Book of Wonder, The Iron Stove

I'm so excited to share this series of images with you. I've been desperate to do a photo shoot at this location, and this project gave me the perfect excuse!

Hope you enjoyed looking at these photos, and sorry it's been a bit of a while!

A.

Book of Wonder, Autumn Painters

A few photos from The Autumn Painters shoot.

More photos from The Book of Wonder series will be posted soon, stay tuned!

A.

Book of Wonder, Little White Lily.

The Book of Wonder is an ongoing personal project. Firstly, The Book of Wonder started out as something to do for one of my modules in University. However, this has been my favourite module so far, and I want to carry on with creating images for this project.

The Book of Wonder is a project based on a book of fairy tales that has been passed down in my family for generations. The journey of the book started with my grandmother, it was then given to my father, then to me, and I will pass it on when I have children of my own. Since the book has been in my possession, it has been much more than just an ordinary book. It is a memory of my family, and a reminder of an older time. Throughout this project, I adapt the stories within the book of fairy tales through photography, to pay tribute to the book and my family.

Let's start with an adaption of one of the poems in the book, Little White Lily.

That's What I'm Tolkien About.

For many years, I have been a huge fan of Tolkien. Since the tender age of seven, I have fond memories of my mother reading The Hobbit to me, looking over a book called A Tolkien Bestiary for hours and marvelling at the imagery (which belonged to my mum, I totally blame her for my love for Tolkien), and of course watching the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Over the years, I've read The Hobbit over and over again, and had Lord of the Rings marathons. I'm currently reading The Silmarillion, which by the way, is awesome.

Yes, I'm a tiny bit of a Tolkien nerd. (I haven't read all of the books by J.R.R Tolkien so I don't consider myself to be a Tolkien nerd) So when I discovered these illustrations by Tolkien himself, I may have gotten a little bit excited. In my opinion, it's interesting to see the original illustrations by Tolkien himself, to then seeing films adapted by Peter Jackson. It may just be me who get's excited by this, but I find the development from a simple illustration, that can be turned into an iconic and memorable motion picture, is very intriguing. Seeing as I based my latest module on a book of fairy tales, seeing books and illustrations by Tolkien being adapted into films is fascinating to me.

The barrel scene.

The three trolls.

The Lonely Mountain.

Bag End.

Words can't describe how much I want to live in a hobbit hole.

Smaug the terrible. When I watched this scene in The Hobbit: Desolation of Smaug, I got butterflies and the hairs on my arms stood up. Well done Peter Jackson!

The next adaption terrifies me...

Shelob's lair.

Giant spiders and cobwebs everywhere. Thanks to this film whenever I walk through cobwebs, a small part of me panics.

I think this would be the part in the journey where I'd go "NOPE. NUH-UH. I'm outta here!"

I'm sure other people get excited by this sort of thing, I'm sure comic book fans get giddy when they hear that their favourite comic is getting adapted into a film. Or when a series of books get adapted into a film or TV series (after watching Game of Thrones I want to read the books). And I'm sure fans of The Great Gatsby were excited when the trailers for the film were released.

In general, I think it's exciting for anyone when their favourite book gets adapted into a film. A group of creatives coming together, then contributing with their outstanding talent to create a memorable motion picture.

I hope you enjoyed reading and possibly giggling at my little nerdy side.

A.

Working in the Studio

One of the things I love about the University are the studios and the equipment we get to use. For my latest module I got to use the big rig lights, it was quite nerve racking at first, but with the help of others on the course it wasn't as bad as I had thought.

Here are some photographs of one of my photo shoots coming together.

Mood boards and props for the photo shoot.

The photographs from this shoot will be shown on my website pretty soon.

A.

Today Was a Fairy Tale.

For the winter season, Free People were inspired by fairy tales for their November catalogue in 2012.

Free People revisited famous tales such as The Princess and the Pea, Snow White and Twelve Dancing Princesses. Photographers Anna Palma and Chadwick Tyler capture the magic for the campaign...

I think the images work very well, not only have the photographers and team captured the fairy tale theme of the shoot, but the photographs suit the brand perfectly.