Portraits of Ireland

Photos by me. Model is Ireland. Taken in early June this year. She is wearing vintage velvet gloves, vintage felt hat, and charity shopped top.

Portraits would have to be my favourite kind of photography (especially black and white portraits.) The first two photos above are photos that I'm really proud of, despite Ireland's demands of in colour full body photos, I was sneakily taking black and white portraits! And am so glad I did.
I am so fascinated with people's faces, and I love to explore that with photography. I'm also really interested in natural effects with light, shadowing and reflections. I recently did some shoots with the gorgeous Jazz (who modelled a beautiful vintage Alice-esque dress in front of the camera for me in this post) and have some photos from a couple of the shoots with some great effects from shadows and lighting. We did three shoots that will all be posted on this blog soon.

I'm really happy with how her hair catches the light in this photo, even if you can see the washing line in the background!

Photos of Ireland taken by me in a week or two ago.

These photos are ones featuring Ireland's new fringe/bangs. I had planned a sixties themed shoot (which I briefly mentioned in my last post) but it ended up getting too late (and my sister had to leave to go and stay with our grandma the next morning) so we only squeezed in a quick shoot with me wielding the camera and my lovely willing model smiling and posing with flowers.
Ireland is still away and has been gone for over a week now - the longest we've ever been without seeing each other. I think I have separation anxiety, I'm really missing this gorgeous girl! I'm sure we'll have a dramatic running-hug when she comes home tomorrow.

Portrait Photography and Writing

An extra photo from my Alice in Wonderland shoot with Jazz.
Photo by me

Felt & Velvet hat - vintage, Jacket - vintage, Dress - Charity/Op-shop
Photo by my sister

Ireland is wearing a fedora from a vintage market stall, not sure about the sunglasses.
Photo by me

Same vintage hat, brown velvet gloves - vintage, top - charity/op-shop
Photo by me

Is this eye-shot still considered a portrait or not?
Photo by me

It has been perfect writing, reading and hot chocolate weather recently (yes, I’m talking about the weather again.) All grey skies and endless days of cold and rain, with no opportunity for a shoot. But I’m perfectly content with lounging about and reading classic literature (finished Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, and I’m onto Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes.) I’m really enjoying Sherlock Holmes, the writing style took a bit of getting used to, but it’s a wonderful read, has anyone else read it? 
Recently I haven’t been very comfortable with my writing, if I’m in the right mood I can write an alright post, but when I’m not I mostly try to lengthen them and often seem like I’m just listing things. I forget that it’s okay to just post some photos and write a quick bit of text. There’s a lot of self expectancy in the way I write – trying to write a hundred times better than I actually can, which leads to less relaxed posts. (So I’m going to delete my last post, as it was an example of this.)

I’ve only been writing a blog for a short time, but I’m hoping that this will help in improving my writing, because it’s something that I love so much. This blog has been really self beneficial and I’m really enjoying doing the photo-shoots for it as well, it’s also been really lovely getting comments (to me a new comment is a bit like getting a letter in the mail.)

Last year the idea of writing a blog would never have even occurred to me, but after seeing my sister’s blog and knowing how much she enjoyed blogging, I decided to give it a go. I was surprised how much I enjoyed it, as the previous writing I did was the occasional short stories and several long ones that never get even close to finishing (all fantasy of course.) And this kind of writing has really gotten me interested in the idea of journalism, it has also, in a way, been helping me with my fictional story writing.