Collection of all things pretty
Apologies for falling off the radar entirely – seems that a platoon of nasty germs have set up camp in my sinuses and have managed to convert most of my head (brain included) into snot! Seriously… where does all this liquid come from?
Oh well, I promise to get back into things as soon as these nasty critters move base camp and I can breath again.
(The gorgeous photo is by William Wegman)
Is that a flying house? Yes! Isn’t it fantastic?
French photographer Laurent Chehere has travelled the world putting together his flying houses series. He has taken photos in far away lands including such far flung spots as China, Argentina, Columbia, and Boliva.
You can see more of his work on his website.
All photos by Laurent Chehere
When I was studying photography at Tech (back in the olden days) we where taught how to do double exposures using film. It was/is a simple technique involving taking two under exposed photos in one frame. Simple but relatively hit and miss – sometimes you got amazing compositions, but most of the time is was rubbish.
Nowadays, achieving the same magical effect would require a fiddly long exposure (which sounds too complicated for me) or possibly merging two photos in Photoshop. However, if you are lucky enough to own a really fancy camera (like the Canon 5D Mark III) then you can do the whole double exposure technique on your camera. Lucky sausages!! Sadly my Canon is not quite that fancy, so any ideas of creating crazy double images will have have to be dependent on my Photoshop skills.
If you are one of those fortunate folk in pocession of a fancy pants camera, then you should watch this tutorial by Sara Byrne. Sara explains how to go about creating gorgeous double exposures much like the ones she did below. Her technique is simple, but the end result is simply breathe taking. You can see more of Sara’s work on her website.
All photos are by Sara Byrne, read more about her here
Living on the foot of Table Mountain is such a blessing (except for when the South Easter blows through our little house and drives me insane). As you may know, Table Mountain is covered in its own floral kingdom, a unique and very special natural wonder that we are all very proud of. So naturally when the opportunity to bring home a bunch of fynbos came up I couldn’t resist. Of course, I didn’t pick this bunch myself (you can get a whopping fine if you try) but thanks to Woolies we can all have a stunning bunch of our natural heritage at home. Proteas and fynbos make very resiliant cut flowers and last quite a long time.
It wasn’t until I popped the Ollo Clip on my iPhone that I realised just how hairy these stunning plants are. Guess it must be to trap all the moisture they can in the early morning. Isn’t nature so clever?
Well here is the sixth installment in My Year Of Flowers – Cape Fynbos
(All photos taken with my trusty iPhone and Ollo Clip – not bad hey?)
In my quest to find the best chocolate chip cookie recipe ever, I found this delicious version on the Australian Cadbury website. It’s a really easy recipe with just the right amount of chewiness and firmness needed in a choc chip cookie. In fact, it was so good that even Alexis (who is NOT a biscuit fan) was caught with his paws in the cookie jar around tea time.
I haven’t adapted the recipe at all from the original, except to subsitute normal flour and baking powder (we never have self raising flour at home). Oh, and I also added in more chocolate chips (why not?)
Chocolate Chip Cookies
All you will need:
125g butter, softened
½ cup light brown sugar
⅓ cup caster sugar
1 egg
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1½ cups of all purpose flour
3 tsp baking powder
½ cup cocoa powder
1 cup white chocolate chips
Here’s how:
1 – Preheat your oven to 160°C.
2 – Cream together the butter, brown sugar and white sugar until light and fluffy.
3 – Mix in the egg and vanilla extract.
4 – Sift together the flour, cocoa powder and baking powder. While the mixer is going slowly add this to your wet batter.
5 – Finally mix in the chocolate chips. You should have a fairly stiff mixture.
6 – Roll little balls of the dough and place them onto a greased baking tray. Gently press each ball down with the back of a dessert spoon.
7 – Pop in the oven and bake for 13 minutes. Keep an eye on these lovelies as you don’t want them to burn. The chocolate batter is fairly dark & you may not notice them getting too brown.
8 – Cool on a wire rack.
Enjoy with a huge glass of ice cold milk.
As a school girl I used to spend hours and hours cutting up old magazines and creating collages in my homework books. I loved transforming what would otherwise have been a boring and much hated part of my daily school routine into something bright and colourful. Sadly I haven’t actually done any collage work since those days, perhaps I should get out my trusty scissors and Pritt stick and get gluing – if only my finished peices could look half as fabulous as Laura Redburn’s gorgeous creations. Laura is a very talented collage and mixed media illustrator from Cardiff in Wales.
