Desktop: 25/08/2011

Not anything particularly exciting but I figured that I should blog something before I head off tomorrow, and considering that I haven't packed yet and there's more job hunt to do, I doubt that I will have much time.

I figured that I would include another desktop screenshot as I haven't posted another one since the first one. I think I'm due for a change now though because it makes me uncomfortable that the image doesn't fill the whole screen.

So, I'm off to France tomorrow, I know it is quite British and untravelled of me, but I was all the way in Hong Kong a few weeks ago, and I do quite like the area of France that we're going to. I hope we get some sunny weather because I'm really fed up of how temperamental it has been here.
So looking forward to spending time with Moon and lazing about, as well as 'getting away from it all' — and 'the' pool.

We're going to St Malo via Portsmouth, which is an overnight ferry, I love ferries and I love being on the sea. This time we actually have somewhere to sleep too, which will be a luxury as last time Moon and I had to scavenge for a sleeping spot and ended up in the children's crèche in the café, really.

As always I'm looking forward to taking lots of photos, which only enhances the fact that I really must update my portfolio when I get back because relying on this just doesn't really cut it. I mean there are a lot of photos on here that I've taken that I like but that I wouldn't show off to a client, quite uninspiring when being a 'photographer' is supposed to be my ultimate goal - but that's something to worry about when I come back.

Should perhaps try my best to prevent this from happening to him again...

604.

So, I've been away from my computer basically all week to take a brief trip into the world of work. Yes! I finally got a job, albeit in the form of a trial period for an unpaid position. I was working for a company called Shoot Experience, based in Hackney. They are the organisers of the London Street Photography festival, so it was a good opportunity to gain more of an insight into a creative field, somewhere much more specific to my discipline.

I only worked for two days, but due to the fact that I was down in Dorking and was up before 7AM to travel for nearly 3 hours door-to-door both days, it felt like much longer, so I was pleased to sleep-in a bit this morning. I feel that I got quite a lot out of the two days though, although there was a fair amount of admin, such as printing, stapling and laminating, I was also able to frame a couple of pieces that Shoot Experience were auctioning at their Fundraising Event (which was tonight).
I helped to frame the Vivian Maier photo, which was valued up to £1,500, not to mention beautiful, very nerve-racking! I framed Lot 19 (Polly Braden & David Campany, Burnt motorbike on the Greenway) and Lot 4 (David Gibson,Audition) unsupervised though, so it was nice to be able to put one of the practical skills that I got from my degree to use. I also packaged a lot of the prints, which is what I spent most of the first day doing. Yesterday I did some online promotion for their new event 'Capture Tower Hamlets', a photography competition/heritage project based throughout the Tower Hamlets borough. < plug > Click the link to find out more, and if you're a photographer in the Tower Hamlets area you can capture a pre-2012 Tower Hamlets to preserve images for future generations < /plug >.

Despite the success of the last couple of days, I'm not resting on my laurels and have quite a few things lined up when I come back from France, but it would be nice to continue working with Shoot Experience for a few days a week if I'm able to. I'm not sure how things will be after my next two (yes, two) recruitment sign-up interviews, hope not all the jobs that they offer me are in 'sales' though... *cringe.
I think I had a photography-related answering machine message too but was unable to contact the caller back as they didn't leave a number - bit annoyed about that because I got all of this and last week's answering machine messages all in one go yesterday (of which there were nine so that was good), then my phone ran out of battery...

Anyway, if you're quite finished reading about my life, here is a feast for your eyes. I found a lovely café down the road from Shoot Experience called The Ginger Pig, it does beaut food, I went there both days because I was too lazy to find anywhere else, I had a pancake breakfast on Monday and Eggs Benedict on Tuesday, yum. I've also included a few others, including the beautiful sky we had on Monday night (it's been weird weather recently, hasn't it?!) and some gratuitous ones of my cat and my cousin's hamster. Most of these were taken on my phone but I don't think they're too bad, it can be quite nice to have a camera on your phone sometimes.

Haven't heard of SBTV?

You soon will; SBTV's founder, Jamal Edwards is a star on the rise.

You may notice that the up and coming Ed Sheeran owes a lot to SBTV, a simple search on Youtube can't deny the facts. SBTV is currently one of the youngest new media companies on the scene, letting other young people know about new music and what's going on. During the riots earlier this month, SBTV was at the forefront of informing it's audience of the issues in an accessible way. However, SBTV are putting no limits on what they want to achieve and how they're going to achieve it.

