Art By Offenders

This is just a plea to all you London folk really. I will do some proper entries tomorrow when I am less tired. There is a super (and free!) exhibition on at The Southbank Centre right now showcasing this year's entries to the Koestler Awards. All the art on display (including songs, poems, paintings, matchstick models, clothing etc) has been made by offenders in prisons, secure patients, young offenders, people on probation and so on. It is a fab exhibition and I think the Koestler Trust is a great organisation giving a voice in the art world to people who otherwise would not have one. Anyway, I think you should all go see it. . . go. .  .now!

one of my fave pieces from the exhibition by inmate David Franklin

Some lovely New York photos

So yesterday saw me get my last 2 rolls of film back from my holiday in New York. It was a bittersweet moment really because the holiday is now well and truly over with, at least for the last few weeks I have had all my photos to look forward to, which is a sad feeling. But on the other hand I am really happy with how these shots came out. I had stopped using a Diana and 120 film so this is my attempts at getting into it again. I got a wide angle lens just before I went away so I though New York would be the perfect place to give it a try. Below are some of my favourites.

view up Rockefellar centre, almost missed this shot as my lens cap was on but luckily spotted a Japanese boy with the same camera looking at me like I was bonkers!

my new favourite double exposure ever, view from the Top of the Rock

a nice angle on the Waldorf Astoria hotel, taken with some battered Ilford Delta film

a cheeky candid shot of some teens in Harlem

I hope you all like them, of course you can see the whole album on my LomoHome.

I want to ride my (Schwinn) bicycle

Since I went to Portsmouth with the parentals at easter 2011, Dave and I have been coveting designer bikes. We saw a girl on a really cool cruiser bike, it had a little basket and a cup-holder and it just looked like a pleasure to ride. We found the make was Schwinn, which we had never heard of and found them online. They are quite pricey (mine sometimes retailing at £449) but they are so comfortable and would be so great for trips out round Yorkshire, as I like being outdoors but find walking just a bit dull. There is a place in Wigan that sells them so now that I am not saving up to go to New York anymore (sob, sob), I am going to put a bit aside each month for me and Dave to buy ourselves a Schwinn bike. I am hoping we can get them in March maybe so at the first sign of springtime sun we can be out in the country. Also, I am hoping my work might help me, through the cycle to work scheme, fingers crossed!

my Schwinn bike - Debutante

Dave's Schwinn - Courvette

When September Ends

I thought I would start as I mean to go on and blog about all the wonderful month of September, as it was one of the best I have had in the last few years, let alone of 2011. Below are a few photos of what I got up to.

Looking after baby Dylan at the beginning of the month - what a pleasure he is now as he is turning into a proper little boy

My family trip to New York 2 weeks ago - 6 ladies went and had a fab time. Photos show my first glimpse of the Statue of Liberty, Times Square, yummy treats and the spectacular new 9/11 memorial

This is my awful face for Leeds Zombie Prom last weekend. It was the third time I had been, but the first time I got dressed up for it so I went all out.

All in all September was a great month on a lot of levels and I am a very lucky lady to have had an experience as amazing as New York. It was lovely for my Mum and her sisters too as they have never been further than Spain in their lives before. I needed the break as well because there are some difficult job circumstances at the moment which I will write about another day this week as hopefully by then they will be resolved (in part).

Knox Appeal

So I just read online that both people originally convicted of killing Leeds Uni student Meredith Kercher have won their appeals and have now been released from prison after 4 years. I have to admit I feel quite anxious about the whole situation. 
For those of you who aren't familiar with the case, Meredith Kercher was studying in Perugia, Italy through an exchange scheme when she was found one morning stabbed to death in her flat in November 2007. I will always remember the story because when it came on TV, I facebooked the name Meredith Kercher, as she was from my uni, in the languages department, same as me and we had both been born in 1985 so I wondered if I maybe I had seen her around the department. I didn't recognise her photo but it told me that we had a friend in common and it turned out that my friend Alex had studied alongside her. He was obviously devastated about the loss, particularly the circumstances surrounding her murder.
The blame was placed straight away on American student Amanda Knox and her Italian boyfriend Raffaelle Sollecito, along with another man Rudy Guede.  All 3 were convicted of her murder and sexual assault and given long jail sentences. 
Knox and Sollecito have always maintained their innocence and obviously the ruling today suggests that the world now ought to believe them. I am just not sure that I do. There are a number of reasons for this, and I know that the media made Knox out to be some sort of sex-addicted lunatic, which I have always tried to ignore. Firstly, the fact that when this first happened Knox lied and blamed Meredith's boss Patrick Lumumba. She now has to pay costs to him for this. Why would you lie if you had nothing to hide? Also, the way Knox acted after the event was always a bit bizarre, giggling and cuddling her boyfriend in the police station the reports suggested, which again seems totally bizarre to say she had only known him 10 days or something and her friend had now died in awful circumstances.
Anyway, I suppose it is not for me to decide, and in many ways I hope that Knox and Sollecito are innocent, otherwise the courts have made a terrible mistake in letting them free. I just hope that the right people are punished for causing such a terribly sad loss of life, and deep down, I am not sure now that they are.

Meredith Kercher, from thetelegraph.co.uk - I hope she is resting in peace

Absence makes the heart grow fonder

Obviously you have probably noticed I haven't blogged for quite a while. I suppose you could say that life got in the way, but essentially what I mean by that is that I got lazy and undisciplined with myself. It is a shame too as I have had some super things to write about. 
Anyway, I have to be honest and admit that I hadn't really missed blogging very much. I guess because I still do the old pen and notebook journal thing anyway, I didn't really feel that the digital version was adding anything. But tonight I was on Twitter and someone linked their blog and I then spent a good few hours reading through some of my favourite blogs and catching up. It was then that I realised I had missed it quite a lot. Not the camera reviews so much, because I get my camera/photo fix over at lomo, but the way writing a blog made me think about things. Like how I used to use Instagram to record on my iphone when something made me really happy so i could blog about it later. That is a really nice feeling and it made me appreciate things a lot more than I do now for example. So I am going to start up again, not just camera reviews but a proper little blog. At least 2 little entries a week, just to remind me to #32: Enjoy the little things.