Sniffle, Sniffle, cough, cough, splutter...ack

Most Excellent Blog Fans, your London correspondent is SICK with FLU. And just needed to tell everyone about it :) :)

Mmmmm think maybe it might have been something to do with those freezing cold afternoons I spent last week in Hyde Park at the Winter Wonderland and at the Tiffany&Co "SKATE" Ice Rink at Somerset House (I will post photos from that tomorrow).

Don't feel obliged or anything (hee hee!), but if you are feeling uber generous then y'all can send me bunches of these to cheer me up ;-):

Later this week stay tuned for Messy Musings on cameras, lenses etc. A couple of you have been asking me what camera I am using, what lenses I shoot with etc so I thought I would do a question and answer session with myself to let y'all know what I am using right now.

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Messy Musings

To have a Tree, or not to have a Tree, that is the question

Well Most Excellent Blog Readers, the question has arisen in the Messy household: should we get a Christmas Tree this year. It is a question fraught with emotion (mostly mine) as in all our 8 years of marriage (eek!) we have never had a Christmas Tree of our very own. Tinsel, yes; Decorations, yes; Holly, yes but an actual tree (alive or dead).....um, NO.

Mostly we have never really had the space to store a tree and all the accompanying trimmings, so we have just made do with decorations strung festively about in an effort to create some Christmas spirit. I suspect we have a box of gaudy baubles (marked "Fragile: Christmas Decorations") in every State of Australia we have ever lived in: Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne.

However, given that we are in London, and fresh trees are readily available, I raised the issue with Mr Messy about whether we might have a tree this year. His answer? "If it costs less than £10 you can get one."

"£10!!!! ARE you SERIOUS???? You can't even buy a needle off a tree for that amount of money!" I mean, I don't want a Fraser Fir, or a Supreme Nordman Fir or even a Blue Spruce- a regular ole Scots pine will do. But they DO cost more than a tenner....ummm, considerably more :(

So, unfortunately dear blog readers, this year we will once again be Without Tree. Instead I will be forced to frequent the shops of Marylebone, Pimlico and Columbia Road to breathe in the scent of pine and citrus, touch the spindly needles and delight in the twinkly lights and lavish decorations. Oh, and I can be smug in the knowledge that once New Years Day rolls around, I, for one, won't be dragging a half dead tree through the flat, down the stairs and out the front door leaving a pine forest of razor sharp needles in my wake...or trying to find a hiding space for the box marked "Fragile: Christmas Decorations"!

Store window on Pimlico Road (above)

Is this a dog or a bear??? or half and half?

Does this cat look suspiciously real to you??? I dearly hope that someone has not stuffed their beloved meow and stuck her in the window!

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Messy Musings , Pimlico Road

Don't count your chickens before they're hatched

Well Most Excellent Blog Fans, here ends another chilly day in London Town for your photographic correspondent. After some rather terrifying moments yesterday dealing with "computer issues" (firing up the disc drive caused the computer to emit sounds reminiscent of a Boeing 747 on take off), I have managed to today hunker down in the digital darkroom processing photos.

Unfortunately, while an actual photo shoot might only be a few hours long, the post-processing can take many, many hours (days, weeks!!) to complete. And outsourcing retouching work just isn't an option unless the work is for a magazine or advertising- just think of a figure per hour in your head and triple it!

Retouching isn't simply about making someone 10kg thinner, lengthening legs to Naomi Campbell-esque proportions or removing an ex from a photograph (although all these things are possible)- it is about colour tweaking, ensuring the white balance is correct, "enhancing" beauty, creating different moods etc. Yes, it is best to get things right "in camera", but in my view, most photos are helped along by a little post production zhooshing. Retouching has always been around... it just used to be done in the darkroom (with lots of stinky chemicals) rather than on the computer.

Now to my post title....well, blog fans, as some of you know by now, I have received word that a travel article and photographs I took for a magazine have been accepted for publication!! I am, of course, extremely excited by this news (think: Labrador presented with an unattended buffet at a wedding reception) and can hardly wait to see my work "in print". I can already picture myself at Borders, proudly clasping an armful of magazines, telling strangers that "um, yeah, see this article here, well, um, yeah, see I WROTE IT!!!!"

It is, of course, against my nature to announce such news before seeing hard evidence of same (and it could all go VERY pear-shaped) but I am throwing caution to the wind and counting my (organic, free-range, happy lifer) chickens before they hatch.

Good things people, good things :)

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Messy Musings , photography

The little red port...

This is the scene which greeted Mr Messy as he came home with the groceries this afternoon...he walked in, took in the set which had mysteriously appeared in the 15mins since leaving home and ruefully shook his head. I could just about hear his thoughts processing...oh god, what is she doing now? is that a new red suitcase? I wonder how much that cost? is the rabbit (WWW) going to catch fire? where the heck is the fire blanket? do we even have a fire blanket?! oh dear, I really hope she doesn't blog about this... (since launch of my blog each time we have a "disagreement" I threaten to blog about it. hee hee!)

Of course, I just smiled super sweetly and kept snapping away thinking how cool it is to finally have an audience for my "mucking around" photos- the stuff I shoot when I have a hot flash of inspiration and feel like doing something creative.

Anyway, so yep, the little red port* is the newest addition to my props collection and is a sneak preview of what I will be using in my shoot tomorrow with a wee little girl called Eleanor and her mum, Jane. I am extremely excited about our session and have lots of ideas for the shoot which will (hopefully) go to plan if the weather holds. I have been obsessively checking Metcheck over the last few days and keeping my fingers, toes, legs, arms crossed that it doesn't rain. Cloudy I can deal with (great light for photos) but rain? not so much**

Eleanor's mum and I have been emailing back and forth preparing for our session. I can't wait to meet Eleanor as she sounds exactly like my kind of gal. When I asked her mum what sort of things she likes doing, top of the list (currently) is beetle hunting!!! Apparently this involves a wooden spoon, the park, and a fair amount of dirt- happy days indeed!

*is port an Aussie term or do other people use this term for suitcase as well? I think it is rather sweet and reminds me of my grandma- she always used to talk about "packing/carrying her port", never her suitcase :)

**just checked Metcheck for the 50th time today and was rudely informed that "weather details currently unavailable"!! What the?

***phew, Metcheck now back on line and the weather man predicts...wait for it....SLEET!

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Messy Musings