Noodle Night Market

I have never lived in such a large city before and I absolutely love it. Something new happens every day, and in Melbourne people like their food.

Way back in November there was a Noodle Night Market. It was along the Yarra River in Alexandra Gardens and was open for two weeks. There were about 25 different food stalls, a selection of bars and entertainment. The place was lit up beautifully with rainbow coloured lights in the palm trees. To get the real Asian feel, there were also a bunch of lanterns which created a great atmosphere.

Although you're in the middle of a city, the gardens feel miles away from everything. It's strange to see the buildings surrounding the park.

The market started off in Sydney and moved to Melbourne this year for the first time. It was a great success and an average of 20000 customers came every night!! It was absolutely packed, the first time I went was quite early, right as it opened so it wasn't very busy, but also not very atmospheric. The second time we went a lot later, and although it was incredibly busy and queues everywhere, it was a great experience.

The Noodle Night Market will return again this year!

Queen Victoria Market

The two main markets is Melbourne are the South Melbourne Market and the Queen Victoria Market. In the summer both markets have special night markets, where instead of an ordinary market it turns into tons of restaurant stalls. Unfortunately I didn't go to the South Melbourne night market, but I did have a few trips to the Queen Victoria Night market!

It was overwhelmingly busy, as you can see from the photo. The photo to the left is where all the food places were located, they were all in a single column running from one end to the other. To either side there were seating areas and some crafty stalls. There was a huge variety of food including Malaysian food, Australian burgers, Indian, Mexican, etc. The night market is open every Wednesday evening during the summer.

When we were in Singapore we had the most delicious food ever, and haven't had it since. Until we went here! The Malaysian food stall had prata roti (is a fried flour-based pancake that is cooked over a flat grill. It is usually served with a vegetable or meat based curry). Super tasty.

Even though it's incredibly busy, there wasn't a long wait for the food, and the great thing about this stall is that it was made for you on the spot.

The second time we went we decided to try something else. We got a crocodile and a kangaroo burger. Pretty crazy, but when you're in Australian you can't not try it! Honestly, it wasn't great, but worth a try!

 The market is amazing and would definitely be in my list of top 10 things to do when you're in Melbourne. It was a really great atmosphere and the different types of food are delicious. There was also live entertainment and the shopping stalls had some amazing and unique things. It's a shame it's only during the summer because I'd love to go back!

Melbourne Royal Botanic Gardens

The Royal Botanic Gardens are located just next to the Shrine, so again very close to my flat. The first time I went to the botanic gardens was for Christmas, we had a lovely summer picnic! The botanic gardens are free to enter so it's a great place to go on a sunny day and spend the day in the park.

The photo to the left is my favourite place in the botanic gardens, just just on top of a hill overlooking a pond and the rest of the gardens.

For Christmas I received some Moonlight Cinema tickets from my boyfriends stepsister. The Moonlight cinema is an open air cinema in the botanic gardens. The screen is actually set up on the hill opposite of where I'm sitting, on the other side of the pond.  We went to see Delivery Man, which started just after sunset. If you look closely to the photo on the right you can see a building sticking out just above the middle of the screen. That's the Eureka building in central Melbourne, the tallest building in the southern hemisphere. During the film there were a whole bunch of bats screeching over our heads. It was kind of creepy but an amazing sight!

 The botanic gardens are beautiful and I've visited it quite a few times for time lapses and videos. Here are some pretty pics! I've also created a video with my new slider of the gardens. Best watched in HD full screen.

Shrine of Remembrance

I kind of started to write about this a little while back, but I thought I'd dedicate an entire post on it. The Shrine is Victoria's largest and most visited war memorial and was built to remember those who served and died during the Great War (1914 - 1918).

The Shrine of Remembrance's location adds to its significance. There are 3 direct roads that lead off of the Shrine. The first is up to the CBD. When you're standing in the middle of central Melbourne on Swanston street, you can look back and see the shrine. Same goes for South Melbourne and St Kilda Road towards the beach. It took over 150 pages to determine the location of the Shrine. Everyday as the sun sets, it illuminates the shrine as though there is a huge spotlight on it. Since it's built on a hill, everything around it is dark, but only the building is lit up.

 On Remembrance day - 11/11 - at 11.00 the sun will cross through the centre of the Shrine. This will take 11 minutes. Unfortunately we couldn't be there on remembrance day, but they do show a simulation of what happens everyday, which is the photo to the right.

