The North Sea following the British Isles as it slowly slides off the planet.Sometimes it is really obvious that something is just plain wrong with a picture. Of course, you can deliberately have the sea sliding off planet Earth for an effect, but usually it’s just you haven’t noticed the background or in my case trying to photograph the sea/horizon (above) was not holding the camera properly (excuses, excuses).
Doesn’t quite feel level does it?
Photographing water – oceans, rivers, canals and even a glass of liquid comes with expectations. It feels right when the liquid looks level. Well, obviously getting a flat calm sea horizon level is pretty easy, but it all becomes more tricky when the waterline isn’t the main focus of the picture.
Since I took these canal photos I’ve been more careful when framing a shot that includes water, but I really, really struggled with this City of London skyline.
The City of London from Canary Wharf . . . Take 1001!!
And, in the end – defeated – adjusted it in Photoshop.
Okay smarty pants we all know your a natural. Now give me back my camera please.
Krasimira Ivanova-Stayneva from the University of East London, Graduate Fashion Week. Summer colours not over bright, but with energy.The graduate and undergraduate shows have been in full swing with Graduate Fashion Week. Across the UK over 1000 fashion students have been showing off their design skills hoping to get noticed by a prestigious fashion house. Their work professionally modelled and professionally photographed can be found by clicking on the specific university fashion show on the Vogue page. The educational institutions are intriguingly sandwiched between some famous haute couture names. I suppose that is how it should be as today’s graduating students are tomorrow’s leading designers.
Richard Quinn from Central Saint Martins, Graduate Fashion Week. Painterly floral skirt offset with midnight blue trim.
Bold patterns, delicate intricate fabrics and a smattering of the current favourite, painterly florals floated up and down the catwalks. There were numerous unusual, striking and even provocative outfits. Bright colours followed dark and gloomy palettes.
And, there was fun with some amusing, charming designs from Rebecca Rimmer graduating from the University of Central Lancashire. I particularly liked her work as I think that sometimes fashion can take itself a bit too seriously.
Rebecca Rimmer from the University of Central Lancashire, Graduate Fashion Week. Fun and the detailing of the black frilling flicks out from the yellow counterpart.
Finally, here’s a photo of the fantastic Linda Rodin (65 years young), reminding everybody that fashion is for all ages.
Linda Rodin modelling for the J.Crew 2012 campaign.
I notice I’ve gone down the ‘very pretty, pretty’ alley a bit too much recently and I feel I need an antidote. Us, humans – aren’t we a contrary bunch? All the grey winter gloom and then it’s spring and there is green and flowers everywhere. And, I’m looking at skeletons! Also, I find I’ve been reaching for the black dye.
Enough gloom I think it’s time for a little ‘Kaffee und Kuchen’.
Coffee and hazelnut cupcakes. And a nice cup of coffee.
Previously known as the Costume Institute Gala, the Met Ball or Gala, is a fundraising occasion from the world of fashion. For those not into fashion this isn’t the opera Met, but the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York working with its own department – the Costume Institute (sorry if I’m teaching Grandma to suck eggs). It’s basically a big celeb fest with all the stars supposedly dressed to suit the year’s theme. This year’s theme was ‘White Tie and Decorations’ and linked to the new exhibition ‘Charles James Beyond Fashion’.
Press coverage of this event held earlier this week has been extensive, certainly here in the UK, and there are loads of photos all over the fashion blogs. But it is very sad how the professional fashion press love to give their ‘professional’ opinion in such a predictable and often unpleasant manner. More than one national newspaper and many of the magazines have presented their views in ‘the best versus the worst’ formula. Most amusing to me is seeing the same star/dress (they appear to morph into each other) being chosen simultaneously as both the best and the worst! I think one of the most appealing aspects of the blogging world, is that there is such a diverse spectrum of people challenging received opinion, delighting in difference.
Emmy Rossum in Carolina Herrera photographed at the Met Gala. Photograph from Vogue UK.
As somebody who gets asked to work to a brief, I have looked at many of the outfits and couldn’t see how half of them reference the work of Charles James and the ‘White Tie and Decorations’ theme. Reference does not mean copy, but between the stars and the designers, many designs were devoid of even a nod to the theme. Anyway, I thought Emmy Rossum wearing a ballgown by Carolina Herrera had it just right for a fresh, contemporary take on the glamour of Charles James.
