Jeff Martin...that is all.

So I have been MIA for the last week or so, my place gets uninhabitably hot so we escaped to my parents house, but I'm back and ready to tell you about the amazingness that was last Thursday's Jeff Martin gig.

So this was my first time seeing him in the flesh, and oh my god the man is pure genius! I have never been so enthralled by someone in my life. He draws you in and you forget about everything any everyone for a moment. I directly attribute this as to why I took over 1100 photos almost entirely of just him.
I feel a little bit stalkerish but he shows so much raw emotion when he performs it would be a crime not to capture it.
The general vibe of the whole place was just awesome. There could not have been more than 50 people there so it was incredibly intimate. I have never been to a show where I could lean on the stage with out being crushed up against it, which resulted in some fantastic shots!
I alternated between colour and black & white all night because the lighting wasn't fantastic, but it all worked out ^_^.
I would also like to mention that The Byron Bay Brewery is now my favorite venue/ just place to be.
On that note here are my 10 favorite pictures, it was originally going to be 7 but I couldn't help myself ^_^.

I hope you enjoyed them! All the other photos I took that night are on the Penny Lane photography facebook page just click where it says Penny Lane Photography up the top and it will take you straight to it.
I am also setting up my etsy store this weekend so I will keep you all posted ^_^.
If you are reading this and thinking "who the hell is Jeff Martin?" check out his band The Tea Party they are phenomenal!
Next weeks post will be a surprise! Because I haven't thought of it yet ^_^.
Stay safe! xxx

Getting my creative juices flowing!

So last week I got the magnificent program that is Adobe Lightroom 4. We had a slight disagreement on Sunday night but managed to work out our differences and are now besties ^_^.
In last weeks post I promised I would get a little artistic so here is what I came up with.
Any and all constructive criticism is welcome and appreciated it's the only way to learn ^_^.
I would just like to put it out there that I used some of Lightroom's presets, although by doing that I feel as though I'm cheating, but that being said I ended up adjusting a lot of the settings any way so in a way I guess that cancels it out.

This last photo isn't very creative nor was it planned. I had been trying to get a picture of him all night and I decided to play with the monochrome settings on my camera. He was being particularly difficult so I got right  in his face and managed to get what I think is the best picture of him ever taken.

But let it be known he was trying to hit the camera away at this very moment!


I am going to start doing a post once a week so keep your eyes out ^_^.
I am also thinking of selling some of my shots on Etsy in print form as well as on canvas starting from about $10. I will do a post next week with some of my print ideas, I would love some feed back, most of the photos I have posted today will be available but let me know what you would like to see me offer I am always open to suggestion. I will also do requests ^_^.

In other news my photos will soon be appearing on the website as well as the app for the Gold Coast Country Club which is unbelievably exciting! I'm not getting paid for it but I get to drive a golf cart around all day so that's all I need.

Any way I hope you enjoyed seeing my creative side I will get better I promise and thanks so much for reading/viewing  ^_^.
xxx

A New Look, a Big Thank You and a Pop Culture Convention

Alright so you may have noticed my blog page is looking a little different some might say its looking a little snazzier ^_^. That is entirely due to the magnificent Miss Samantha Jane and I can not thank her enough, she is so incredibly talented and did a fantastic job I could not be happier.  Be sure to check her out her button is just there on the side ^_^. Also a massive thank you needs to go to my bestest friend in the whole world Miss Sarah Cree for the drawing she did of me for my birthday which now sits proudly atop my blog as well as on the wall above my PC. Thank you ladies you are both creative geniuses and are definitely going to go places! ^_^

Now on to the event of the year (well in my calender any way) SUPANOVA Brisbane 2012!!!!

Despite the rain on the first day it was fantastic!!! The caliber of cosplayers was outstanding! As to be expected due to the amazing John DiMaggio being there, there were quite a few Finn and Jake's (Adventure Time) and even Lumpy Space princess made an appearance. What was surprising though, despite the presence of not only John DiMaggio but Billy West, was the lack of Futurama cosplayers. Through out the entire two days I only saw two Leela's, one of whom was fantastic though I some how managed to not get a picture of her lol. If anyone found more Futurama cosplayers I want to see pictures ^_^.