Ludovico Einaudi

All my recent posts seem to be updates. I keep wanting to start blogging again, but every time I don't end up sticking to it. Well, I'm officially starting again! I have a lot to write about and I need to get it all posted before the end of this month. On April 30th I'm flying to Sydney and will be spending the next 4 weeks travelling up the east coast all the way to Cairns. Then from Cairns I'll be flying to Tokyo and 5 days after that back to the UK. It's bittersweet to think about it, on the one hand I absolutely love living in Melbourne, it's such a beautiful place, but going back to the UK won't be THAT terrible. It's a lot cheaper and we'll actually be able to get the jobs we want. We were very limited here with the working holiday visa rules.

Anyway, these next couple of posts will be looking at what I've been up to for the past 6 months.

Now to the point of the post: Ludovico Einaudi. Einaudi is a famous Italian pianist and composer. I was first introduced to his music by my boyfriend and immediately loved what I heard. I used it as the music for quite a few time lapses, before I ended up changing it to something else (eg. the music my brother composed for me). It's such beautiful and intense music and perfect for time lapses! Spoiler alert: I've been busy for the past couple of months to create a Melbourne time lapse and guess which music I'll be using?!? Anyway, a while back I saw a poster that Einaudi was going to play at Hammerhall in Melbourne, only a 10 minute walk away from us. I was super excited but didn't think much of it at the time, I love his music but don't know whether it would be worth the money. A couple weeks later I started my Melbourne time lapse and starting thinking about music, obviously Einaudi. I remembered the concerts and immediately checked the tickets. I am so incredibly happy that I went!!

The concert was on the 13th of February and was based around his new CD called In A Timelapse, fitting name right? Einaudi played alongside 5 other musicians including 2 fantastic cello players. The music starts off calm and beautiful but the songs build up into this intense creation. Seeing it in person was a completely different experience. As the music builds up, the lighting also became more dramatic. Amazing.

Unfortunately I couldn't take any photos or recordings, but at the end I managed to get a shot of Einaudi. After that I bought a CD and….. got it signed!!! Amazing.

2 Months in Melbourne

It's already been two months since we arrived in Melbourne and it's all been a bit hectic. We got all the important stuff out of the way immediately and moved into our flat exactly 2 weeks after arriving in Australia. Since then we haven't really stopped. My boyfriend got a job as a rigger for various events such as the AFL and horse racing etc. I also managed to get a job at Subway! I obviously started applying for loads of photography jobs, but never heard back from any of them, so Subway it was! I've been there for over a month now and working like crazy. The 'normal' shift is 10 hours, when in the UK 7 hours was a long shift! Tuesday I ended up working a 12 hour shift.

I work in the middle of the city on Bourke Street. It gets extremely busy there - we made 101 subs in one hour!! Bourke street is the main shopping street. Then there's also Elizabeth street and Collins street. Collins street has some of the more expensive shops, whereas Bourke and Elizabeth street are a lot more affordable. I really enjoy living so close to the city centre and working there. Melbourne is such a lively place, there is always something going on. There are constantly buskers everywhere and they are amazing!! Well most of them... I saw someone playing an air guitar as he was saving up for a real guitar... There are always protests going on, which isn't always the best but definitely entertaining! A few of them have started in front of Subway, so I get front row seats to the event!

One street up from Bourke street is Little Bourke Street. This is where China Town is. We quickly strolled through there on our way to the Museum. The museum has a whole marine science section so Kevin is looking for jobs/volunteering opportunities there.

One of the first real touristy things we did was go to the Shrine of Remembrance. We can see the Shrine from our flat so we thought we might as well start there! The shrine is absolutely beautiful. We had been admiring it for a while, but it was great to learn more about it. Like the fact it took 150 pages of equations to decide on the location of the shrine. Everyday as the sun sets, it illuminates the shrine as though there is a huge spotlight on it. Since it's built on a hill, everything around it is dark, but only the building is lit up. It looks beautiful! There are 4 streets that lead away from the Shrine. One of them is St Kilda Road leading to Swantson Street (into the City) and the other is towards South Melbourne (the street where the sun sets). I'm not sure about the other two. When you're in the middle of the city crossing Swanston Street you can actually see the Shrine in the distance. It's such a strange/amazing sight!