On a daily basis there are things that are uplifting and then there are things that irritate. And, sometimes those two responses meet in a head on crash. I don’t want to have a huge rant about this, but I couldn’t resist making a comment. Firstly, I love the women’s designs from the Italian fashion house Dolce & Gabbana. I love the rich, ornate fabrics, put together in irrepressible combinations and finished off with an expert attention to detail. Haute couture by its very nature isn’t mass market, but its long tentacles spread influence across the world of fashion through lesser, mass-produced merchandise embellished with a luxury brand name. As with much fashion retailing collections are supported by extensive, glossy ad campaigns. Last year’s Dolce & Gabbana’s campaign was a take on a vintage version of Italy, recycling the 1950s, über cool, stylish look. Sparkling models grouped together displaying a youthful, exuberant version of living. Fine. Gorgeous.
Dolce & Gabbana Spring 2013.
This year’s campaign’s launch photograph, not so fine. Beautiful people, beautiful clothes, beautifully shot, but one huge ERROR a female model is shown eating bread!! I mean let’s face it, it’s almost headline news to see a model eating, but blatantly eating white bread what is going on? Or, hang on, is this a deliberately provocative photograph? As beautiful as it all is, I just find seeing an industry infamous for the ‘size 0’ phenomenon parading stick thin models posed pretending to eat refined carbs a bit rich for my taste.
Gosh – a mini celebration here on the old blog – at midnight tonight it will be one year since I started blogging. I kind of started by mistake, experimenting, thinking if you don’t tell anybody then nobody sees it, and I remember being quite amazed when I investigated the stats info and discovered that there had been visitors! Well, I’d just like to take the opportunity to thank all the readers, likers and comment makers for their ‘activity’. And, also to offer an inclusive thank you to all the bloggers I view and read who are so interesting and often inspiring. – Speech over –
When I saw the trailers for The Grand Budapest Hotel my attention was immediately grabbed by the image of the pink hotel facade. As I’ve mentioned before I love to really look all round the screen when I’m watching a movie so Wes Anderson’s latest offering was one I couldn’t miss. The deep rich colours and the delightful, just slightly over-the-top performance by Ralph Fiennes made it an enjoyable diversion. The interior details, the visual fun and the knowing, cartoon performances worked during the colourful parts of the film, but once it moved into the grey of the prison and the whites of a snowy landscape my attention drifted off. I suppose overall it was neither amusing enough nor clever enough and without the captivating visuals became grey candy floss.
Auditioning for a Wes Anderson film at the V&A Or A bit of whimsy?
In the UK, Mother’s Day usually falls on a Sunday in March. This year I notice it is quite late, March 30th, as Easter is late too. When I was a child my sister and I were expected to help out with the chores on Mother’s Day. As we got older we’d either bake a cake or a nice pudding for my mother – she had a very sweet tooth. We didn’t have a dishwasher, so my sister and I were used to washing and drying up. If, we had baked we were expected to leave the kitchen as clean as we’d found it particularly on Mother’s Day.
My mother was not into kitchen gadgetry, like dishwashers, but she did have a large front-loading washing machine. Despite this I still remember her meticulously washing any special, delicate clothing by hand. I remember explaining the ‘wool’ cycle on the machine, but she told me that she found hand washing beautiful garments quite therapeutic and not a chore. It is not how we think today, but I did notice when cold rinsing by hand a batch of scarves that the colours of the submerged silk were worth capturing in a photo.
Not really sure how the suits categorise films nor how they arrive at release dates, but ‘Her’ was released in the UK on Valentine’s Day and billed as a romcom starring Joaquin Phoenix. Set in the near future the film is more of a science fiction dystopia and actually falls far more naturally into a category that Margaret Atwood (The Handmaid’s Tale) calls ‘speculative fiction’. But, romcom? – I must be living on another planet. The film is amusing in parts, but overall the content is deeply depressing concerning itself with the inability of individuals to make lasting and meaningful relationships. ‘Her’ is more of an antidote to Valentine’s Day. However, it is quite beautiful to look at. For once, the ‘urban’ future is not grey, dingy and underlit. If anything, the outside shots have a bleached quality and the interiors are creams, fawns and browns punctuated with orange accents.