What was truly awesome though was the growing Star Trek presence. Almost every stall had something Star Trek related to sell which had Bradley practically peeing his pants with excitement. There was also the best Borg cosplayer I have ever seen! 

As always the 501st battalion was there (Stormtroopers) looking as awesome as ever. There was also a Lego Millennium Falcon that makes mine look like a cheap toy. 

Other cosplayers that deserve mention, were an unbelievable Pyramid Head, more Slendermen than I could shake a torch at and probably my favorite cosplayer in Supanova history A.W.E.S.O.M-O.

Despite what some people might think Supanova isn't just about dressing up and looking at "toys" (although that is one of the best parts). They manage to get bigger and better stars every year. They started off on a pretty high note at with Will Wheaton, Oliver and James Phelps (The Weasley twins), Summer Glau and Morena Baccarin at the Gold Coast Supanova in April. 

Brisbane though saw Tom Felton (Draco Malfoy) which is almost as good as having Daniel Radcliff but not quite ^_^, James Masters (Spike from Buffy), teen heart throb Luke Perry, Nelsan Ellis (Lafayette, True Blood) Cassandra Peterson (Elvira, Mistress of the Dark), as I mentioned before the amazing talent that is John DiMaggio and Billy West and returning for a second time this year the amazing Morena Baccarin with whom I am madly in love with and got her to sign my copy of Firefly. She also turned out to be probably one of the coolest and down to earth people I have ever met and the highlight of my Supanova experience ^_^.  

Due to time table clashes I only managed to get to three Q&A's, Morena Baccarin, Cassandra Peterson and  John DiMaggio and Billy West, but all three were fantastic! 

So all in all it was a pretty fantastic year for Supanova. I will just say though I prefer it on the Gold Coast, the  Convention Center is the perfect location for this kind of thing, yeah the main floor is a bit smaller but having it there means we get that fantastic rooms for Q&A's in which every one is able to see the person speaking. It is also situated in the middle of Broadbeach so there is no shortage of good cheap food.

So ends another year of Supanova though it's only 5 months until the next one so we don't have to wait too long ^_^.

Keep an eye out for my next post, I'm going to go on a little artistic adventure so I shall have some awesome photos to share.

Be sure to check out all my other Supanova photos on my facebook, I will have my Penny Lane Photography facebook page up and running very soon. I also just joined the world of twitter so you can follow me at pennylane1961. 

I want to just add one last thank you to Apple maps for getting Bradley and I lost in the rain for 45 minutes looking for our hotel when it was essentially just across the road from where we left the train station so thank you Apple maps.

As always have fun and I will now leave you with my favorite photos from Supanova 2012, enjoy!

 

 

Fairies, Pagans, Knights and Procrastination.

I have come to realize just how easily distracted I am.
Immediately prior to my last post I got straight into it. For the first time in a long time I was actually absorbing information from what I was reading and not just staring at meaningless words. I got all caught up with my assessments and got really good marks for all of them. I also got down to 83kg.

The last 2ish weeks on the other hand have been really fun but crazy counterproductive ^_^.
I went on a bit of an eat junk food and go out and do things binge. So therefore my studies have been somewhat lacking and I have gained 1kg. I mean it could be worse, I guess I have to just pick my self up and keep going.

This past weekend though was probably my biggest highlight. My very first ex boyfriend Neville drove all the way up from Tamworth for a spontaneous visit. The plan was to hang in Brisbane so I could get a few shots of the gardens and city and to show him around. We were walking though the gardens taking photos when we came across a group of people dressed as fairies and I immediately recognized them as being the Coven of the Wildwood, admiring them but not wanting to intrude we continued on our way. One thing you should know about Neville is that he is very impulsive and when we left him alone to go the the bathroom we returned to find that he had joined their circle.
So one thing lead to another and we ended up being part of their fairy parade and Beltaine ritual. It was fantastic and I got some amazing shots! I managed to fill my SD card. I am definitely going to organize to do some more shoots with them they are some of the most amazing people I have ever had the pleasure of interacting with.

