So it's Sunday 10...

During my rather unrelaxing weekend of getting ready to move/return to Leeds/revise, I found the time to sit down for five minutes and have a little gander through a couple of newspapers when a photography article caught my eye (with the images featured especially gaining my attention). As a huge fan of countdowns and competitions, I enjoyed reading about Digital Camera Magazine's Photographer of the Year 2010 competition and having a look at the overall winner and other subcategory successes. Really made me realise that not only photography skill is involved but also the ability to seek out and capture a particular moment, with some involving skill and time and others created merely via luck. Below is a link to the competition page and a few of my particular favourite entries which perked me up during a time of burst pipes, decorating ideas and houses that lack electrcitiy!

Photographer of the Year 2010



Overall competition winner, Jon Wright with his piece 'Exit Wave'. Really stunning piece which took me away from my winter blues and this miserable whether we've been having recently



Fire Fighter by Buchachon Petthanya. This was the piece what really dragged my attention to the article in the newspaper, coming second to the overall winner in the adrenaline category. Unbelievable how he managed to capture this piece and highlights a photographer potentially putting his life in danger for his art



This piece, 'Jump', by Wayne Lawes was unbelievably achieved in one shot, taken for the photographers own entertainment and for the dancer's portfolio. To say it portrays such a strong and powerful man, it conveys a great sense of elegance and beauty at the same time. Wish my camera was waterproof!



Even though this image wasn't shortlisted in the competition and only commended, I found myself really drawn to it whilst looking through the entries. As a person who loves to shoot water, as seen with my hydrophobia work, I love the shifts in focus on this piece, with some droplets blurred and others not. Seems a bit magical!

Hope you guys enjoy following the link and picking out your own favourite photos, let me know which ones you liked and what you reckon to my favourites! I may have to upgrade my camera sometime soon so I can try and achieve some of the detail captured in the images above!

It's all on the move here in Sheffield

Well, I was rather shocked when I opened my curtains this morning! Snow again, and lots of it! Not that I'm moaning, I love the stuff and having the excuse to wear my silly wellies! In other news, we got the keys to our new family home here today so I took up the opportunity to pick up my camera and have a nosey in the garden at all the lovely snow as a break from revision (note: the quality of some of these photos is a little off as I didn't realise that the windows I were taking them through were mucky until I left haha).

I tend to have a thing for capturing water and water droplets, especially after my Hydrophobia brief (see http://www.liannamaydesign.co.uk/). At the time, sadly the falling snow had turned to rain

Peg love! Whilst inspecting our new back garden, I found these two having a little peg hug. The cutey girliness inside of me is reflected in the image, bless!

Taken through a mucky window like a nugget but kind of like the grainy effect achieved

Milk Bottles

Not the best pictures I've ever taken but it was nice to be running around with my camera again, first time in a while, especially seeing as Photography 2 module starts when I return to uni!

Friendly Friday 3 (a little late, I know haha)

Well, what can I say, last night was Bonfire Night so I might have just neglected my blog a bit (I'm sorry blog). Anyways, it's getting hard to recommend a friend every Friday as some are still establishing their blogs and sites (if you want a recommendation, drop me a comment or message btw). So, seeing as it got set up this week, I shall recommend myself for one week only (please don't see this as being big headed guys, pleaseee).

Lianna May Design

 

WEBSITE IS NOW LIVE CHUCKS!

www.liannamaydesign.co.uk

Exciting times!

Friendly Friday 2

Here's something a little different for you guys this week. I know I said I'm going to recommend a fellow designer friend of mine each Friday, well, that's going to be hard. I haven't got a huge amount of designer friends...yet. Anyway, seeing as today has been dominated by music news (I'm not going to take this opportunity to gloat about which tickets I successfully managed to purchased today...I've been using Facebook for that!) I'm here to recommend to you lovely readers a great music blog!

Insight Music

I urge you to have a look if you're into a little bit of alternative, up-and-coming music. Insight Music is full of album reviews, gig reviews and recommended artists so if you're looking for a new listen, start your research here!

I'll be back on Sunday to let you all know whether I've calmed down from the Take That mania, how my final pasta pieces have come along and any other general news about my design work (the photographer I told you all about has been contacting me again, he must like me quite a bit!). Have a good weekend chucks!

It's been a bit manic to say it's a Monday!

After my blog entry yesterday, I ended up on a very productive spin and really got my name out there! I joined a couple of design forums, finally uploaded things onto Flickr, began sorting out my website, made a couple of logos, blah blah blah! And WOW did I get some results. I had literally been on the forums for half an hour and I already had over ten replies and helpful comments, my Twitter went mad with new followers and this blog, even though it's only just started, went from 3 or 4 fews to almost 40 in one hour! As they say in Yorkshire, I was dead chuffed! Even more exciting was a post I noticed from a photographer up Newcastle way who required a graphic designers help. I thought 'o yeah, al av a go pushin me luck whilst I'm on a roll' (yep, I have a very broad Yorkshire accent) so I dropped him an email about his request for a designer to edit all his photos for him. Went to bed and didn't think nothing more on it until I checked my emails this morning...HE'D REPLIED! He said he'd looked at my work and was very impressed and wanted to know if I was willing to edit a tester piece for him before we went serious (I talk about this as if it's a romance haha, kinda feels like it at the minute!). So yeah, good mood today despite the masses of work I have to do. Whilst I'm waiting for a reply, please head over to his site and check him out:

Nicholas Ainsley Photography

and keep your fingers and toes crossed for me on that one :) Anyway, onto other things...

As I said before, I've been creating a few types of logos for my self branding task. I ended up sat doodling in my marketing lecture this morning and came up with a design that was simple yet memorable and captures the essence of my design brand (clean cut, modern designs, efficient etc). Decided to colour co-ordinate logo to the applicable site they are to be assigned to, with hopefully this reflected on my website in links such as liannamay|twitter in the associated colour for example. What do you reckon?

And I'm thinking this for my main website logo? Too girly? Boring? Crit me :)

I'm off now, I've rushed through my pasta sketches today so I've got more time to research establishing a website/getting a domain name etc. Crit day tomorrow so my mood may have changed by the next time I blog...