The photo above is taken from the balcony. The street straight ahead is St Kilda Road leading to Swanston Street. On the left side of the street you can see the tallest building in Melbourne. If you look closely you can see a spiral on top of a building on the left side. This is at the Arts Precinct. That's where the National Gallery is as well as the theatre. Every sunday there is also a lovely market with all sorts of things. They also had poffertjes (Little Dutch pancakes) so I felt right at home! Just past there is a bridge across the Yarra River.

If you go down the stairs you'll be at Southgate. This is an area full of restaurants. It's such a nice place, it looks beautiful in the evening. The next bridge on the left has a pub underneath it. It looks awesome!!

Just over the bridge on the other side of the street is a orangey/brown church. This is by Federation Square and Flinders Street Station. Basically where the city starts.

Arriving in Australia

You know when you think of Australia, you think about beautiful sunsets, kangaroos, koalas, white sandy beaches, beautiful landscapes, the Great Barrier Reef etc. Well I haven't seen any of that yet.. except beautiful sunsets. I had all these unrealistic expectations of how different Australia would be, but  arriving in Melbourne isn't anywhere near the Great Barrier Reef or in the outback etc. Melbourne is beautiful though.

We arrived last Wednesday and it was the most beautiful day to arrive on. It was 26 degrees and sunny and spring! Spring started on the 1st of September, instead of the usual 21st. We arrived at about 7 in the morning so had the whole day to get stuff done. We're staying with Kevin's step-sister, who has been incredibly nice to us and has helped us out with absolutely everything! On the first day we managed to activate our bank account so they could send us our cards (which ended up going to the UK.... ??) we got a simcard and an Australia number, we got a Myki card (for the metro) we wanted to register with medicare (they had a problem with me being dutch but having come from the UK...) we went to the South Melbourne Market (which was aaaamazing) and I think that might have been it for the first day. Luckily we didn't suffer from any jetlag since singapore is only a 2 hour time difference, but we were still pretty exhausted by the end of the day!

We're staying in the southern part of the city, although it doesn't actually feel like you're in the city. We're about a 10 min walk from everything, which is the perfect location! A 10 min walk to the left is Melbourne market and Coles (the grocery store). The South Melbourne Market is amazing, it's open on Wednesday and Friday-Sunday and it's literally got EVERYTHING - fruit, veg, shoes, clothes, make-up, meat, bread, pasta, chemists, etc etc. And everything is fresh as well! Melbourne is pretty pricey, although if you look for the deals it isn't so bad. £1 equals AUS$1.7 so everything LOOKS more expensive, but when you convert it back to pounds it's a lot more bearable. We bought a whole bag of pasta for only $1, so I think we'll survive. A 10 min walk up brings you to Flinders street, this area is where all the shops are. There are a lot of shops that I know, but a few are new to me. Cotton On is my new favourite shop. It isn't too expensive and the stuff is super comfy! There are also Subways around every corner, so I'm sure I'll be able to get a job somewhere!

On the second day we went on our first flat viewing. The system here is very different from the UK. Instead of setting a time with the estate agent to view the place, they have open 'inspections'. Everyone who is interested will go to the same inspection. It's a bit terrifying because all these people are your competition. For the first viewing it was us, and two other couples interested. At the end when you're interested in the place, you can't just say 'Ok I'll have it' and pay the bond (deposit), you actually have to hand in an application and then the land lord will decide who they like best! So basically, you can apply for 10 flats, and get rejected from all of them... It's pretty stressful. So far we've seen 6 places, both in the centre of the city and to the south, and applied for two. We actually managed to get accepted by the first application we handed in! We viewed the place on Wednesday, handed our forms back on Thursday morning and by that evening we heard we were accepted!! Panic over, now we just have to get jobs....

We've both been applying for a quite a few jobs focussing on our studies. I have applied for four studio assistant jobs and am just waiting to hear back. Now that we know where we're going to be living, I'll also be able to apply at subway and other food places, just to get me going until I get a photography related job. Once we've settled into our own place, we can start thinking about doing some more touristy things, but at the moment we just need to focus on getting a job!

Singapore 2

 On the second full day we went up Bukit Timah Summit, the highest point in Singapore. My dad was very happy to announce that there is in fact a country where the highest point is lower than Holland's highest point. Although it was incredibly steep! Instead of taking the easy route, we took a path which was a bit more adventurous and went right though the rainforest. We saw some HUGE ants, about 3cm big. Creepy. We also saw some super cute monkeys! They were right at the start, literally hanging around. They got really close the to path and were obviously expecting some food. The rainforest was beautiful. It was an incredibly humid day, and the path had really steep, uneven stairs. I don't think I'd ever been that sweaty!! Once you get to the top, you're not rewarded with a beautiful viewing point, you're surrounded by trees! But it was definitely a great, exhausting, sweaty walk!

