Who Am I?

Hey Guys!

So, recently for my Summer photography project my task was too take three photos that best described me as a photographer.

For a long time I struggled to decide of what kind of photographer I am. I asked a fair few people what they thought I should do to express who I am.
I had several suggestions of "you should just show what you like to take pictures of" or "just try and show your personality through the pictures you take!"

Then it hit me. Out of no where i realised what kind of things i wanted to capture. I had found who I was as a photographer.
 I was inspired. Mostly by my recent trip to New York... Manhattan is such a vast area, it is easy to get lost in a way that just isn't possible where I'm from. I live in a small community where you can't walk down the road for five minutes without some lovely old person saying "good morning" or "hello!", where as in New York it is so easy to become invisible, to fade into the shadows you are just another tourist in the big city another person to ignore on their very busy schedule, they never stop to see if the sky is blue or to appreciate the immense architecture and culture that amazing city has to offer.

So, baring this in mind. In answer to the question "who am I as a photographer?"

I'd say I'm the kind of photographer that wants to capture the beauty of life in everything. To remind people to stop. Look up from their phone. And stare at the world around them.
I want to capture the beauty of this World we live in.

It is so easy to get lost in the virtual world of the internet we forget to appreciate the things around us. The "Beauty" or "allure" of the outside world. I should know, I end up spending a lot of time on my phone. It feels like it is superglued to my hand 90% of the time while the other 10% is spent sleeping!

So I ask you this one simple question...
Who are you? What makes you who you are?

Keep those smiles on your faces!
Love,
Becca

Exam Results... EEEK!

Hey Guys!

I'm so sorry I have missed three upload days. I found that I didn't really know what to write about. However out of nowhere I have found that inspiration. 

So, for many of us in the UK the last two weeks have really been hell. Last week for me was A Level results day, where we get given results from a standardised test which are designed to test your memory rather than how good you are at the subject. I took combined English, Media and Photography. All subjects that I love however, It comes down to the fact you need to write a certain way or edit photos in one singular way... Our whole lives we are taught to be true to ourselves and express who we are. If this was truly the case, why are we made to do something one set way? That I just don't understand!

photo credit to google images

Now don't take what I just said the wrong way, I did quite well in my A Levels... All things considered. In my mind as well I don't think i would have got that far without the amazing support network my college had to offer or the immense support my family gave to. 

To get into my first choice university I needed to get three Bs. This is what the university has said I should achieve to be able to get when I was predicted two Bs and a C... I did not get this when results came out.

We are told that results are everything that they shape our future. Letters on a page tell you what you can and can't do, when in reality we make our own future, we define who we are as a person. This is something that a bit of paper can't do. I once knew someone that didn't take her GCSEs to prove a point. She wanted to prove to everyone that you don't need qualifications to get a job and you can still do well for yourself regardless.

This just proves that it isn't the end of the world if you don't get the "right" grades. There are always options available to you no matter what happens.

At the end of the day I was lucky despite not getting the conditional 3 B's, because I was still accepted into my first choice University.

As teenagers in todays world we are lucky to be able to go further than our parents may have had the opportunity to.
We get out of the world, what we put into it. If you work hard for what you want then you can achieve anything you set your mind to.

Just remember to breath!

Love,
Becca

New York!!

Hey Guys!
Wow so i guess you wait a life time for a post, and two come along in one week, what a surprise. Now I was going to wait till Friday to write this but I just got too excited and couldn't wait!!!
So, here goes nothing....

A few weeks ago I was lucky enough to be able to go to New York City. Manhattan, The City that never sleeps. Call it what you will, I can only say, it is truly a once in a life time trip, and an amazing experience for a 17 year old to be able to experience.
My Passion for photography and capturing the simple moments made me walk around this great city wide eyed and amazed, the culture, the people and the architecture, was almost all to much to be able to capture within my tiny in comparison Nikon DSLR!