You can see more of her work on Society6 and on her own website
Maureen Mitchell was an English teacher who’s love for fantasy and wild imaginings inspired many generations of scholars. Sadly, after a long battle with brain cancer, Maureen passed away in 2008. To help cope with her intense and consuming grief, Maureen’s daughter Kirsty Mitchell decided to create Wonderland, an ethereal fantasy world (a fitting tribute to her late mother)
In Kirsty’s words: ‘This escapism grew into the concept of creating an unexplained storybook without words, dedicated to her [my mother], that would echo the fragments of the fairytales she read to me constantly as a child.’
Apparently Kirsty’s magical characters appeared to her in her dreams – “it’s not often you get to stand beside an eight foot princess in the rain, or witness the dawn with a dancing circus girl on stilts!”
Inspired by these dream state apparitions Kirsty painstakingly hand made all the costumes, wigs, props and sets (thanks to her background in fashion and costume design). She also photographed all these whimsical scenes in and around her home in Surrey. No mean feat! So far it’s taken 3 years to accomplish this dream and soon she hopes to publish a book and end with a final exhibition of her work.
Isn’t it amazing what phenomenal things one can accomplish when pushed to the edge. You just need to know how to turn negative energy into something powerful and creative.
Read more about Kirsty’s Wonderland here and visit here site here
Here is a really random spot of loveliness, Berndnaut Smilde’s Nimbus collection.
Dutch artist Smilde creates these indoor meteorological miracles using a smoke machine, moisture and some clever lighting. The cloudy phenomenon only appear for a very short period in which Smilde photographs them. It is these lovely prints that he then exhibits.
Read more here
Visit Smilde’s website
One of my New Year’s resolutions was to always have fresh flowers in our house. I started it off with a bunch of scented stargazer lilies, they where followed by a dreamy vase of purple lisianthus (who had just started looking really sad). Then yesterday evening, dear sweet Alexis surprised me with a gorgeous bunch of brilliant red gladiolus. Aren’t I so lucky? (Top tip – did you know that you can force very tightly closed gladys to bloom by putting loads of ice into thier vase along with the water. Works like a charm!)
“Garden Fresh series investigates the shifting boundaries between humans and animals in today’s environment and the complex relationship between art and nature”
Agan Harahap’s photos of animals “captured” in supermarkets are amazing and at the same time a little dark and macabre. Agan is a photographer from Jakarta, Indonesia – you can see more of his work on Behance.
All photos from here
Do you always leave Christmas shopping till the very last minute? Are you the one madly rushing about trying to get presents and cards before the shops close?
We are here to help you – we will provide the Photo Booth, the props, the snow and the Christmas vibes. All you have to do is grab a Santa beard, pose with a cheesy grin and leave the rest to us.
After Santa’s elves have worked their magic you will receive a package with a DVD, prints and post cards.
Its so simple – all you need to do sign up, pitch up & dress up.
What fun!
The Christmas Photo Booth is a collaboration between dna photographers and PrettyPretty.
Details:
When: 9 December
Where: A Christmas studio in central Cape Town (to be confirmed)
Time: 15 minute time slots
Cost: R900
What you get:
1 x 15 minute shoot
5 images posted on DVD (& sent electronically)
5 jumbo prints
2 A5 prints
1 A4 print
20 post cards with a funky Christmas design
All posted to you (or you can collect from Cape Town CBD)
BOOK NOW: send an email to and give us the following details:
1. Your name and surname
2. Your postal address
3. Your telephone number
4. Your email address
5. The names of the folks who are going to be in the Christmas Photo Booth with you.
Limited space available.
It would seem that LOL cats were probably the brain child of Harry Pointer, a photographer based in Brighton during the 1870s. He lovingly took photos of his pet cats, eventually setting them in silly poses like riding bicycles and balancing on a skateboards. To add to the cheesiness, he added little captions to each shot. Not surprisingly folks flocked to buy these daft photos, eventually Pointer had them made into greeting cards and by 1884 the Brighton Cats collection expanded to include around 200 LOL kitties.
You can read more about Pointer and his Brighton Cats Collection here.
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