 After a lot of relaxation and swimming and cooling down, we went to Little India, which is hectic! There were men EVERYWHERE, just aimlessly wandering the streets. It was just packed with people so it was very hard to take photos. There were little stalls everywhere selling things, like these beautiful flower necklaces. It was great to walk around, but because it was in the evening, it was too busy. We ended up going back the following day and it was a bit quieter.

 We also went out for dinner in Little India. This was actually a proper restaurant - something we hadn't been to before in Singapore. The food wasn't served on a plate but on a banana leaf. There was so much food! The first thing I ate was super spicy, and for the rest of the meal that hot tingling burning feeling was with me. Nothing could cool it down! The food was absolutely amazing though, I think the photo only shows the starters. By the time all the food arrived, you couldn't see the table anymore.

 The next day Kevin and I just went out by ourselves. We decided to go back to China Town since we didn't see all of it the first time. It was a weekday now so a little bit emptier. I ended up buying some beautiful scarves and some nail polish for very very cheap. The singapore dollar is about twice as much as the pound, so $10 was only £5.

 China town is one of my favourite places in Singapore. It was really bright and colourful with lovely little shops everywhere selling everything! The food was also delicious.

We also went back to Little India, but unfortunately I didn't take any more photos there.

 After Little India we decided to go back to Marina Bay Sands, where the weird boat building is and the Merlion. It was a very different site during the day, but equally unbelievable. Towards the left of the photo you can see the clouds getting a bit grey, there were DARK grey clouds coming our way, so we went into a shopping centre to stay dry, but it ended up never raining! (It did rain massively before, but we were in the metro when that happened).


That evening we went to a seafood place. Duck is also considered seafood....! It was delicious, like all the other food we had! And as you can tell from the photo, we thoroughly enjoyed it.










On the last evening we went to the beach front. I didn't have my tripod with me to taking photos was very hard. This photo had an exposure of 1 second and I was able to hold it completely still. I'm very impressed with that! Anyway when you look out, you can just see a line of lights. You'd think it would be land, but it's just boats! It was the strangest thing.

Finally, here is a photo of Marine Bay during the day and night. It's a huge difference!! Much more glamorous at night. I really enjoyed singapore. I thought it was a million times better than Dubai and I'd LOVE to go back!! Even if it was just to taste the food. I was quite surprised because I didn't find it very expensive. Once you've got the (really easy) conversion rate it your head, you'll start to realise everything is very cheap. Especially in china town!!

Singapore

Singapore is beautiful.

We arrived in Singapore on the 30th of August in the evening and stayed with some family friends. This is another place where you just have to get used to the fact you'll be sweaty... all the time. It's around 33 degrees, but the humidity is 74%! It feels extremely hot, and when the air conditioning is on 26 degrees celcius, it feels cool. Similar to Dubai, there is a huge difference between the inside air and outside air as most places have air conditioning on full blast. It starts off being really nice and cool, but quickly becomes too cold! Other than that, it's NOTHING like Dubai. Singapore is a lot more real. Dubai was very American and fake with lots of walk ways and construction sites.

On the first night we went to get some food in the Singapore equivalent of a pub. It looked a bit dodgy, and in England you'd never go to a place like that! So it was incredibly surprising that it was the most delicious food ever, I think it was called Prata's! That was the start of our food adventures.....

On the first full day we went to a food market. It was incredibly busy and extremely hot, so definitely something we had to get used to. The market sold all sorts of things: durians (extremely smelly fruit), fish balls, fish heads... just normal things.... We brought home some strange looking fruits, including dragon fruit, ramboutan, custard apple and mangosteen to try. It all looked a bit strange, but it tasted nice!











After a quick swim to cool down, we started our journey into the city centre. We first had some coconut soup with all sorts of stuff in it called Laksa. It was pretty spicy and had some random things in it, but it was very tasty. We also had some lime juice. Lime juice is a really popular drink in Singapore, and they seem to sell it everywhere, we've literally had it everywhere. Some places sell fresh lime juice, which is quite sour, whereas other places just sell lime cordial which is very sweet.

This was followed by a quick visit to an indian temple. You had to take off your shoes outside before you could enter, but the ground was BOILING hot, so the 5 steps from where you left your shoes and to temple entrance was painful.. The temple was beautiful, it was very colourful and had some very interesting things in it. We then went on to view St Andrews Chapel.