Back in 2001, something monumental to history happened, this was the falling of the Twin Towers (also known as 9/11), I was only 4 years old and can barely remember it happening, but it will go down as one of the greatest tragedies of our generation.When I was in New York I visited the memorial to the victims of this tragedy where nearly 3,000 names circle the twin pools, set within the footprints of the original towers. being there humanised the entire catastrophe. You can learn about it as much as anyone else in history classes or in documentaries but being there and visiting the tribute centre brought home the reality of what happened and it had me in tears. Right up until now I have kept this photo (seen below) to myself because it just didn't feel right to share it with anyone. When someone has placed a white rose in a name it is to commemorate that persons birthday, This is a truly touching sight to see.

While I was in NYC I tried to do as much as possible, in order to do this, my family and I did a hop-on-hop-off  bus tour, sadly our tour guides seemed to be a bit hit and miss, sometimes we would get really good ones other times we would get terrible ones. Despite this we experienced as much of New York as possible, so much so by our last day there we could barely move our legs were so sore from walking nearly the length of the island.
Such experiences include eating Ray's pizza, now you will probably never believe me, but one slice was the size of my face (I'm not sharing images because I'm afraid they are just too embarrassing).

When you go to New York one of the recommended things to do is to go up The Empire State Building at night, while this was certainly an experience with spectacular views, I wouldn't recommend it because it is an over crowded building with no organisation, that has not banned selfie sticks! The view from The Top of the Rock is a much better experience because it is less crowded and you get a view that includes The Empire State Building. That being said, below is one of my favourite images I captured at night from the top of such a magnificent building.

 If you go to New York I recommend more than anything that you go into Central Park and just sit for a while, watch the world pass by while you do this. because its the only place you will get piece and quite away from the sounds of sirens and Taxis honking their horns. You could even visit such monuments as Strawberry Fields, The Hans Christian- Anderson Statue and The Alice in Wonderland Statue. These pieces are great arts of work and well worth the walk to visit them.

There is so much more I could write about however I cannot do it as  much justice as actually experiencing it in person, I experienced so much while I was there and yet there is still so much I have left to experience, I will leave you now with some more images I captured while I was               

    

Feel free to leave your own experiences of New York in the comments I would love to read them! :)

Thank you so much for reading this post!

Lots of Love,

Rebecca 

Disclaimer: All photos used in this post were taken by me, I have not sourced them from anywhere else on the internet.

Women's Rights

Hey Guys!

So it has been a while but life got in the way, started working full time and had a holiday and I found I didn't really have time to sit down and write (As Usual!!!!) but hey ho time for another blog post!

Recently I read an article in the guardian Titled: "Harper Lee: the 'great lie' she didn't write Mockingbird rears its head again". Now To Kill a Mockingbird is one of my favourite books and one of the greatest novels of the 20th century, highlighting civil rights in the United States for what it truly was. 

Harper Lee has been discredited a number of times because it was thought she had help writing the novel, just because she is a woman. You don't see men getting the same treatment do you? No and that is because as tradition goes, Men hold a higher standing in society to Women. This has to change, just recently in the news, they have reported a ban on discrimination against women in the work place, with many having a poor working environment or not being paid as much as they should, The law now states that a woman with children will get a better quality work environment and be treated as fairly as anyone else! I see this as a win for women's rights in the UK. 

The only problem with that is, it shouldn't have taken this long to gain these rights for women. Why should we be forced to suffer, just because we are the ones to give up our last names when we marry and bare children for the men of this world, We go through the pain, not men, and our generation have finally seen a change that women's rights activists set in motion 143 years ago, IT'S ABOUT TIME RIGHT! This is not a patriarchal society any more, I am proud to say I am a woman of the 21st Century and we are making a change for the better.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women%27s_suffrage_in_the_United_Kingdom

 Th article I read the other day called in to question another great author of the 20th Century, Truman Capote, known for such works as Breakfast at Tiffany's and In Cold Blood. because he was a childhood friend of Lee it was called in to question whether he helped Harper Lee write To Kill a Mockingbird however when compared to others in Capote's work there was found to be no similarities, instead it is a well known fact that it was in fact Lee who helped Capote write In Cold Blood. She was there when he conducted the interviews and Capote combined both hers and his own notes to form a spectacular true account of the Clutter Murders. 