The following night we accompanied my good friend Mitchell to training. What training you might ask?. Well Mitchell is part of a medieval reenactment group called The Knights Order of Lion Rampant. He was an archer but has now leveled up to swordsman. It was probably one of the coolest things I have ever seen. I'm pretty sure Bradley will be joining them in the not to distant future to which I have no objections. I will be there to document them the next time they train in full armor and hopefully I wont leave my tripod at home this time. If anyone reading this is interested in knowing more let me know and I will hook you up with the right people ^_^. They fight in a few tournaments but the biggest one is probably The Abbey Medieval Festival. I went this year for the first time and it was fantastic!!! I highly recommend checking it out.

This weekend I will be at Supanova pop culture festival, so keep your eyes peeled for my Supanova blog post and photos.

I will now leave you with links to the Abbey and Supanova websites and my favorite photos from the weekend. ^_^
Peace.

http://abbeytournament.com/
http://www.supanova.com.au/

An Epiphany

I have no idea what I'm going to write in this blog post. I thought I would just wing it and write what ever comes to mind.
Here I am sitting at my pc waiting for chicken to defrost so I can have chicken and salad for lunch, which I have been eating non stop for the past 3 weeks and astonishingly haven't got sick of it yet. It is definitely directly responsible for me loosing 5kg is under 3 weeks so I guess that helps.
I am so incredibly proud of Bradley and my self for actually sticking to this diet, 500th time lucky I always say. We still have quite a ways to go so we can't get too complacent just yet.

I can honestly say I wasted the last 6 years of my life. Yes they were amazingly fun and yes I had a great time with only a few major hiccups along the way, which in compassion to some peoples lives seem so insignificantly trivial. I feel as though I grew a lot as a person and learned some extraordinarily valuable life lessons and met some truly amazing people with out whom I would I would either be sprinkled over Jim Morrison's grave site or have just spiraled down until I was a hollow shell of a girl. To those people I say thank you for keeping me sane.
In the years I spent worrying about boys, listening to way too much emo music and feeling sorry for myself, I really should have been thinking about what I wanted to do with my life.
I'm 24 and only this year have I finally figured out what I want to do. Having said that it wasn't until I started loosing weight that I actually found some scrap of motivation to do something. Even then the only thing I am motivated towards is loosing weight.
I mean I have a fantastic unit on photography that I'm doing at uni but getting motivated to actually sit down and do it is a hell of a lot harder than it should be and I hate myself for it. I could blame video games, tv, and facebook but really the only one at fault is myself.

I have lost my enthusiasm for things I was once enthralled with. I mean I still love it but haven't done anything about it for at least a year, I dare say that's due to living somewhere that I'm not entirely comfortable and not having my own space, but that being said I should be able to adapt.

This last year has been a complete roller coaster. Starting with loosing the best job I have ever had,  finding out I'm not good enough to be a professional piercer, finally freeing myself of  the most unhealthy relationship I have ever been in (no offence Tyler you're a great person), to starting my first truly healthy and happy relationship with someone I truly believe to be my soulmate.
I went from having my own little apartment where I was free to do what I wanted when I wanted, to living with my boyfriends parents and having my entire existence confined to 2 small rooms.

I know I need to change things in a big way but I feel like the're are so many things that keep holding me back, but I think now is as good a time as any. I have to stop giving my self excuses to not do things and take a deep breath and let go of all the negative thoughts I keep harboring and move on.

I am going to stop relying and concentrating on others and start doing things for myself.
It begins now!

The Best Birthday Thus Far!!!

Alright so 2 weeks ago I turned 24, I know what you're thinking, "She's fucking ancient" I know right mid twenties already my life is over! I kid lol ^_^. Any way it is safe to say that this year was the best birthday I have had thus far.

