I’m trying to start a new routine of doing something creative every day. Whether it’s photography, music, sketching, whatever – it’s just so fulfilling to do anything creative.

I started this yesterday by making some music in ACID Xpress… well I say ‘music’, more like a crazy remix of soundclips from local MP Betty Williams. No I will not be posting it!

Today was really sunny so I stopped the (little) revising I was doing and popped out for some photography. Here’s one of the shots I came up with (click image to view on black):

So after I finish my A-levels this year, I’m going to be taking a gap year – or as my friends jokingly call it, a gap life! Basically I’m going to do a bit (a lot) of travelling – learn about different cultures, take photos, take photos, take photos, and maybe do some short courses. I really need to get planning as to where exactly I’m going and what I’m gonna do – it’s all a bit vague at the moment.

Anyway, I was talking to a friend who was thinking of going to Australia on his gap year and I decided to go on a bit of a Google StreetView binge… somehow I ended up in New Zealand on this road:

Now I really really really just really really want to go there, just to find out WHO THE HECK LIVES THERE?! There’s loads of these little shacks all along this road, and it’s just so intriguing… I’d love to find out what they’re all about.

I shall leave you with something I found whilst roaming around the Australian suburbs:

Woooooo! We finally get some proper snow!!!

Hopefully it will carry on snowing all night, then I’ll get a day off school and time to take lotsa snowy photos!!

(Sorry for all the exclamation marks!!!!!!!!)

Update: On seeing the above photo a Flickr user, artistwright1 was reminded of a painting by Italian artist Giacomo Balla – Street Light (click here to view on Museum of Modern art website) – it looks surprisingly similar in style to my photo (subconscious reference?!). In other news – it rained later on last night, and all the snow was washed away.

After some thought – considering the deadline :) – I’ve decided to do a series of photographs (rather than a film) for my art project… these will be based around/inspired by original expressionist cinema/horror imagery. I’ve been thinking for ideas about what sort of photos to take and how to make some sort of “series” – so all the photos are connected somehow…

I might do something like emulating a series of still frames from a horror film… along the same lines I could have like several ‘film negative’ strips lined up with different shots on each.

Nosferatu - shadowy inspiration

The night before last, when I was walking up the ladder into my attic I saw an awesome shot! It reminded my so much of a scene in Nosferatu (horror film and an example of expressionist german cinema). I was too tired at the time to take out my camera and set up a shot, etc. but expect to see a shot on my flickr soon :)

I hope to use something like this maybe as one of my photos for the art project, if not just as a preliminary idea for my sketchbook. Seriously it looks amazing! Actually I’d better not hype it up too much just in case I dreamt it all up!

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After I got my new camera, I decided to go on regular “photowalks” to a nearby botanical garden. Just looking through these pictures, there’s some surprisingly good shots there… and I found this awesome one!

What I really like is the fact that it has an almost black & white look to it, yet there is some glints of sunlight that show up the colour in the image (I didn’t do any selective colouring just so you know!).

One more thing… I experimented with a little dodge/burn in GIMP, and I think it turned out a’right. I think this tends to dull the colours a bit, but it seems to suit this picture quite well. I’m not quite sure about the border though…

Check for more photos from my Flickr photostream.