Pom poms!

A few weeks ago we were asked to go down to Shimmers hair salon to take some fashion hair portraits for an international competition. It was something completely different to anything we had done before, but it was most definitely a great experience and I would love to do some more stuff like this in the future!

Here's a little taste of what we got…enjoy!

I love photo shoots like this, when we get to really experiment and do something completely different to anything that we have done before!

xo

Day Three: I am Michaelangelo

Sept 3rd: "When I grow up I want to be...." Feel free to answer as your 5-year-old self or as of now.

Oh I don't wanna grow up, wish I'd never grown up

I could still be little

Oh I don't wanna grow up, wish I'd never grown up

It could still be simple 

If you were to go ahead and ask me this question when I was younger I would say a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle (Michaelangelo) or a Pokémon trainer or even a Pokémon! If you were to ask me this question now? The answer would pretty much be the same…

Okay, being serious, if you asked me that question now then there would still be so many things I would say. We spend our whole lives being pestered to figure out what we want to be when we're older, because we got told that all our decisions mattered. The problem with that is kids and teenagers change their minds ALOT and you can't expect us to make this huge decision at 16, to be honest, humans change their minds a lot with everything, so we're going to change our minds with our career aspirations. 

Right at this current moment I want to be a whole array of different things, I fall in love the moment I have a camera in my hands. I'm at war with myself, I have found love in so many places that I can't just stick to one. I love the idea of working with animals, just being a zookeeper could make me the happiest person in the world. I want to travel the world, I'd love to land a career that meant I could do just that. I would love to be a photographer who travels the world, as long as I have my camera and the ability to blog it would be absolute perfection. It's so hard to know what you want to do and to know you'll be happy doing it…you don't know that you'll be happy and isn't happiness going to be the most important thing? 

So to recap…when I grow up I want to be:

- A world traveling photographer

- An amazing camera women/director

- A screenplay writer

- A zookeeper

- Michaelangelo

- A Pokémon Trainer

What do you want to be when you grow up?

Until tomorrow…

xo

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Things are looking up!

It's crazy to think that it's now September, August and the whole of summer has just flew by, it's just passed me by without a notice. Looking back on the previous month it's so weird because some parts seem like they happened forever ago, but some feel like they happened just yesterday.

September beginning means the beginning of the next educational year, so the return to university. I have spent a lot of the summer period feeling bored and just like I haven't really been doing anything worthwhile. I mean, don't get me wrong, there have been some days where i have worked my ass off doing various freelance work for clients and I've really enjoyed that, apart from that I have just been so fed up.

When it's the end of the university year I get really excited for summer, but after about a month I feel really fed up with it. So I'm pretty much excited to go back to university, I can't wait to start feeling productive again.

I would be lying to say that I am not terrified about the fact that this is my last year at uni, this if the first time in my entire life where I don't know what the future holds, I don't know where I am going to be a year from now. The ideas of entering the real world terrified me, yet excites me at the same time, it's all I have wanted for so long. This year is going to be the year I work my hardest and truly make the most of the student life.

My dissertation is by far the most important part of my degree and it's going to be a really different project to take on, especially knowing i can create anything and bring one of my ideas to life.

Aside from university, over the past few days I've actually been getting a lot of freelance photography and videography work for the future which I can't wait to do. Some of it will be really different because it's something i haven't done before so I can't wait for the new experiences. I'm actually photographing a wedding on Friday, i find weddings so magical and being such a hopeless romantic I find weddings to be the closest thing possible in life to a fairytale and I just cannot wait.

Here's my showreel for 2014 so far!

I've really been enjoying building up my portfolio, it's nice to know that I am doing something that makes me happy but makes other people happy too.

xo

Moore Nature Reserve

Today was an absolutely beautiful day for photography.

I visited my grandmother today, I don't get to do that very often and it meant an extremely early morning. Following this my mother, sister and myself then had time to waste before picking up my brother from the train station once he had returned from work so we decided to take an adventure to Moore Nature Reserve.

The weather was absolutely divine, apart from the occasional little spit of rain, but that didn't stop us having a wonderful time. We sat on a bench, eating a little picnic enjoying the beautiful views, which was just lovely.

