2017 PHOTO ALBUM

In 2016, I made a giant (actually, it was really quite small) album for the whole year. It can be pretty time consuming to make these albums, but breaking it up and basically updating it each month helped a lot. I also chose to only use photos from Instagram, which made the process a lot quicker too, as the sorting out the photos, organizing and editing is already done. But for my 2017 album, I decided to simplify it even further and made a photo book based. I used Blurb as a) they're my go to for photo albums, b) they were one of the few companies that could print up to 440 page books and c) they have a program that connects directly with Instagram. There's a couple of limitations as to what you can do format wise using this tool, like how you can't edit the layouts or do two-page photo spreads, but for my simple plan of having one photo per page it was pretty perfect. I updated the album monthly and it probably took me about five minutes each time. 

And whoa, I love this album. I love the fact all our favorite photos are in physical print and that you can just sit and look through them. I've probably already spent way longer than I should have flipping through it, and there's just so many pages that instantly make me smile. It contains our whole year, and everything from everday photos around the house to photos from our travels. And I absolutely love comparing the photos at the start of the year with the end of the year and seeing how much Oscar has grown. He's gone from being a baby to a kid, and it's so awesome. I mean, when I was taking photos for this post, I ended up ear-marking 48 favorite pages that I just had to include. I manage to narrow it down a bit further than that, but sorry, this is still a pretty photo-heavy post haha (which meant that Blogger crashed about a million times when I was trying to post this haha).

However, first a bit of a disclaimer: the album you see here is actually my second attempt at a 2017 album, as I just wasn't happy with the first album that got printed. The photos came out blurry and grainy and I just wasn't happy with the quality of it at all. Such a bummer. I ended up contacting Blurb customer services to complain, and I was really just hoping for a refund (as obviously an album of this size cost a few bob!). Mainly though, I was just so sad that I'd been looking forward to flipping through the album for a year, and expectations just did not meet reality. I know, this is an album based on photos from Instagram which automatically reduces the quality, but I guess I was just expecting that a program specifically made for making albums from Instagram photos would either somehow magically take that into account, or at least produce some sort of warning as you're making the book that the quality isn't good enough (as that's normally what happens with their other software). Anyway, I did not get a refund. I was told they'd give me a free reprint, but that I'd have to go through and probably use the original photos for the quality I was looking for, and I'd have to reorder within a month. AKA, sort through thousands of photos (probably not even an exaggeration haha) and organize and edit them--exactly the part of the process I was hoping to avoid. I don't even think I have all the originals anymore, nor did I have any idea how I'd find the time to do this. Eventually I decided to go through the album and just change the layout of each page, hoping that might help. Instead of full-page photos I opted for one large photo on each page. I figured that as they were covering the cost of a second album, I might as well give it a shot. And I'm so glad I did, as the second album is exactly what I had in mind the first time around. Lesson learnt.

The finish album is my biggest photo book yet, 360 pages total. It's divided into twelve chapters for each month, and at the end I did a quick written summary of the year at a glance so that the album will still make sense to me 20 years from now. The photos are not necessarily in chronological order beyond being in the right month--chronology is not a priority for me. I used photos from both mine and Graeme's Instagram account, and kept the whole book super simple and uniform. As a change from my previous photo books, I chose a printed hardcover this time, and I'll probably do that again for future albums too.

And, yes, duh, of course--I have already started the 2018 album. And I'm already very, very excited.

DIANA F+ & OLYMPUS TRIP: GLASTONBURY

Oh man, I have been neglecting this blog recently. I was expecting to have plenty of spare time this summer, but in between applying for jobs, remodelling the kitchen, planning our wedding, travelling and other engagements, it's been ridiculously busy. But I'm getting there. The kitchen is SO close to being done, and Graeme and I are now getting married in less than a month. This week we managed to secure someone to actually carry out the ceremony (just a minor detail!), so that seems to be coming together too. We're also pretty much done with all our travelling this summer, so I figured I'd share a couple of the photos Graeme and I took from Glastonbury a few weeks ago! Oh, how I love analog film. These were all shot on Lomography Diana F+ with a 35 mm back and the Olympus Trip.

We had a pretty awesome weekend (as seen in the last photo!). It's such a huge festival, and it was so amazing to just wander around and explore and take it all in. Florence + the Machine was probably my favorite show, but there were so many other amazing acts, and such a good vibe throughout the festival in general. Would definitely recommend if festivals are your thing!