Next we walked past Boat Quay on our way to China Town. It was strange to see the contrast between the small little colourful houses and restaurants compared to the sky scrapers.


China town was one of my favourites places, and I actually ended up going there twice! It looks quite modern in the photo due to the roof, but if you look at the buildings on the edges of the photo, you can see the chinese architecture. It had lots of little shops selling all sorts of pretty things and also had some great food places. On my second trip to China Town I bought 2 beautiful scarves for $10 (£5ish) and some nail polishes. The food we had there was (again) AMAZING. We had a plate of honeyed pork and spring rolls. Yum.








After China Town we went back home to relax and cool down, before going back into the city to get some food and see some more things. We went to a place called Lau Pa Sat, which is kind of like a food market. The street had been blocked off for a seating area and this is where they have the best satay! It was amazing.. again. The food was delicious but the atmosphere made it even better. Since the sun was down, the temperate was also a lot more comfortable.



After that we went to Marine Bay. This is where the strange boat building is and the Singapore flyer (looks like the London Eye). We made it just in time for the light show! It was such an unrealistic site. I've seen so many photos of this building online, but never actually thought I'd see it myself! It's the strangest building I've ever seen. The light show was beautiful, I did take a video of it which I'll post over the next couple of days.

That's it for the first full day! We ate so much food and had so much lime juice! Tried so many different things! It was incredible.

Dubai!

On the 27th of August, I left for Dubai with my boyfriend! I packed and repacked my suitcase a million times in order to take everything with me I needed (and not just what I wanted). We had an evening flight, so we arrived in Dubai nice and early... 7 am. The flight was amazing. We were on the Airbus 830, which I believe is the largest passenger plane. It was extremely luxurious. We had a lot of leg space, we each had our own screens, there was a ridiculous amount of movies and tv shows to watch, there were games you could play, the airplane had little star lights at the top, etc etc etc! It was amazing. The airplane also had 3 cameras, one at the tail, one at the wheels, and one at the front and throughout the whole flight you could check out the cameras to see what was going on. Obviously, it being a night flight there wasn't much to see other than landing and take off, but it was still really exciting. Unfortunately I only got 2 hours of sleep on the 7 hour plane journey so when we arrived at Dubai at 7 in the morning, I was exhausted. We weren't able to check into the hotel until 2,  so we dropped off our suitcases at the hotel and went to The Dubai Mall.

When we arrived it was "only" in the 30s, which super high humidity, but during the day it got up to 44 degrees celcius, again with super high humidity. When you walk outside the air feels hot and heavy and horrible. Luckily we hardly had to walk outside as there are enclosed bridges everywhere.

The Dubai mall is HUGE. It's the largest shopping and entertainment destination in the world. It has an aquarium and an olympic sized ice rink, amongst other things. But also millions of shops. Literally. It was an endless mall, we haven't even seen everything! It's a mixture of America and England. There were shops like Bath and Body Works, Victoria's Secret, Sephora, BHS, Debenhams, Boots etc etc etc.

As soon as we could, we went back to the hotel to check into our room. We were absolutely exhausted and a bit overwhelmed.

The next day we went back to the Dubai Mall again in the morning to get tickets for the Burj Khalifa (tallest building in the world), but the earliest tickets we could get were at 8pm! After getting the tickets we walked back to the metro and went to visit the Mall of Emirates. The metro ride was amazing. There isn't a driver, so we sat all the way at the end of the train so we could see out the back. We saw beautiful views of the Burj Khalifa, although it was incredibly hazy.

After the mall of emirates, we went to The Gold Souq. Dubai imports 500 tonnes of gold per year, and has an annual business excess of Dhs 25 billion. That's why Dubai is known as the City of Gold. We walked through the Gold Souq and it was incredibly overwhelming. There were people everywhere trying to sell you gold. The only shops there were selling gold. It was crazy.

At the end of the day we went back to the Dubai Mall to visit the Burj Khalifa. It's 828 metres tall and almost twice the height of the empire state building in New York. The lift went up 10 metres every second. It was an amazing view at the top, the photo below is of the Dubai Mall. You can see how gigantic it is!

Although I sound super excited about Dubai, it was a bit of a disappointment. I thought it was going to super glamorous and beautiful, but in reality it was a huge construction site. It was as if it wasn't finished. It was a great experience, but I don't think I'll be returning any time soon. On the 30th, super early in the morning, we flew to Singapore where we'll be spending 5 days. And on the 3rd we leave for Melbourne.

