveaway :) It will end on Sunday, 26 January at midnight.
You can of course just book a place for the Photo Brunch or a Skype session as well.
Also, I'd love to get to know you a bit better too, so if you've got any kind of video of you online, please do share the link in the comments.

P.S. You can see some images of the last Photo Brunch right here.