Category Archives: Books

Happy Things

By Emily | Published July 1, 2012

I’ve had a big long week this week and I thought I would share three Happy Things that are making me smile at the moment.

New Pink Shoes, I found these online over at Style Tread and fell in love. Looking down at hot pink shoes during or after a long day at work always makes me feel happy.

Walter Moers books. I LOVE Walter Moers books! I found them about a year ago stumbling around the internet looking for something to read and just couldn’t pass them up. The books are all beautiful, amazing, funny, sweet, interesting, thoughtful, just absolutely fantastically wonderful books. I just finished reading “The 13 1/2 Lives of Captain Bluebear”again, it’s been perfect reading it again especially this weekend while it’s been all overcast and wintery. I can’t wait for the 8th November when “The Labyrinth of Dreaming Books” is released. “The City of Dreaming Books” is my plan for this week I can’t wait to read it again, it is for true book people.

My new iPad, I’ve had an iPad one since only a couple of months after it first came out and it works fine still. But I’ve been wanting a new one since the iPad 2 came out and this week I decided it was time to upgrade (also because I had finally saved up the cash I needed to pay for it) So this week I became the proud owner of one New iPad and my old one got passed on to my mum who is beyond thrilled because she would never buy one herself.

I think I’ve now cemented myself as a bonafide Mac geek.

Happy Sunday !

Book Review – “Italian Joy” by Carla Coulson

By Emily | Published June 3, 2012

I read Italian Joy for the first time probably 6 months ago sitting at the cash desk of the store where I was working at the time. I was not in a great place at the time I was really contemplating giving up photography for good. This book is a big part of the reason I didn’t give up.

Reading about Carla’s journey from Sydney to Florence was amazing, Here was someone who understood what is was to have a dream but what she showed me was that it was possible not only to want the dream but also to stand up and make that dream a reality.

The book follows her journey from a Christmas in Sydney and a gift from her local take away to living out her dreams in Florence Italy. This book is amazing, easy and wonderful to read, funny and in places I was almost in tears finally feeling like someone out there understood my dream even though I had never met her.

I Love Her photographs the movement and the emotion they capture, they are endlessly inspiring. Every time I read this book and I read it a lot I always feel more inspired to follow my dreams and reach for what I want in life. Carla also has a blog here which I adore looking at her photographs are amazing and reading about her work and other photographers she finds inspiring is always so interesting.

I would give this book to anyone who has a dream and is trying to work up the courage to go and follow it.

Enjoy.

Book Review: “Still Life” by Jane Ussher

By Emily | Published March 13, 2012

I bought this book for myself as a treat a couple of weeks ago when I was feeling particularly down. Antarctica is my dream location for holiday and for photographing, for just about everything really.

This book is beautiful for a start its a big beautiful hardcover. The cover is actually some type of fabric so right away when you pick it up you feel that the book is different and amazing.

Still Life is about the Antarctic Huts of Captain Robert Falcon Scott and Sir Ernest Shackleton. Two of the most famous Antarctic explorers these men and others like them literally went to the ends of the earth. These men were the last explorers, the last people to conquer unknown territory for King or Queen and Country. The age of exploration in Antarctica is one of the most interesting times in relatively recent history. Sir Ernest Shackleton was even a photographer himself.

Now back to the book, the big, beautiful, wonderful book. The photographs are amazing to look at. Because the book is so large you really feel as though your almost there. Paging through the book you see all these images objects both small and large that would have been so important to the men who were exploring the continent how they have weathered and grown old in the huts over time. Its so interesting to look at the photos and read the essays (written by Nigel Watson who does an amazing job of evoking the spirit on the Antarctic.) you look at every item in every photo and wonder about who owned them, and what it must have been like to leave everything and go to the bottom of the world.

Other photos show the landscape of Antarctica the sweeping mountains of ice and snow, the expanse of nothingness, and the beautiful rock beaches. As you go through the photos of the landscape you can almost feel the snow and ice crunching under your boots, the cold wind kissing your cheeks. The photos of the landscape and of the wild life make you want to pack up and go see them for yourself. They are simply breathtaking.

The photography in this book is the type of photography that inspires me, these are the experiences and the type of photos that I want to be able to take.

Every time I look through this book (and I look a lot) it inspires my passion for photography, this is a phenomenally beautiful book that I will cherish for years to come.

All Images copyright Jane Ussher.

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