Perhaps this warm palette (even Phoenix’s usually dark brown hair has been softened to a lighter, ginger brown) was chosen to contrast with or heighten the desperate and bleak story. The urban vistas of the near future (apparently mostly contemporary Shanghai) look shimmering and fascinating, but the lives of the people in the film were introverted and self-obsessed. The characters are only interested in themselves to such an extent it is hardly surprising that Theodore (Joaquin Phoenix) is unable to sustain a relationship with a real woman and instead finds love with a computer ‘operating system’, who names herself Samantha.
The story is a bit like Pygmalion, but instead of the sculptor falling in love with his own crafted work, Samantha is an evolving computer program who moulds herself to Theodore’s needs. This is the point where I think – ‘what would this film be like if the lead were a female and a male OS adapted to suit her?’ Although, visually the total opposite to ‘Blade Runner’ (dark and very wet), ‘Her’ is on that continuum of films touching on the relationship between artificial intelligence and what it is to be human. Watching these creepy characters suggests humanity doesn’t have a rosy future.
I don’t want to give away the ending and, of course, a dramatic creation is working on several levels, but as the film progresses we see Theodore’s colourful clothing gradually change. If you’ve seen the main film poster it is red – almost totally red – with Theodore wearing a red shirt. During the course of the film he is shown wearing red, then oranges and tans, then pale orange and soft peach and finally at the end a white shirt. Maybe, I’ve read this all wrong, but Spike Jonze (writer and director) looks like he has experienced a few female bloodsuckers in the past!
Why go to the cinema? Why make the physical effort to go somewhere else when it’s all available (eventually) at home? Why get hassled with winter weather, parking and queuing? Well, for most of us we go to be entertained. A word of warning here, I loved ‘Inside Llewyn Davis’, but it’s not an easy, gentle type of entertainment. The Coen Bros are renowned for making films they want to make in the way they want to make them. Here, with ‘Inside Llewyn Davis’, they don’t attempt to soften the overall relentless, low-level dreariness of existence. They have chosen the early 1960s US folk scene as the medium for their commentary on the nature of a creative life. If you want to go to the movies to see a film pushing an optimistic, ‘we can all achieve our dreams’ theme, concluding with the obligatory Hollywood happy ending, then this movie is not for you. For me this film is a superb antidote to our contemporary celebrity obsessed culture.
Absolutely beautifully shot – worth seeing on a big screen just for the visuals. Sometimes I get annoyed with productions that are underlit and grey, but here the muted palette worked to enhance the bleakness. Also it contrasted well with harsh lighting of the night scene at the motorway services. The film draws you along Llewyn Davis’s (Oscar Isaac) life, not into his life, but closely observing his dwindling energy from the sidelines. There have been many films about creative people (fictional or biopics), individuals struggling for recognition, enduring setbacks, but ultimately ending with them standing in the spotlight of success. Parts of this film are funny, just how funny depends on your own appreciation of black humour, but overall it’s a film more about the nature of reality than the glories of fame.
Several professional reviewers have commented that it is not an accurate portrayal of the 1960s New York folk scene, but it isn’t a docudrama. Perhaps the Coen Bros chose that period as folk was having a resurgence in general and because folk songs are traditionally the songs of ordinary people. I am too young to remember the 1960s ‘folk scene’ at all. Folk has really passed me by, but this harsh yet melancholic film has been a revelatory introduction for me. Once again the globe contracted that little bit more as I heard mention of the Norfolk seaside town of Great Yarmouth when Llewyn Davis sang:
O, it was a fine and a pleasant day
Out of Yarmouth harbour I was faring
As a cabin boy on a sailing lugger
For to go and hunt the shoals of herring
This is the opening verse to Ewan MacColl’s folk song about the collapse of the herring fishing industry off the east coast of England (where I live). A song of everyday folk losing their livelihoods, not to mention the near annihilation of the herring.
Herring boats at Great Yarmouth, Norfolk, UK At one point in the early 20th century there were over 1000 boats out of Yarmouth. Photo: Time & Tide Museum, Norfolk
I appreciate a film if it makes me stop and think and look again at my assumptions, particularly if the film is subtle and engaging. We all know that a movie is a fiction, and if you were to record even a couple of hours of real everyday life you might get a few minutes of compelling material, hopefully more interesting than watching paint dry. I think on one level this film has captured the futility present in most peoples’ lives. Through Llewyn Davis the Coen brothers have shown us a personification of the bitter pill. Not every film has to be plot driven, fast paced and packed with special effects – they have their place, but so does a film attempting to reflect how it is – grey.
Agnes Ashe 