DIANA F+ / SCOTLAND

We are still in the middle of our kitchen renovation process over here. Currently, we've just finished doing the walls and flooring, and the kitchen itself was delivered a few days ago and is sitting in boxes in the living room, ready to be installed. We cook our meals outside on the bbq, and have to do our dishes in the bathroom. Our fridge sits in the middle of the living room. In other words, the whole house is a tip. To distract ourselves from the situation, we've been accepting every dinner invite thrown our way, and travelling whenever we get the chance. We went to Oslo to meet with the British Embassy to get some wedding-related paperwork done. Some friends of ours from the UK were running the Copenhagen Marathon, so we jumped on the ferry, drove through Denmark and cheered them on (I still have blisters from trying to keep up with them, stomping all over Copenhagen's cobbles in my wedges--not the best choice of footwear, I'll admit). Then we also went away for our stag and hen parties. Graeme went to Scotland for a week, and I had a long weekend in Bristol. I had the best time, and I'm now convinced it's some tropical paradise where everyone stays in beautiful houses and the sun shines every day (we stayed in the most gorgeous Victorian townhouse through airbnb and I got a tan). Today we're contemplating taking a few days at my parents cabin before the kitchen finally gets installed and we can return to normality. I'm planning on spending pretty much all of next weekend in the kitchen, cooking and baking and making a mess.

As we've been keeping pretty busy staying out of the house, I haven't really had much to blog about. So while we're still living in this kitchenless limbo and travelling a lot, I figured it'd be appropriate to share some shots I took while travelling over to Scotland this easter break. Graeme and I went to Glasgow for a week to visit friends and family, and then had a couple of sunny days in Edinburgh to finish the trip off. These were all taken with the Diana F+ with the 35 mm back. We're heading to the Glastonbury Festival in a couple of weeks, and think I'll be taking this camera with me!

LA SARDINA / BENICASSIM, CARTAGENA, MURCIA

I think my favorite thing about using analog film might be the anticipation and excitement of getting it developed. I tend to save them up and go and get a whole bunch of films developed at the same time, so quite often I have no idea when the films are even from.

Last week, Graeme and I were in Glasgow and in between wedding errands and visiting friends and family, I managed to sneak off and get a couple of 35 mm rolls developed in Snappy Snaps on Byres Road. The two rolls that were mine turned out to be from last summer- one from when Graeme's dad came to visit and the other from our trip to Spain. I've been working on a photo book from our Spain Trip, and didn't even realize I still had undeveloped rolls of film! And as this week's been pretty grey and dreary over here, I thought I'd share a couple shots of sunshine.

These were all taken with the Lomography La Sardina using 35 mm film. They were shot in Spain, namely in Benicassim, Cartagena and Murcia.

ADVENTURES IN KOREA

Why hello there, long time no speak! I am back from my holiday in Korea and have finally stopped feeling like a zombie, so thought I’d get my act together and do a little post with some photos from my trip! I probably took about a million photos while I was there, but don't worry, I'm only posting a few! :) 

My sister is currently living in South Korea, so I decided to go visit her and see what Korea was all about. I spent the first week on Geoje Island where my sister lives, which is Korea’s second biggest island and is located at the south of South Korea. It was pretty relaxing, and I ate tons of good food, spent a lot of time walking around and exploring and managed to get in a day of biking and exploring the mountains too. We also took a day where my sister and I went further south on the island and took a ferry to see Haegumgang ("Korean National Scenic Site no.2") and Oedo Botanical island. I did however manage to leave the battery for my camera in the charger that day though (facepalm!), which was such a shame as both were such cool and beautiful islands.

Seoul was pretty awesome. My sister and I went up for the weekend with a couple of people from her work. We stayed at a hotel in Itaewon, and spent the first day on the DMZ tour and went up to Panmunjom and the North Korean border. It was a bit bizarre, but very interesting. I decided I wasn’t quite ready to leave once the weekend was finished though, so while the rest went back south I checked into a hostel in Hongdae and stayed a few more days. I did a bit more sightseeing and visited Gyeongbokgung Palace, Namsangong Hanok Village and went up Namsan to N Seoul Tower. I also managed to meet up with an old friend from when I lived in Doha, as well as a friend from Glasgow University who now teaches English at a school just outside of Seoul. Was great seeing them both! The latter was celebrating her one year anniversary in Korea, and we celebrated with good food and some noraebang (karaoke). When in Korea, right?

I then went down to Busan on the coast and spent a couple of nights there in a hostel on Haeundae beach. I explored Dongbaek and went to the Jagalchi fish market and Shinsegae, the world’s biggest department store. Unfortunately, I also had grand plans of visiting Haedong Yonggungsa temple, but had to cancel due to bad weather. I had also been toying with the idea of doing a temple stay, so will have to save that for another time!

I ate so much good food on the trip, too. I had lots of kimchi, bungeoppang, dak galbi, and bibimbap, as well as Korean soju andmakgeolli. Korean BBQ became an absolute favorite, and the day before I left I went to the supermarket and bought tons of ssamjang, garaetteok and kim nori to take home. I definitely plan on trying out some Korean recipes at home (though I totally regret not getting a Korean cookbook while I was there)!