Food

Food is one of those things... everyone needs it to survive, yet too much or too little can cause major problems. Some of it's ridiculously good for you, but tastes bad, and some is ridiculously bad for you, but tastes good. Today as I was blog trawling through the inter nets, I realised that food is one of those things that maybe shouldn't be photographed by just anyone. When it's good, it looks friggin' awesome. But when it's bad, it's enough to make you nauseated. Things like ice cream sundaes, for example, or brownies, or really cute cupcakes, tend to always look good. Ditto coffee. However, things like burgers, pizza, curry and bacon and eggs should only be attempted by the experts; if you get the slightly wrong angle suddenly the entire meal looks as though it's dripping in oil, grease and other things that are just plain nasty.

On a similar note, I'm here to declare my love of coffee and my hatred of Starbucks. I'm all for big, capitalistic corporations (!) but seriously. A little bit of finesse, please. I would like a well-made cappucino, not a piss-weak ginormous cup of milk and sugar topped with cream and caramel and sprinkles, with half a burnt shot of espresso thrown in for good measure.

Starbucks: Coffee for people who don't like coffee.

Whimsical dreaming...

I want to live in the world of Tim Walker.

He's a British photographer, working in London, who I guess you'd call a fashion photographer - but I think that to limit him to that would be unfair to his work and talent.

Anyway, what I personally really like about Walker's photographs is the whimsical, nostalgic nature of his images. They kind of feel like a childhood memory, filled with interesting shapes and soft colours - really, I wish my childhood had been more like his pictures. I guess as well, there's something that's remniscient of Alice in Wonderland; an endless memory that mixes reality with an undeniable sense of fantasy. Dresses that hang from trees, a room decorated with cakes, enormous cameras and toy aeroplanes, spiralling staircases, old houses, a gian swan being assembled on the beach at dawn, library camp-outs and bubble baths filled to overflowing are the kinds of things that feature in his works; while not often featuring children as the subject of the images, there is something that pulls the viewer back to childhood, losing them in memories that are half real and half dream.

A lot of his works remind me of older, medieval-reference stories and paintings, not necessarily in style but in mood. There is something undeniably old-world about his photos, which I really appreciate. He also has works in the permanent collections of the V&A museum in London (one of my favourite museum/galleries in the world. It excites me!).

I don't often gush over a single photographer in this way (with the exception of Annie Leibovitz, whom I think suffers from being overrated), but his works just affect me. It must be the beautiful people in surreal settings, the soft lighting and the pretty dresses. They also remind me of Florence and the Machine's video clip for "Rabbit Heart (Raise it Up)", which I think is just beautiful.

Maybe deep down, I just want to live a life of frivolity and tea parties; pretty dresses and make-believe. They've always appealed. But, for now, I'll be happy to lose myself in Tim Walker.

It's all a matter of perception, really...

If you were to ask a few of my friends what my compulsions are, they would probably say photo-taking*. Just about every time I leave the house, I have my camera with me and am known to pull it out on random occasions and take pictures that are a mixture of posed and candid. I love it... I'd call it my passion, but I think that's underrating the nature of a 'passion'.

Because I take photos so regularly (and I mean, regularly. I have 40+ albums on Facebook, most of which have more than 100 photos in them. My catchphrase tends to be "consider yourself tagged"; my friend Andy has 124 photos on the social networking site, and of them I've taken all bar about 6. Nathan was tagged in nearly 200 of my photos, before he deleted his profile), I am well accustomed to what you could call my 'style'. I love group photos, mostly candid, where there is stuff happening in the background as well as the foreground. I like photos with more than one person, usually, but trying to catch their personality or emotion at the time.

What I noticed recently, was that everyone sees the world a bit differently. How? Well, a couple of months ago, I didn't feel like taking the photos myself and so entrusted my camera to my friend for the evening, instructing him to take as many photos as he wanted. The result - a lot of portrait-style, zoomed in shots of my friends faces, taken throughout various stages of the evening. Not at all what I would have taken, which was brilliant! It was the first time I'd ever noticed the subtle differences in the way that people look at the world around them.

A few weeks after this, I went on a road trip to Queensland, where we used a video camera to document our exploits. It was awesome, because we realised when looking back at the footage that it was possible to identify who'd been filming which parts because of what was the focus. Once again, I was astounded by the simple differences in the way that everyone looks at things. It's probably because of this that we get such a variety of films, books, tv shows and works of art. It's one of my favourite things about people, and I hope that I never get used to the idea of the way we see things. Because after all, people can always offer an alternate point of view - on everything. And that's really pretty cool.

*Not photography. I'm not trained or qualified, and I wouldn't dare label my photos as 'art'. Maybe one day, but definitely not yet.