I have never completely warmed to the idea of camping and I don't know what possessed me to choose camping as this years birthday activity but it completely quashed all my expectations. Apart from the absolutely perfect weather and the fact that we managed to coax my mum, brother and best friend along with us (my dad, sister and boyfriend were already super keen)  it was the most amazingly picturesque place I have ever and probably will ever visit.

This perfect little place is called Sandon River which is in Brooms Head NSW about 2.5 hours south of Tweed and let me just say it is quite the popular little place. 
The original plan was for the boys to head down on Thursday to set up and get a good spot and the girls would head down on Friday afternoon after mum had finished work. Though true to form dad made the executive decision that they would go on Friday morning at 8am on the dot, and by 8am I mean 10:30am and by on the dot I mean somewhere in the vicinity of. Though they got there in the end with out drama and found a perfect little spot and did a fantastic job of setting up. It had just the right amount of privacy and was incredibly cosy.
Dad had gone on a ebay spree a week earlier and bought a new 12 man tent and a camp kitchen so we had the best little set up.

My mum, sister, best friend and I had to play a fun little game called human Tetris because the boys had conveniently left us with more stuff than we could fit, but we figured it out and were off on our 2 and a half hour journey to the middle of east jesus nowhere. 
So 2 and a half rather cramped hours later we arrived. We expected the boys to still be setting up but much to our surprise it was all done. 
We managed to get there just before sunset, and it was the most beautiful sunset I have ever witnessed.  We explored the beach in the remaining light and discovered a sculpture that freaked us all out, but I aptly named Milky Joe because he had a coconut for a head (it's a Mighty Boosh reference for those of you who aren't familiar with the amazingness that is the Boosh)

By Saturday morning (our second day) there wasn't a camp site left but having said that it was by no means crowded. I mean we almost always had the beach to ourselves, our campsite was by no means isolated but it wasn't so close that the people next to us annoyed us, although on the second day the people next to us were playing the same CD on loop all day, but it was alright because we would just find some where to explore. 

The beach was by far my favorite part, which is odd because I generally hate the beach. 
The second morning we woke up at pretty much sunrise and explored the beach almost the entire day. 
Along the shoreline was all the debris washed up from the ocean. 
You know how fish and chip shops and other places with nautical themes have all the shells, seaweed, fish and what not arranged in perfect little displays, well all along this shore line were little arrangements just like it. It was as if the ocean had perfectly arranged them just for us (christ how corny was that line ^_^).
I could have walked up and down the shore line all day just looking and taking photos of it all. 

Because we were up at sunrise we managed to get a lot of exploring done that day. We went into town, and when I say town I mean there is a few houses a caravan park and a general store and that's pretty much it, but there is a headland! 
So we went up one of the walking tracks on the headland and I had a photographic field day. The views were stunning! Every where you looked was either ocean and beach or bush, and both were as beautiful as each other. What was even more amazing was that my brother accompanied us on our little adventure and didn't complain once! We then got ice cream and went back to the camp site by that time is was only like 2 o'clock so we went and explored the beach some more.

We managed to find a plethora of amazing things washed up on the beach. Lobster carcasses, childrens shoes and toys, a perfectly square rock (which I am in the process of turning into a companion cube), my sister found the bottom of what I'm guessing is a beer bottle that had 1953 printed on it which was an awesome find, we even found a bird skull. I also found a jar embedded in a sand bank which I wish I had taken, although if it is still there when we go back (and we are going back as soon as possible) I shall take it with me.

We ended our second and final night with an awesome steak dinner and then we were up before sunrise so I could take photos of the start of our last day.
I hadn't watched a sunrise in years and it was spectacular! My camera battery was on its last legs by that point but I managed to get some amazing shots. Including some of what we though was a suspiciously slow moving comet, but turns out is was a plane whose vapor trail was being illuminated by the rising sun. There was also a crazy guy on a paddle board, it was freezing at that time in the morning I don't know how he managed to do it but it meant I got one last amazing shot before my battery died. 
We had breakfast, courtesy of Bradley, explored a little more and then packed up and were ready to go by lunch time.

