He hit so hard...

...and paid homage to women throughout the ages.
I am not usually a fan of Chanel's haute couture collections. Its simplicity, compared with the excessive splendour of Dior's haute couture... well, bores me. (sorry, Karl! >.<) (and after all, am I not, the Queen of excess?) But that's all going to change. I give a standing ovation to Chanel's AW Haute Couture collection. What got me the most was the surprising wearability of each piece- I actually admire it and go, I would totally wear that. Which is a rare thing to say about clothes meant for the 20% of the reallyreallyreally rich women in the world. To cut a long story short, it rocks. I will let the pictures do the talking. These are some of my favourite looks. For thewhole collection, do check out Chanel's website!
Loves the gradient on this one! and the tights. and the shoes.


Courtney would have loved this number. Its grunge-chick meets romance!
See those things on her finger tips? I want a set of those!


This season's shecksy take on the LBD, the front just looks like a plain shift, like the one in Breakfast at Tiffany's. I think the concept is awesome. AND I love how the RED shoes dont look painfully high.


Before Yves Saint-Laurent there was Marlene Dietrich.

This season's take on the classsic chanel suit was an archetectural train which was featured in many jackets and other pieces throughout the whole collection. Simple, elegant and subtle. yayness.

The flapper. Again, those finger slips rock!


Doesnt this coat remind you of 1920s glamour, when animal rights activists were practically non existant? I wonder what they have to say about this, hurhur!


Reminds you of Poiret, anyone? (right, by Paul Poiret)


Reminisence of the 1860s, Hoop skirt era, x-rayed!


and finally, The Greek Goddess.


"He hit so hard, that I saw God"

Pictures during the holidays (Assignment on the previous post)

Some pictures I managed to take during the three week break... which never made it to submission for GEMs.

TREDP CA2 Submission: Decisive Moments and Lighting Excercise

Part 1: Decisive Moments


Silver Second


Metal Moment


Your Smile


The Poisoner, the Violinist, and the Extras


Part 2: Lighting Excercise

Hollywood Heroine
Side top Lighting


Femme Fatale
Bottom-side Lighting

Writeup:
It is a little difficult to explain composition methods used for decisive moments because my shots were for the most part spontaneous-there was very little time to plan the shot, I just took them. But I will explain the pictures as best as I can.

'Silver second'- was taken completely by chance. This is a photo of the Silver medal winners of the Asian Youth Games Beach Volleyball female athletes for Kazakhstan. I was volunteering at the Siloso Beach for this event and suddenly they walked past me, and I decided to take the shot it happened in a split second. 2 Days later they won the Silver medal. I framed them at the side so they would look like the most prominent subjects at the very busy volleyball court. The background may be busy but somehow these two girls stood out. I think its because of the lack of colour, and that their skin was most prominent as it relfected light better than clothes.

'Metal Moment'- I attended my friends band's jamming session to hear their latest composition- the studio was very small and crammed but I managed to get a photo of the guitarist and the drummer ( there were 2 more members and 2 other people in the room)from the corner of the room. The man in the background is the studio 'uncle' checking to see if everything was alright. There is a triangle made by the guitarist to the drummer because of the two different heights. Its beter in black and white because the lighting made it very awkward for colour photos. It looks better with the colour omitted.

'Your Smile' -is dedicated to my best friend, Salima, who is the girl smiling heartily in the background, amoung all the other people in the scene- the guy in the foreground is the directer directing them to positions. I thought the effect of the being framed by the two guys worked very nicely. It has quite a timeless look to it- in my opinion.

The Poisoner, the Violinist and the Extras- this is a scene from the current production I'm involved in. This scene is that of a mime, with the violinist providing for the background music. At the very back you can see two actors, waiting for their queue, but totally uninvolved in the current scene that is going on. And I find that quite comical: they are the only two in the whole frame not participating in the current scene.

Lighting exercise(these photos were not edited in any way): I have always been interested in fashion photography, and decided to use a myscene doll for an object- its almost like using a human model but easier. (myscene dolls have bigger expressions compared to barbie dolls which is why I deemed her better for this). The light was really soft lighting- I used a really really old lamp of mine which uses tungsten bulb- the yellow light one- except this one was was already dim(due to oldness) and became a very soft, warm amber. The fact that there were no harsh shadows produced shows that it was soft lighting. I did not use flash for this excercise.
The concept was to make her look like a Hollywood actress from the black and white films era. In the first picture, Hollywood Heroine, where the light comes from the side, it lights her face, and it makes her look like the typical wholesome hollywood leading lady of that time. For this shot, the painting 'Girl with a pearl earring' by Vermeer was a rough inspiration for it.
The second one, Femme Fatale, shows her in almost the exact same pose, but because the lighting came from the bottom at a side, her face was cast in shadow, she is looking somehwere else that we dont know, and the midlong shot showed her black skirt- giving the effect of mysteriousness. Now she looks like a femme fatale from a film noir movie.

I think decisive moments was very challenging because it was very time consuming and you only get a few good shots out of a few hundred. Also it was a little difficult to anticipate people's movements- the moment is usually gone by the time I wanted to snap the scene.

