I believe in a thing called love..

Just listen to the rhythm of my heart..

As i've mentioned before I Love street photography and while I was away from my love in Europe over summer I noticed, probably even more than normal the amount of love in the air. I decided to share this series with you for the season of loving and sharing. Although I wish it was like that all of the time.

While I was in London I went to see an exhibition at the Tate Modern on Voyerism, it was incredibly interesting, I got to see a lot of the work I had written essays on while at Art school and see bunch of photos I hadn't seen before as well. A highlight was Nan Goldin's 'Ballad of sexual dependancy'. Despite all of the negative connotations that go along with voyeurism and taking candid street photos of unknown people the exhibition inspired me to keep my camera to my face.

I learnt why they call Paris the city of love. I don't know if it is just because that is what it is called so everyone plays up to it or if it has always been that way and that is why it is called that but It really is all around you there..

South of France.

I'd always associated the area of Southern France to be the holiday spot for well to do people from England and alike. I had imagined it to have high rise buildings and large hotels overlooking the long white sandy beaches packed full of people trying to burn away any winter left in their skin.

I perhaps should have read my Lonely Planet guide more closely. Everytime we saw water while we were on the train we would get excited, try and take photos and take about how the first thing were going to do as soon as we get to our hostel room is get into our swimming costumes and hit the beach. Upon arriving by the train in Nice (and being careful to scurry (with a broken suitcase) as quickly as possible into a Tourist office to get a map so that we didn't get lost around the streets around the train station (never the best parts of town but the area around Nice's Gare-du-Nord is particularly notorious for tourists being pick-pocketed.

So, did Nice live up to my expectations? High rise buildings, not really, the occasional one but nothing like any of the other cities we visited, a pleasant surprise. Large hotels, yes, barriers off surrounding the pieces of beach that they owed with carpet going over the small pebbled beach so that the guests wealthy enough to stay in these places didn't get sore feet walking back up the beach. White sandy beaches, no. People burning away their winter skin? I don't know if it was because maybe we got there late in the season (August) or maybe because we are just so extremely fair skinned but I definitely felt like there were a hell of a lot of tanned bodies scattered over beach towels and pebbles.

That all said, I did really enjoy Nice, I got a little bit of colour, had some relaxing days shopping (after all it is a holiday right) enjoyed some nice seafood and explored the south going to the Celebrity hang out of St Tropez (Lady Gaga had been seen there only days before we got there) and just generally enjoying our time there (that is except for the broken suitcase).

P.S Don't forget to click your fave photos to see if you can purchase them in my Etsy store

Keeping it Urban..

The shopping season is in full swing and with it comes numerous marketing campaigns including my (what feels like) daily onslaught of emails promoting whatever the special is of the day. One of my faves to quickly look through is Urban Outfitters and when I went to Toronto a couple of weeks ago I was lucky enough to stumble into the store and play with some of the toys there. These are some of my faves..

I amore Paris (Part 2)

At the end of Paris part 1 I left you at the end of what was a very busy first day in Paris. On the second day we spent a good chunk of time in the Lourve, I again got in for a discounted price as I'm a UK citizen which still blows my mind. Following many travel books advice we mapped out the areas that we wanted to visit, we decided on all the Painting and hitting up the major sculptures. Through the France, Spain and last but not at all least Italy wings, being taken in the drifts of tourists towards the 'Tourist attraction" works like the Mona Lisa and Venus de Milo. I enjoyed that you could take photos in most places of the museum but felt like hitting whoever was holding a camera to their face when I saw a flash go off.

I was lucky enough to get into the Centre Pompidou for free which was a good change of pace after the Lourve with all its old greats to going there to seeing the contemporary artists and there were actually a lot more works there that I had studied being a Photography/ Fiber art major. I was even lucky enough to get into an exhibition for free that should have cost extra that was called Dreamlands in which i saw a bunch of my favorite photographers.

The third day we were in Paris we went to Versailles to check out the Chateau, which it seemed thousands of other tourists decided to do the same thing that day which kept us waiting in lines for around 3 hours to get tickets and being swept through the rooms as quickly as possible so as to avoid the group tours. The hall of mirrors was a little bit underwhelming but the palace as a whole was just a crazy sight, If that was made in this day and age it would simply be classified as tacky and over-the-top but with having frescos by some great artists and that amount of gold leaf in there left me amazed. The only thing I was left wondering about the place was how much had been restored, what was new and what was fake. There were a few places where we noticed that some thing for example that was meant to originally have been marble was just painted to look like marble.

The year in Square

About a week ago on my Facebook page I had been selected to be published and that I wasn't able to give away details just yet. Well I am now not sworn to secrecy and i'm proud and pleased to announce that Square magazine- A great online magazine dedicated to photography dedicated to shooting in square format, has selected me among 8 others to be published online and in their first ever printed book, which I will be recieving a copy of and as the contest was in conjunction with Lomography I also score a Diana Mini- which I'm really looking forward to using!

These are a couple of the photos that I entered, the theme was the year in Square. But be sure to check out the article in full to see the descriptions etc!