I was incredibly sad to be leaving, all I wanted to do was stay and explore some more, but it's not going anywhere so we will be back. It was by far the best weekend of my life and I feel like a new person having gone there.

I almost forgot to mention the stars!!! I haven't seen them that clear god knows how long. I could have sat on the beach all night just staring at them.
 Look up at the night sky and take note of the amount of stars, now multiply them by about a million and that's how many stars we could see out there. You don't realize just how much light pollution effects the amount of stars you see until you go somewhere with no light pollution.

We also had some pretty intense jenga matches during breakfast, Shannen lost every game.

My presents were also fantastic, Sare got me a bottle of long island and bedazzled the top like a pro, Bradley got me a Minecraft diamond necklace and Firefly on dvd and my parents got me a tripod, a fantasitc photography book and a bunch of clothes and panties. 

Thus ends the tale of my best birthday to date. I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it, be awesome to each other and peace out.
I would also  like to add I have never seen so many kangaroos in one place in my life.

And so begins my inevitable addiction to writing blogs

Ok so I haven't written a blog since myspace and I'm fairly sure the last blog I wrote on that was either about how difficult it was to give up chocolate for a month or how I got to shake Gerard Way from My Chemical Romance's hand and almost passed out from hyperventilating. I feel as though I have come a long way since then, well at least I hope I have.

So where to start, I just turned 24, I'm a full time student who finds it extraordinarily difficult to concentrate 95% of the time. The other 5% I'm a complete genius, well at least I like to think I am, in saying that I am writing this blog instead of finishing an assignment, go figure ^_^.
 I am completely obsessed with photography, music and art. Andy Warhol is my favorite artist, in high school art every assignment we had I would some how manage to relate it back to Andy. The topic could be to write 500 words on the art work of an ancient tribe in the South Pacific and I would still be able to make it about Mr Warhol.
 I just got my very first DSLR (Cannon 600D). Before that I was relying on my little Cannon PowerShot A2000 and my iphone that functions better as a camera than it does as a phone and its a pretty shit camera ^_^ . I have had my DSLR just over a month and have managed to take about 7000 photos.

I am studying photography at RMIT through Open Universities Australia but they don't do an entire bachelor, so here's hoping I get into Griffith!
My goal is to be a professional photographer. Nature is probably my favorite photography subject but that being said I haven't really done anything else although I have been experimenting with still life and will be doing my first shoot with a model in the not to distant future, and by model I mean a friend who is really pretty. I'm hoping that in the future I will see her in a magazine and be able to say "I did her first shoot" and therefore wont feel guilty when asking her for money ^_^.

I am a bit of a geek, the first joint purchase my boyfriend an I made was a Lego Millennium Falcon, we managed to space the build out over about 6 weeks much to his disgust.My dad sat me down to watch Star Wars when I was 5 and I have been madly in love ever since. I am also not ashamed to admit that when I was 11 I had a huge crush on Mark Hamill and actually kinda still do.
I'm not a massive gamer but am pretty addicted to minecraft. There isn't a day when I'm not in my awesome little world running around building my kingdom, slaying spiders and creepers and talking to myself in Toby Turners voice. I love it so much that instead of buying me a real diamond necklace for my birthday my boyfriend bought me a mincraft diamond necklace and wrapped it in diamond ore wrapping paper ^_^.
He also bought me Firefly which is my favorite show. It was pretty much the best birthday ever.
My favorite band is The Doors. Jim Morrison's voice is hypnotic and I am madly in love with him.
I would give anything to be able to go back in time to Woodstock '69. America in the 60's and 70's is my ideal time period.

I guess I should end it there or else I wont have anything else to blog about in the future.
So on that bomb shell I leave you with my five favorite pictures that I have taken with my new baby.
Have fun and such xoxo