Motion Blur

I am still in love with motion blur photography and did quite a bit of that in The Netherlands. I started taking some photographs at the three country point (3 landen punt) and fell in love with them. I was shooting digital and without a tripod, so the images look very different from my large format photographs.

These three images are just a few of my favourites from the day. They are all completely different and I don't think they would work as a set. The top left photo was taken at about 4 in the afternoon when the sun was still up in the sky. I honestly don't know how it got this beautiful boukeh effect, but I think that's the reason the photograph works. The top right was taken as the sun was setting. It shone through the trees and I shot right at it. It created these intensely bright lines that contrasted with the darkness of the surrounding trees. The colours in other photographs taken in this area were a lot more vibrant, but I liked the fact that the sunlight almost looks like a fire. The bottom left photo was taken away from the sun in a much more densely packed area. I didn't focus on the tops of the trees (emphasising the green), but I looked more at the trunks of the threes and how the sunlight hit that to create different colours. I'm absolutely in love with this photo. I think it's very unique and different from the others.

A few days later, I visited a small village in Germany called Monchau. It was a very nice little place and I took some more motion blur photographs there. The photo I took were completely different to anything I'd done before; they were of buildings. The photo to the right is my favourite, although every one else who I have spoken to prefer the two photos below. The photo to the right is taken of the front of one of the houses. The black panelling creates vey interested shapes and makes the photo look a bit haunting. Although the lines on the building itself aren't completely straight, the line at the edge of the building is dead straight. It almost makes it look like it's framed, or that there are two photographs next to each other. It's a very abrupt end.

 These two photos are a lot more vibrant. The village had lots of flags everyone, the sky was completely blue and there was a lot of green from the trees. This created a huge contrast with the black and white of the houses. The first of the two photos is a bit more identifiable, than the second, however it's just blurred enough to still be confusing. Because I used a slower shutter speed, there isn't as much movement and it has made the colours a lot more visible. The second photo was a much longer shutter speed and thus the colours look a bit washed out.

 I'm really impressed with these images from Monchau. I never expected motion blur images to work this well of buildings. I guess I was a bit stuck in my tree photos! I'd like to continue this style of photography when I'm in Australia as it's very unique and different. It's a lot of experimentation though, especially without a tripod!!

Update!!

It's been a ridiculously long time since I last blogged. July has been a hectic month. It started with me quitting my job at Subway and moving out of my flat in Portsmouth. Soon after that my brother came to visit from America. After that it was my 21st birthday and my graduation!! That was followed by my boyfriend's graduation and immediately after (the day after) driving to Belgium, spending the night in a chateau, and then driving to Holland. Only to continue the hecticness and celebrate my parent's 25th wedding anniversary and my grandparent's 50th! We spent some time at the "3 landed punt" (three country point) where Holland, Germany and Belgium touch. We then celebrated my brothers 23rd birthday, drove back to the UK and now I'm spending some time with my boyfriend's family before we leave for Australia. Phew. Crazy!

The first thing photography wise that happened is my time-lapse! In my previous post I mentioned some scenes from my Portsmouth time-lapse video and I finished it soon after. I absolutely loved creating the time lapse and was overwhelmed by the response. It was like my dissertation coming alive! It reached 1000 views within a week. It's now stalling at 1600 views. It got mentioned on the University of Portsmouth Alumni Association on Facebook and later got featured on Strong Island. After that it was picked up by "Shaping the Future of Portsmouth" who also featured it on their website.



After that I graduated!! I'm super happy with the marks I got, I would have obviously wanted to graduate with a first, but I did get at least one first in every single unit.

I'm also not sure if I've mentioned this before on my blog, but I sold some work! After the Eldon exhibition, way back in May, I was contacted by someone from the University interested in my work. I got contacted by three different people, but only one ended up buying my work. They were interested in my 7591 Miles project, and asked about prices. It was really difficult to come up with a reasonable price, because I spent SO MUCH money on it, and did want to make a profit. I gave the buyer some options and they ended up wanted to get it in A2 and mounted on MDF instead of diabond. I got it printed in Brighton, so had some more lovely day trips to there, and gave it to them the day before I moved out of Portsmouth. I'm so happy to have received such an amazing response to my photos! It's really boosted my confidence and I'm excited to continue in this style of photography.