I hope the future brings more memories like this, it's lovely to enjoy the weather (when it's not too hot) and to take in some beautiful scenery

With weather like this, why not pick up your camera, click the shutter and see what you get?
xo

Pictures speak a thousand words

I think Liverpool is one of the most beautiful cities in the world, the architecture is absolutely amazing to look at and not a lot of people really notice it.

 here's a few reasons why…

Pictures speak a thousand words
xo

Stakeout Festival 2014

So much has been happening recently, and I’m just so excited! It gives me faith in my career when things like this happens, it gives me faith in people to know they appreciate my help and actually want me to be involved in something huge! I was so excited about this that I absolutely had to post for the second time today.

A few months ago, both my boyfriend and myself were working at an M.S charity event at Osqua’s Bar/Event space in Liverpool, when a man named Paul Lloyd approached us. He owns a Liverpool based company called Unsigned City whom works with unsigned musicians and bands around the local area, helping them gain gigs and much needed promotion. After talking for a while we exchanged contact information and kept in touch and actually all became good friends.

We are now working alongside Paul to create a Liverpool based music festival called Stakeout festival. This will be taking place on the 28^th and 29^th of November and will be spread across 5 unique venues across Liverpool, consisting of a growing list of amazing bands. We are aiming to provide unsigned musicians and bands the promotion they require on a large scale, as well as providing a platform in front of a large audience, including talent scouts.

I personally am in charge of bringing together the best possible videography team to film the event to allow us to create an amazing promotional video for future stakeout festivals. As well as this I will be photographing the event, this may include being on the stage to get the required shots

I am absolutely blown away already by what’s been happening with this festival, with all of the bands messaging us asking to be involved, it’s just insane that I am a part of something that hopefully will end up the biggest festival in Liverpool, or if not the biggest just very successful!

When I look back to the last few months I cannot help but think about how different life would be right now if we had never attended the charity event. It’s crazy how one small moment can change everything. How one conversation with a stranger, something that seems so insignificant at the time can actually impact your life so much

I cannot wait to see what the festival bring us and I couldn’t ask for a better team of people to be working with. We are going to face so many obstacles and challenges along the way and do you know what? I can’t wait because we will overcome every single one of them and this festival will be amazing!

I’m going to continue posting about my progress and the progression of the festival, especially for those of you interested in attending

It’s time to have a stakeout!

xo

The Girl With The Red Hood

In previous posts I have talked about how in September I will be entering my third and final year of University. It has been a really challenging and life changing experience and I am happy to say that I did make the right choice by going to Uni. I think it made me grow as a person.

During my final year I will have numerous large projects to work on, the biggest of the lot being my dissertation. Every part of uni is important, but I would say that this project is the most important because it's worth the most amount of marks, is essentially the biggest project and I will get to do exactly what I want to do for this project.

I have spent my entire summer so far thinking about this project, trying to figure out what is the best idea to go with. I have came up with ideas of both documentaries and short films.

The idea I have chosen to go with, and will not be changing whatever the cost, will be my own adaptation of the children's story Little Red Riding Hood…The only thing is my interpretation of this story will not be suitable for children at all.

As a huge horror fan I have always dreamed about bring my own horror creations to life in the form of films, and I have never really had my chance to completely shine, but with this, with God as my witness I will shine. I love the idea of taking children's stories or even fairytales, twisting them and tuning them into something quite gruesome and bloodthirsty.

So getting back to the topic of focus here, I will be naming my short film The Girl With The Red Hood. My version of this story will be a lot more modern and realistic, with the entery of things such as phones, modern costumes and the biggest difference of all will be there will be no appearence of any wolf at any point in my film. The bad guy will actually be a psychotic stalker who stumbles upon a personal item belonging to the girl with the red hood, which sparks his dangerous obsession…

The ideas I have came up with for this film will clearly be rather bloody and gruesome as I want to twist the original story and make my creation the complete opposite

I look forward to sharing my journey of creating this film with all of you and I will post anything from weekly to monthly updates with my progress on this project

Remember never stumble through a forest alone, you don't know who's watching…
xo

Today was a fairytale

As a little girl, I grew up loving Disney. The outfits, the prince and princesses and the castles, it just amazed me.

Growing up you realise that these fairytales aren't exactly realistic you can try to believe as much as you want, but when it comes down to it, life isn't like that.