This is something I just have to blog about

There's this girl in New York who s doing something called 'The Uniform project' Go visit her website!
www.theuniformproject.com

She has seven of the same dress, and she wears them in a different style everyday for a year. Its still ongoing, and Its really cool. The dress looks good when worn on its own, is loose fitting enough to layer on the inside but skinny enough to be layered on the outside too. It can be worn front-to-back, or back-to-front, open, or closed.

And today I was just thinking about how Audrey Hepburn can pull off the minimalist look. Someone said she had one dress but 12 different scarves to accessorize it, and how I would never be able to do something like that because of the lack of time or creativity, and how maybe I should start that because I realized that the minimalist look might just(somehow) work on me too. Like when I wore black jazz pants and a white Tee. and yesterday as I was rushing for ballet I just put on a black tee, black tights and dark blue shorts.

I mean it wasn't that bad. And it could be a new type of style for me.

Maybe I should start making my own uniform dress. And stock up on accessories lol!
Although i dont know if Im an accessories person, I tend to get all itchy and shit.
But will definitely keep this idea in view though! although i wonder if I'd make it black, like hers, probably not, though! and should I just copy her design? or come up with another one.
If I do, I'd probably just be stuck at the dcision making process itself cuz there are gonna be soooo many designs to explore. argh.

signing off!

GEMs Submission- Assignment 1

Architecture: Extraodinary Out of the Ordinary


Top: Stamford House Night(1) and Day (2)
Bottom: Interior Day (3) and Night(4)
Model: Dalvin
Medium: DSLR

Me: This is Who I am


Culture Vulture
Medium: Sony Ecricsson Handphone Camera


La vie en Rose
Medium: DSLR, Photoshop

Writeup:

Architecture: Photos were taken on three separate occasions, (twice on a same day) because the security guard scolded us for taking photos!(oops!) Many people pass Stamford House by because it honestly doesnt loook very interesting, and their specialty brands mean that people who shop there usually already know what they're looking for. But I like the building for its colonial charm and peranakan elements in it. To me, it is a very understated, yet elegant building- someone with taste must have designed it, and when I step into it, I always wonder if it was a hotel, or even better, someone's house! My friend, Dalvin and I had planned earlier to shop there, and I decided to bring my camera along just in case! I think it paid off.
Stamford House is a structure with alot of vertical panels, so instead I chose to use a diagonal line for its placing, and also created a dimnishing perspective effect. The night shot being more sucessful than the day shot.
I found its interior very quaint, but a little plain so I decided to add a human figure- contrasting its geometrical structure with a natural shape, and using the frame-within-a-frame techinique.

Self Portrait: I preferred this exercise because I felt I could be more creative as more things were within my control, and I got to take lots of photos of a very interesting subject! (kidding.) I post two photos anyway because I wanted to express two different sides of Lizzie.

'Culture Vulture' was a VERY impromptu moment of creativity. As you can see, it was'nt planned as I had to resort to using a phone camera of just 2 megapixels(sighness!), and I was very unprepared, I did'nt even pose properly. It was taken beside a bus stop and I only have one of this because my bus came seconds after we snapped it, but I loved the effect of the analougus colours, and the whole 'nature' vibe. The forest colours and my sari worked so nicely together. This photo taught me that cool photos can be shot at any where, any moment, where you least expect it! Sometimes I get paranoid that I should start carrying my camera everywhere I go lest I miss a great photo opportunity! And, yes I love all things asian, especially its heritage and culture!
'La vie en rose' (looking at life through rose coloured glasses) . Another frame-within-a-frame concept. Through photoshop I attempted to create a very french-y...or french cinema kind of feel, doesn't this look like something out of a Jean-Pierre Jeunet film? I used a filter to make it look almost like a painting, like one of those old hollywood movie posters. I guess you could say this shot was inspired by my love for film and movies, the pose suggests my sometimes dreamy and romantic outlook on life. (like in many movies!)

For more photos from my photography escapades, see older posts! =)

Your Picture

I've been taking alot of photos lately, mainly because of my gems. I dont hate it, I do wish I could do abit more fashion photography though! The challenging part of assingment 1 is that you gotta have day and night shots. and I seem to ve running all over the country and never having the time to take day and night shots of these great shots!!! sigh. So anyway heres some nice pics that came out but (sadly) cant be used.

Proving that Brintey is still the Princess of Pop

When you look at videos
1. Miley Cyrus
2. Ashley Tisdale
3. Taylor Swift
4. etc

I swear there is unmistakable influence of old Britney's videos.
To boot, all of them cant sing very well either.
But maybe I sang like them when i was that age. or worse.
The things uhmerica is feeding our tweens. Ah well.
I think Taylor is the most decent of the lot. which isnt saying alot. but her songs can be a tad boring. I found it funny in Teardrops where she clutches the guitar but never ever plays it. haha. this proving my whole 'guitar there just to act cool theory'
and in Love story? The costume and period dances were OF DIFFERENT time periods.
LOL?

Spent a week in a dusty Library

Do they look alike, or what?

Guess who the dude in B&W is.

Chemo Limo

Sophie only wants to tune into radio BBC
Michael sat on my knees and whispered to me
All about the meanies
Jacqueline was being such a big girl
with her cup of tea looking out of the window
And Barbara
She looks just like my mom
Oh my Barbara
She looks so much like my mom

My bedtime stories are of war and criminal minds

More and More I am beginning to believe that in this world, you score through friendly liasons and favourtism. 'Tis a sad truth indeed. But! life must go on!

The Worst read.