Earlier this year SBTV was the subject of the T4 documentary 'Inside SBTV: From Bedroom to Boardroom' and despite being around for four years previously, their popularity then soared.

Edwards is a gent and if I'd had the time, I would have been happy to have taken up the offer to blog some news articles for SBTV. But, due to my current situation, I'm happy to admire Edwards' achievements from afar and be quite pleased to have been aware of SBTV for a few months prior to 'Bedroom to Boardroom'; it's always great to feel as though you've grown with something.


Currently featuring on the Youtube homepage, earlier this evening Edwards' Google Chrome advert appeared in X-Factor's prime advertising slot and the SBTV website went down! Jamal Edwards is an inspirational young man in these times of arguable uncertainty and I'm looking forward to seeing what he's got coming up next.

Follow Jamal Edwards on Twitter
Follow SBTV on Twitter
SBTV Website

Oh Hello.

I've only gone and got a trial-period working with Shoot Experience for a couple of days next week. That is quite nice, because I have been miserable and tired all day. I'm glad that it went well this morning though (which was when Shoot Experience was), they put together the London Street Photography Festival.
They informed me that there is little chance of being taken on afterwards, but it's a tiny part of my foot in some kind of doorway, probably. Despite being completely disgruntled over how early I've needed to get up nearly every day this week, I'm quite looking forward to doing these two days. More than anything it means I have something to do, so I think I'll just try and do the sensible thing and really rest this weekend.

I'm quite excited as I'm most likely to be helping to set up an exhibition on Tuesday, not sure what the rest of the time holds, or if it's only for two days, it may be the whole week. I didn't think that I really brought my A-game to that interview either just because of how tired I've been, but hopefully it will be a different story after the weekend.

Something in my life is happening! It might even mean that the next three months will actually count(!)

'Graduate Nightmare'.

If you follow me on Twitter, you will know that my current 'most talked about' topic is my ongoing job hunt. Hashtagging and talking about it generally has struck me up many conversations over Twitter as well as got me a couple of potential (but eventually unsuccessful) job offers.

Today I signed up for my first real-life recruitment agency since graduating in July and beginning my serious job hunt in May. I have been with a recruitment agency before, but only for temp work over the summer after the first year of University and it was only to earn a bit of extra cash, not to find a real-life serious job. It is looking as though this recruitment agency is going to be a similar case to the one I faced all those years ago. While it's nice to have a bit of extra money, I don't want to do catering and basic admin for the rest of my life, and I'm not really sure why I was told to come in if they didn't have any relevant jobs for me, they must have read my cover letter and CV before inviting me in?

I'm waiting on hearing back from another recruitment agency in a few days and have a prospective meeting with another one some time before I go away. When talking about this on Twitter, the response was 'Post-Grad hell', and it's probably a correct statement. It's becoming more and more disheartening as the time goes on. I feel like I'm definitely going to have to put my wants and wishes on hold and have to settle, for a stable job in recruitment or sales, not that I believe I would be competent in either role.

I have also discovered that all is not lost when it comes to my current 'Jobseekers' position, I can re-apply any time between when I went away and six months, meaning I can probably get back on it with no issues when I come back from France. It really upsets me that doing Jobseekers properly is kind of engaging me.
Things may be looking up slightly but only just, I contacted a Digital Media agency and they may have some graduate roles that are appropriate for me. I just really hope I get a response because I'm really interested in that area and to stay away from generic recruitment jobs and to be more specific to what I actually want is so much more appealing.
I suppose that I'm just feeling really worn down, particularly after the rejection I faced from a role I was really excited about. It should all be fine. I personally don't think the fact that I took a Photography degree is limiting, people do realise that degrees generally are quite academic, do they not? I'm a bit of a clever clogs, you know.

Here is what I wore to my sign-up 'interview' this morning, although I shouldn't really have bothered because it was pretty casual really. I'm off to a family party this afternoon, where I can discuss my failing job hunt and how difficult everything is. I'm not really as down as what I'm writing makes me seem, just frustrated. I want to be a real grown up.

