I need to buy a reasonably cheap but decent point-and-shoot camera. I’m mostly interested in Canon models (I’ve always been a Canon buddy), but I’m totally lost. I haven’t owned a point-and-shoot since 2003 and I’m more inclined to trust someone’s own judgement rather than a review. It’s mostly just for when I am out and about and don’t want to carry around my huge backpack at clubs/events/shows/friends & family dos. At the moment I’m totally obsessed with this Canon Digital IXUS 100 (bit old but would do the job?), but mostly because it’s entirely red and I am of course obsessed with the colour red. I’m pretty ridiculous. As soon as I see anything that’s red I instantly think, oh that’s nice, without even considering what it does..

So.. Any ideas/recommendations? Help!

I am so tired of my photography right now.

… somehow ended up at a twelve year old girl’s Lady Gaga themed birthday party. Usual weekend then…

Forgot to post this insanely amazing burger cake that was god knows how many pounds of PURE SUGAR that the girls made for me for my house warming.

After years and years of R telling me to watch some of the educational talks on TED, I finally got around to watching a few. I suspect that there are a fair few boring ones on there (I do get a bit lost when it comes to science), but these three really stood out to me.

Firstly, Jill Bolte Taylor’s “Stroke of Insight” (very moving):

Mark Roth’s “Suspended animation is within our grasp” (almost seems unreal)

And finally, Miru Kim’s “Underground Art” in which she photographs nude self-portraits in some of the world’s most amazing derelict locations. Beautiful work.

My new neighbour, who is an absolute darling lady, brought over a cake for me to share with Kt & C the other day. Mmm.

In other news I spent the day at John Jones‘ jumble sale, looking for frames. Found a huge 60″x25″ panoramic frame that will look amazing in the new house (with the elements series), plus a couple of 12″x8″ frames. I am really excited as I am trading some prints with the wonderfully talented Elisa Lazo de Valdez who I have been following (stalking?) for god knows how long. I picked up some red paint (of course) and painted the frames this afternoon. I am so so so excited to put some lovely art on the walls.

My oh my I am a little behind in blogosphere. When I don’t post for a while I start getting a little concerned that I will forget things. I haven’t even written about my lovely trip to the New Forest and there’s still plenty of other images to post, too…

The camping trip was pretty amazing. I’ve never been camping before, other than at Glastonbury, and I don’t really class that as camping. I’m not quite sure how we came to the decision of camping in March in England, which pretty means disaster weather, but it was a rather spontaneous decision. The past week or so had been pretty rough for both of us, I think, so the need to just hop in the car and drive into the distance was very much present. We coasted around the New Forest, whizzed along the west coast around Dorset pretty much taking photos, visiting strange little towns and enjoying both being out of our respective cities.

We called this home for three nights:

I’ve never put up a tent before either so that was another mile stone. I really wish my parents had taken me camping as a kid. We cooked on this ridiculously pathetic stove (actually it wasn’t even a stove, just a pan with firelighters underneath) and I loved it. I ate French Fancies for breakfast, drank beer before bed and was woken up one morning by a wild pony trying to stomp me to death in my tent. What more could I ask for? And I got to wake up to this face every morning:

Beautiful, eh? Anyway, I won’t bore you with the details. Here’s the pretty normal photos from the trip, I’ll post the prettier ones in staggered posts. Here we go…

A couple of months ago one of my oldest external hard drives took a turn for the worse. Clicking and whirring it was pretty clear it didn’t have much go left in it. Some friends recommended putting it in the freezer a couple of times which helped me to retrieve a small portion of photos, but all else seemed lost. Of course I hadn’t backed up. I seem to be filling up hard drives quicker than I can afford them. I admit that I am a complete and utter photo hoarder. Ironically I am completely obsessed with deleting every other kind of file on my computer in my never ending quest for “organisation”, but when it comes to photos (good, bad or entirely useless) I just can’t bring myself to delete any. With the drive dying it meant that I had lost hundreds of thousands of photos dating from 2001-2007, as well as 100gb+ of music. I was pretty devastated. People kept telling me it could all be fixed but that it’d cost me big bucks. I was beginning to lose hope and silently resigned myself to the fact that I was an idiot and should have backed up. Some of those photos were my favourite photos I’d ever taken.

I was sifting around under my desk this afternoon when I came across a bag stashed away. Lo and behold, a chunky bag filled with literally hundreds of CDs and DVDs dating back to 2001! So I have been sitting here at this computer for almost twelve hours now transferring an incredible amount of data over to one of the drives. I had forgotten how clunky, slow and easily damaged CDs/DVDs get. Quite a few of them have been corrupted but I’ve managed to retrieve the majority of the data using software. Hallelujah!

It’s been an odd journey. Much like when I look back through this blog (which I do from time to time to remind me of things), it’s been incredibly nostalgic. Something that has become increasingly noticeable to me lately is the division between photographers, artists, people that practice both and where I stand. Sifting through these images has given me (or reminded me) of why I became interested in photography and why I pursued it. I started photographing as an alternative to the written word. I had no idea that it would totally transform my perception of the world and that I would become so obsessed with documenting and creating images. It’s interesting to see how my attitude to photography has evolved from a diaristic, almost therapeutic approach – which was very much present during my degree and has been continuously evident in my relationships – to a commercial approach. In short, it’s even more interesting to see my photographic style progress, shift, but recognise that my style is still evident in a great deal of my images.

Photography for me is still very much so a therapy of sorts. I am terribly paranoid about the lack of memory. Although I am not as bad as I used to be, I obsess about the possibility of not remembering a place, a person, a moment. For me, this is how photography came about. Seeing these images, to me, are just fascinating. There have only been a few instances where I haven’t recognised, or remembered, taking a photo. Surrounded by my pile of CDs, which will soon no doubt transform into yet more hard drives, I like to think that this great archive will one day be a hundred times bigger than it already is…

So just remember.. backup. Please.