That doesn't stop you from dreaming. Nothing can stop you from dreaming.

So I decided to bring these dreams to life, to recreate the disney princesses in the art of photography.

And here's what I have achieved so far...

3…2…1…CHEESE!

So, like I said in my last post, I love photography!

I've noticed a lot of people, noticeably a lot more recently, actually take part in some form of photography, quite a lot of people whom I would have never expected it from.
I think it's a wonderful thing to photograph things around you! Such as experiences and memories, it's amazing to take that one moment in time and capture it forever. That image will never change, one day you could look back and no matter how much time has passed and how much things have changed, the image won't have, the memory will still be there and it will take you back to that one moment in time.

Photography is a beautiful art form, there is so much that can be done with it.
The average person spends their days capturing memories and uploading them to instagram to share with the world, this is still a form of photography, it's on the lower side of the scale, but essentially it's still photography.
Then you get those who take this to the extreme(serious hobbyist or working professional), with the expensive equipment and the models and creating images that look like memories when essentially they are just staged.
I've found one of the funnest things in the world, for me at least, is to hold you're very own photoshoot, to have an idea of what you want, to get the models you want, throw in a few props and crazy ideas and the photos you can end up with are just truly remarkable.

For me photography is more that just a hobby, it's something that I absolutely adore, It acts as an escape from the real world. As soon as you're creating your own shoots with staged memories, it makes you feel like you're someone completely different, whether that be for just a few moments as you press the shutter.
There is just so much that can be done with photography, if you go out into your local city centre right now, I can guarantee you'd see a bunch of people taking photographs, whether this be with a phone, a digital camera or a top of the range DSLR.

One thing that has never failed to amaze me is the fine detail that you can achieve with photography, take this picture for instance...

The detail on the face of this insect that you can see is truly amazing…

You could look at this insect and you won't be able to notice any of it's features, you won't see it's eyes or even be able to describe what it's face looks like, but as soon as you grab a standard DSLR such as my Canon 600D, attach a quality piece of glass to the front of it, such as the 100mm Macro 'L' Lens which was used for this shot, the difference in what you're going to see is going to leave you gobsmacked.

Just think, without these cameras and lenses, how could we capture images of someone or something so small and show the world it's beauty…or ugly-ness dependant on your own opinion of insects!

It's funny when I think about it, all of the years I've been working with camera gear(mainly big TV and Broadcasting video cameras) , it never occurred to me to get into photography, I have no idea why. it's weird really, I decided to buy a DSLR a few months back, mainly to use to create short films in my spare time and I found that i just couldn't stop taking pictures, I just love it.

I honestly think that apps such as Instagram are shining a new light upon the world of photography because a lot more people are getting involved with it now, especially because everybody now owns a mobile phone that has a camera built into it. Given the recent technological advances regarding mobile phones from companies such as apple and samsung, camera technology has improved to a point where your iPhone takes better quality photos than an entry level DSLR from 5 years ago.

I look forward to continuing to learn more about the art of photography, until next time, Adios!

xo

Howdy!

Hey guys! so this is the first post on my nice shiny new blog! This is just a quick one so that I can introduce myself to the world of blogging.

I've never had a blog like this, my past blogs have always been quite silly and random, just rambling about things I love, but this time I wanted to do it differently. I wanted to do this seriously. So again, hey there, I'm Ashleigh, I guess it's good for you to know my name right?…

i'm a 20 year old University student, I'm currently studying Broadcast and Media Production at Liverpool John Moores University…and that's well, interesting to say the least.
I'm a film fanatic in anyway possible...
I'm actually just about to go into my third year, this course has been really challenging so far, I've almost gave up multiple times, but I' still here and I'm determined to get to the finish line

I have a love of journalism and photography, I bet you would never have guessed?

So…I'm going to be blogging once maybe even twice a week, about random topics

I'll be basically reporting on a topic and then supporting with photographs, it will be quite an interesting thing to attempt.

As well as this I'll be commenting on various obstacles I go through during my day to day life, such as Uni, work and what life is like trying to become a Videographer/Photographer as well as any obstacles I encounter completing my dissertation. 

Well, this is me and I will see you again shortly! 

xo