I think I have shared enough feminist views to last a life time! 

Thank you for reading! 

Love,

Rebecca 

article: http://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/jul/20/harper-lee-to-kill-a-mockingbird-authorship-women-writers 

My Hectic Life

Hey Guys,

So, I have been quite hectic recently, what with the last day of school for study leave and other things going on, So I haven't been able to sit and write a post in the last 21 days. 

Here is a little update on what has been going on and what is going to be happening in the next few weeks. 

So most recently I have been seeing someone, his name is Adam and we get on really well. he makes me incredibly happy and i cant wait to see where things go with him or even if things will progress any further. I have also been keeping in touch with friends and family in Canada, but it makes me said that I cant be there with them, I can only be a face on a computer screen seeing each others bedrooms and not the beautiful country that surrounds them. 

Back to this country though what has been going on....

Last Friday (15th May) was the last day of sixth form (which would be the last 2 years of high school for american readers). It was a sad day, because a lot of the friends I've made in the last two years I might never see again, but that's a sad fact of life, you lose some friend but you also gain some, and you keep in touch with the special ones like this one...

So this week has also been a hectic one... I met up with a friend on Monday and got some revision done... probably the only bit of revision I've done all week #procrastination. I have found I am an expert at procrastination and its  good thing my exams aren't until June otherwise I would be screwed!!!

and finally we get to Wednesday the best day of all, I passed my driving test first time, which is very rare for my family, I have been told that I am the third in the family line to have done that, and i am so excited that i have finally done something better than my brother! 

That is about all for now though so I will catch up very soon!

Love, 

Becca xx

A Day In ST Neots

Hey Guys , 

Me again! Wow two blog posts within a week!?! This is a new record for me!

So I'm currently in a four hour free at college, and thought it would be the perfect time to write a post.

Wednesday morning I got up so early (unusual for a Wednesday!) and got the train to Cambridge where I met my friend to give her, her birthday presents :) we then got the bus to ST Neots! You may think that there isn't a lot there but to us it has some great memories of the summer and it is kind of our little place to go just the two of us, we used to go to a café there but that had shut down some time between last summer and now! 

We did our favourite thing, which is going to the charity shops and looking for bargains ( I head straight for the books!) I was good this time and only bought one!!! 

After we found that our café had shut down we came Across this little alley way and found this little tea room called "Poppy's tea room" it was so cute and everything was vintage! From the fur other to the floral tea cups :) it was us to a T! (See pictures below) it was a great little day out (if you could call it a day!) and I can't wait to go back! 

Until next time! 

Love, 

Becca! X

                         

                                 

A Day In Cambridge

Hey Guys,

So I know every time I write a post, I say I'm going to get more active on here and write a lot more posts (the same with my YouTube really) but then life gets in the way as it always does and I found that I didn't have the time to sit in front of my computer and just type like I am now. Enough with the excuses though! this will probably only be a short post because I don't have a lot to say but here goes nothing!

Today I took a trip into Cambridge, armed with my trusty camera and tripod to finally get that photography work I had been putting off done.

The exam word I chose to focus on this year is "solitude" probably one of the hardest ones to do and I found myself losing a lot of motivation for the art and not wanting to be out with my camera. however with a week until the final 15 HOUR! exam, and with a lot of nagging from my parents i went out and actually had a lot of fun!

the concept for this shoot was to capture crowds in long exposure to show movement and also convey a sense of being lost like you weren't actually there, a ghost.how does this link to solitude? well it proves ho alone you can feel sometimes, even in a crowded place. 

the whole morning i was out my mum came with to be my "assistant" for lack of a better word, and we had a lot of fun (she was mainly laughing at me getting annoyed with my camera but that's not the point!) by the end of it we came out with some pretty good shots and had some good quality time together, We even had our photo taken quite obviously by a older man with his SLR camera, quite creepy but hey ho what can we do! 

So without further ado, here is a few photos from today that i think turned out the best!

ENJOY!!!

Love, 

Becca x