Black & White in Brighton

Hello! Some more photos from my recent trip to Brighton. I wasn’t happy with the colouring in some of these photos so I adjusted them to monochrome. It was quite novel editing in black and white! I nearly always use monochrome film with my analog cameras, but this is the first time I’ve used that effect for photos taken with my DSLR. Brighton is a really colourful place so it’s kind of an odd choice to go for monochrome, but I quite like how they’ve turned out!

These last photos show you what I bought from Brighton, an idea completely stolen from my pal Bel in this post. I’m not really into haul posts but I remember thinking that was a nice thing to include about her trip. Holiday souvenirs and mementos are a bit different to a standard shopping trip in my book. I picked up three pieces of sheet music, a black and gold velvet skirt, vintage yellow and white blouse, graphics pens, medal, 1930s teapot, paprika, lemongrass, bay leaves and ground curry leaves. I cook a lot of curry!

P.S. If you haven’t already, I’d really appreciate it if you could give my facebook page a quick like here (it’s different to the blog page!) – many thanks for your support! Also, I have a huge exciting announcement to come in the next post…!! xx

Golden Hour

Aren’t sunsets wonderful? I wanted to share these photos from Prineville; many are just from my Aunts garden but there was such a gorgeous light in Prineville every day we were there. I tried to capture the beauty and stillness. The sunset seemed to last for hours and every evening we were drenched in this stunning golden light.

My family has had ties and connections to Oregon for about 5 generations now and on this trip my Aunt took me to visit certain key areas where ancestors of mine were born, married, buried. It’s strange to think that we live an entire life and eventually get distilled into a handful of places and sentences. “Hers is the fourth plot from the left. She liked playing the piano and was a big animal lover.” “His birth entry is on the second page. He had grey eyes and everybody mentioned his big smile.” We’re left to fill in the gaps with our imagination. Maybe when our generation is gone it will be different, and we’ll leave acres of mundane photos and comments strewn across the internet that our great-grandchildren will never read.

Barcelona

Hola from Barcelona! I spent most of last week in Barcelona, one of my favourite European cities. I went with 3 other girls and we had such a fun week: living like locals, running around museums, exploring backroads and side streets and meeting lots of amazing people.

I think travel is so important. I’ve spoken about this before and every time I go away it’s something that crystallises even more in my mind. I’m in the unique position that I’d racked up 3 different continents before I was 2 years old as my immediate family is spread across the globe. I think my whole life I’ve grown up with the sense that the rest of the world is just around the corner, rather than imagining “travel” to be some huge insurmountable obstacle I’ll tackle when I’m older.

It’s often considered lucky to be able to travel but really if you’ve got a little bit of money and a bit of time where you’re not directly needed there’s not much else you need to go away (maybe a cheerful attitude and an open mind). Like most people in the UK I spent a lot of university going on European excursions with my friends – every time our student loans came we would pick a new destination for reading week and live on beans the rest of the term (RIP £5 Ryanair flights). I’m already planning my next 3 trips this year and I’m so excited to see the rest of the world! Where would you like to go?

Cardiff

Last week I went to Cardiff with most of the WOLF PACK cast. I’m part Welsh, and every time I’m back in the country it reminds me of the idyllic childhood I spent there. We were only there for a few days but it was lovely to see the familiar road signs with everything written out in both English and Welsh, and seeing the distinctive flag everywhere always makes me feel at home.

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This is the third time I’ve been to Cardiff (I grew up in the North) and although I’ve not explored as much as I would like to I always find it such a charming city. This particular trip was with all the WOLF PACK lot following our busy week at VAULT. Most of these photos are from around the centre, near where we stayed. Cardiff Castle is one of my favourite castles, entirely because of the animal wall. You all know how much I love animals; what could possibly be better than a giant stone wall with a different animal perched atop each segment?

Denbies II

I originally wanted to call this “Denbies through the Seasons” but I’m not entirely sure my real life cynicism, sarcasm and constant irony really come through on this blog and was worried people might think I was being serious. Anyway, these photos are from Denbies Wine Estate in Dorking. I first visited back on one of the first sunny days of the year, and it was lovely to visit again and see the changing colours of the leaves against the perennially golden fields.

If things look a little different, I’m trying out my new camera lens! This lens will take some getting used to as it has an incredibly shallow depth of field which is great for portraits as it focuses on one subject (i.e. notice how blurry and undefined the backgrounds are in the photos of me), but I do like taking shots that show detailed tableaus and this lens is not great for that (i.e. the banana sign is way clearer than the others, where as in previous posts those kind of flat detailed shots are very clear as I’m using my other lens – like this one).

I’m wearing my newish Orla Kiely coat (!!!) which was 65% off in their sample sale and then a further 35% off the marked sample sale price when I got to the till (isn’t that the best feeling ever?) and my new shoes which were £6 from New Look in the sale. One of the many perks of having massive feet is your size is always left over in the sales. I love mustard (both as a colour and a condiment) and have wanted a coat in mustard and gold for such a long time, so it was like a dream present to myself. Does anybody else have dream items in their mind which rarely seem to actually exist?
P.S. I’m going to be shutting down my Raccoon Circus Facebook page soon so please follow me here or here instead and I recently signed up to both LookBook and Pinterest, so you use those sites do let me know! 

Coat – Orla Kiely (sample sale), shoes – New Look (sale), dress – Miss Patina (sale), bag – ModCloth (gift), leggings – Tesco, socks – Monki