Cardigan: H&M (borrowed from my sister)
Shirt: H&M
Belt: Dorothy Perkins (w/ dress)
Skirt: Dorothy Perkins
Tights: Primark
Shoes: New Look


Cardigan: H&M
Shirt: Dorothy Perkins
Trousers: New Look (love them, picked them up yesterday as final birthday gift to myself)
Shoes: Converse

Sorry these are just on my phone, the last few days have exerted a lot of energy.

600 - Birthday day, the 'in my twenties' special.

So, I took far too many photos yesterday, and I'm struggling to put them anywhere or to edit them down, so if you know me, the best but (sadly due to the 200 photo rule) not all, are in this album on Facebook, and there is an extended set on Flickr. I'm in New Malden for a couple of days due to my 'agency sign-up' tomorrow, the internet is being so slow and rubbish so that's why I'm writing this so late.


Like I said in my post last night, I had a lovely day. Moon and I have barely seen each other in ages, and after being together for a few days, he went off to Ireland for a week this morning, so it was really good to spend some quality time together doing something nice. I get him practically to myself for a week from the 26th anyway when he joins my family and I on a short holiday to France. He joined us last time we went out there and we had a lot of fun so it will be good to do it again - I'm really hoping that the weather is good for us.

Anyway, enough mindless yammering. Yesterday, after a bit of present-opening (Moon made me wake up at 8:30am!), we drove up to New Malden to park the car and head up to London for the day. We began our day-trip with a visit to the Natural History Museum - Moon had bought me tickets to the Age of the Dinosaurs exhibition. :)

The exhibition itself was interesting, as I like dinosaurs and natural history generally. I will however put a huge downer on the price. Despite the fact that buying the tickets meant that we got 'fast-tracked' into the museum, which was good because the queues were huge, the actual exhibit was only half-an-hour long and not much better than the exhibit that the museum displays for free. The fast-tracking did make up for it though, I'll never understand why it is so busy, I mean I love it but whenever I visited it as a child, I never felt it to be crowded and now it really is. I think it must be because it's free, or just because it's the height of the summer holidays, whatever the reason, I hate all the crowds!

They really need to sort this cat out.

We spent a bit of time walking around the rest of the museum once we'd finished with Age of Dinosaurs and by that time it was definitely lunch time. I decided Brick Lane would be a nice place to go because Moon had never been before and it's his kind of thing. I like looking around, but all the hipsters are a bit much. I think the main reason I wasn't so keen on my last visit was due to the weather, I was much more relaxed this time.
After (what I knew would be) an obligatory trip to Rough Trade we kind of drifted into The Big Chill bar, which I really liked. The food was nice and the atmosphere was even better, I loved the music that they played, it was basically The Boat That Rocked soundtrack, beautiful. Moon and I thought their nachos were really good too, and for those of you that don't know, we're nachos connoisseurs(!)

We look like total gorms in the top-left photo because we didn't have a clue what was going on, we just wanted to be Trendy-Wendy's.

Always thought seeing a 'real Banksy' would be a bit more exciting than that.

As I mentioned in my last post, we had a nose around the vintage shops, if I'd had a bit more cash I would have bought some things, I'd really like to have a poke around again.


Then we went to South Bank and took in the 'Festival of Britain' that's taking place around there. We also went to the National Theatre and saw the Press Photographer of the Year exhibition, we saw some really interesting shots. I really liked Clare Kendall's collaboration with Tessa Farmer, it's so creepy. We were really lame and couldn't find the entrance to the Hayward Gallery to get in to see the Tracey Emin Retrospective, and then when we found it, it was closed, Moon was more than pleased...


















So, after what seemed like years, Moon and I left London and actually managed to get a seat on the way back to New Malden. We had some dinner at the restaurant, as well as cake that my sister kindly bought me - there were cherry tomatoes on it!


It was a bit quiet but it was perfect, it's time to start slowing down anyway isn't it? I should probably start worrying about my wrinkles or something. I am joking, but it is a bit scary that I'm 22, only a bit, but it is.

TL;DR: I went to the Natural History Museum, Brick Lane and various bits of Southbank. It was my 22nd birthday and it was nice.

In other, more recent news there's a lot of buzz around my job hunt at the moment.
How good are these cushions?!

Natural History Museum Shop

Today I went to Kingston and saw the Inbetweeners movie, it was very good and nice.