Cephalopods and Lepidoptera

A bit of a different post today! These are actually some pictures I took a couple of months ago which I never uploaded because the lighting was really bad and I wasn't very happy with how they came out. I am actually starting to hoard quite a collection of unpublished outfit photos as I have perfectionist tendencies and if something isn't quite how I want it to be, I won't upload it.

Anyway, I've been getting motivated back into blogging recently and since I had a few hours to spare last night, I thought I would recycled these old photos and make them a bit more interesting. Since the quality of the images were so poor due to bad lighting, I just edited them loads, which kind of gave them a "vintage" effect as they became so grainy and low quality.

My absolute favourite artist of all time is Dan Hillier and a photographer I really enjoy the work of is Elena Rendina. Both artists have a signature style of juxtaposing vintage-ey/Victorian botany/zoology drawings with the human form. Dan Hillier primarily works with extremely intricate black line engravings when Elena Rendina does a lot of fashion photography. I love her strong sense colour palettes and use of mirroring. Both of these artists were inspirations towards my two edits above.

I found two images of an octopus and butterfly from possibly the best website ever: Vintage Printables - the best section on the website is titled "Animals acting like Humans".  I then used Paint and Microsoft PowerPoint to juxtapose the drawings on top of my photographs. Yes, you read that right - I used Paint and PowerPoint! It is an extremely primitive way of editing photos but it sort of worked (I think?). I'm not very happy with how the second images' octopus tentacles are not cropped properly but I was pretty limited with my technical ability of photo-manipulation. I feel like I know what I want the end product to look like, but I just don't have the technical skills yet to execute it. I suppose the next step is to actually learn how to use a "proper" photo editing software - a job for the summer holidays!

So yes, the work of Dan Hillier and Elena Rendina are a few things I have been enjoying this month. Since it is approaching the end of April (eek!), I might as well sum up some of the things I have also been enjoying:

1. Mary's blog. Mary is a 15 year old girl from Germany and every time I go on her blog, the posts are just getting better and better. She is just so creative and crafty in the way she dresses and you can tell that she truly enjoys putting her blog together. I feel now with so many blogs becoming increasingly monetised, you begin to lose the raw enthusiasm and passion of blogging as a hobby and it begins to feel forced. I don't know if what I just said made sense, but basically just check out her blog.
2. UNIVERSITY CHALLENGE! I love that shit. The final is tomorrow which I am honestly so looking forward to. I am rooting for UCL to win, although I have a feeling Manchester may suddenly have a lucky streak and take the crown. The Manchester team are just so boring to watch when I find UCL to be so entertaining to watch - just listening to the voice over man say Papaphilippopoulos is exciting in itself! Half the time I have no idea what on earth they are talking about, but whenever a rare science question crops up, I'm always shouting at the screen. The science questions are always so easy though in comparison to questions on classics or literature - some only require GCSE level knowledge. I often find Jeremy Paxman's snide remarks extremely rude but you cannot deny that he is what makes UC so exciting. 
3. Chili sauce! Coming from a Chinese family, I have always been into spicy food , however recently, I feel like I am becoming a chili connoisseur. Slightly off topic, but I also broke my Nandos virginity this month and I found it extremely underwhelming. As a business model, I think it is genius how encourage brand loyalty with the loyalty cards, how they can use a small range of raw ingredients in so many combinations to create different meals which probably works out well financially for them, and their strong sense of brand identity with their continuum of spicy sauces. Although, as for their food, I found it insipid and uninspiring, despite them trying to be masked this by smothering it in their pungent sauces. However sauces are probably pretty cheap to by in when meat and veg are expensive, so that's probably how they manage to make their profits.

Wow, I have managed to ramble today. As you can probably tell, I like to over-analyse everything  but I don't see the point of being superficial. Also, I miss writing so it's all coming out today. Anyway, I should stop procrastinating now and start revision for my exams in 2 WEEKS!

Thanks for visiting - come again soon!

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P.S. It actually makes me so sad how shiny my Dr Marten's Tanner shoes look in these pictures.  I took these pictures the day the shoes arrived, so they were in pristine condition  Now I have literally worn them nearly everyday and it now has more of a brushed metal look. :(