Field Day 2012

Music: Beirut - Nantes

 

Field Day was exactly one week ago today. A day full of music, laughter, friends and a whole lot of randomness. It was the first music festival that I'd ever been to and as I lay there on the grass completely immersed in music and beautiful bass I couldn't for the life of me understand why I had never been to one before. 

The day started early. Bleary-eyed I got myself to London for 11am to meet my friend, H. We caught up on lots of little stories as it had been a while and soon we were on our way to Victoria Park, giggling to ourselves that we didn't need a map. We just had to follow all the hipsters. Which we did :)

When we got in music greeted us and like children we excitedly danced from one  amusingly named tent to another (Bugged Out! Eat Your Own Ears.. to name a couple), enjoying music, watching games, teasing each other to join in the playfulness. There was room to stand and dance and also room to just sit or lay back losing yourself completely. At some point I remember just smiling with the realisation that I was surrounded by people who loved music as much as me and in this space and time all of our little lives and stories were overlapping. 

H making little garlands for our heads :)

Koreless playing his set..

Short person's view :p

In the afternoon everything got a lot busier. The music got louder, the energy was palpable and all inhibitions were lost. There was impromptu dancing, girls with flowers on their heads singing without a care and there I was with a camera in my hand just taking it all in. All of a sudden I realised I was drifting in a sea of people. If H wasn't wearing her bright green jeans I would have lost her completely. Friends turned up and we frantically texted each other trying to find each other among the crowd of people.

The best thing is when you run into more friends that you had no idea were attending! And this exactly what happened! It was as though we were all exactly where we were supposed to be. 

The sun joined us for little while and the rain held off til the last moment. The last set I watched was Beirut (link above) and it had just begun to drizzle. We didn't care. We just sang along and danced in the twilight rain. 

I reached home at 1am achingly tired, with sore feet and music still playing in my head. 

All in all, a pretty awesome day.

<3

Metronomy - The Bay

wild roses and a hampstead heath meetup..

Here's a small series featuring the beautiful Little Twiglet which was taken during the open-to-all flickr meet up that the girls and I held back in April in Hampstead Heath, London.

The inspiration for the edit came from the pink flower wreath that I'd brought along with me. At the time I wished I'd brought the white one instead to contrast against her dress but somehow in the edit experimenting I fell in love with mixing the pinks and blue hues to create this light/dark ethereal feeling.

I was quite pleasantly surprised with the way they turned out as I literally grabbed Twig, put some flowers on her head and placed her in an area which had the prettiest light. Somehow, between talking to people and directing her, I only managed to take 7 photos! Usually it takes a (hell of a) lot more before I get one I really like let alone four!

Anyway please take a look and let me know what you think :) 

And now for meetup photos! I have a confession. I managed to run late and get lost along the way so by the time I reached the location some people had arrived and left! So, here was the group I met and although at first I felt a little intimidated seeing all the new faces, it wasn't long before we were all laughing and getting along well :)  

I can't help myself but do the typically British thing of mentioning the weather(!) but really,  we were all SO impressed with it! The forecast for a ENTIRE week leading up to that day was rain, rain and more rain! Which I suspect deterred some people from attending but then when the day arrived somehow someone somewhere was smiling as us because it was suddenly a sunny, warm spring day!

Anyway! Here are some pictures :)

Group shot with links! So from left to right: 

Me, Henry, Twig, Sarah, Jack, Sam, Sevgi, Amy, Nizaad and Rich

Henry!

Jack and Rich

Sam, Amy and Niz

Amy

Little Twiglet, Henry and Sarah

Sev and Jack

Niz

Niz and I taking shots of each other through purple glasses!

Sev applying the lipstick that soon everyone was wearing, yes even the boys! Haha ok ok maybe not the boys ;)

Chilling out at a local pub and checking out everyone's images from the day. 

So that was it! Our first open-to-all-meetup! It couldn't have come together without Sarah, Niz and the super organised Sevgi! My god.. this girl is good. 

 Personally I think it went really well. Everyone came with a good attitude, ready to engage, share and help each other. Some came not knowing anyone and I think we all went away having made lots of new friends! Which I think is what it should all be about anyway! Yes at times we didn't really know what was going on but fortunately with a small group of people it was easy to just set up a scene and marvel at the different approaches people had.

I think the girls and I will definitely do this again. So keep checking in and we'll let you know when the next one will be!

Here are links to everyone's pages and do check their versions of the day! :) 

 Henry, Sarah, Jack, Sam, Sevgi, Amy, Nizaad 

And finally! This series of Sev was also taken on the same day and the link to that blog post is... here!

Phew!! Thank you so much for reading!

Coming soon...

Somehow unbelievably it's been exactly 2 weeks since I got back from Kenya. In that time I've shot 2 weddings, visited Germany, relaxed at the foot of the Alps and now have a backlog of images and stories to share!

This was taken on the beach in Mombasa.. the town where I spent the first 16 years of my life. I'm looking forward to sharing more images from my beautiful home town with you :)

David Trumble

David Trumble is a talented artist and director who also happens to be a good friend of mine. A few months ago he commissioned me to take a series of images that reflected him and his personality to use on his website and also in his TED talk. YES that's right... TED TALK. 

For someone so young he's achieved a fair bit! I've attached the video at the bottom. It's beautifully delivered and talks about issues that I think every artist can relate to so please do check it out when you have a chance.

So, back to the session! A couple of coffees and a long country walk later, we'd outlined the images we wanted to create from the locations, to the props and to what he would wear. There were several things we wanted to incorporate such as his sketchbooks, signature red hat and the concept of duality (since David has a twin brother, Stephen). The images were taken in central Oxford and later in a field behind David's house. So.. (finally) here they are!

Stephen and David

Cheesy group shot!

And just for fun here's a dramatic outtake ^_^

David's website  and facebook page

And here's his TEDxYouth Talk - "The Journey to Indifference and Beyond"

Thanks for reading!

lady in the woods..

A quick series featuring the lovely Sevgi taken at the recent meetup in London.

This was such an impromptu set up. I literally grabbed Sev, spied the veil and ivy from Sarah's prop bag and placed her in the space that had the prettiest light and interesting tree features. 

I love setting up little daydreamy scenes and Sev was very patient whilst I danced about trying to make that veil reach new heights. As it so happened all around Sev were creepy thorny vines, perfect for a picture but not so perfect for my little ankles which were scrapped at mercilessly! 

Still, it was totally worth it :p

The three images all have the same colour way. I guess I just fell a little in love with the colour palette and wanted to explore it further. 

  I confess!! I couldn't resist playing with a b/w version.

Ahhh I'm so torn as to which version of this picture I like best.. which do you prefer?