Link love

The first one is a link to a virtual tour of the Neues Museum in Berlin (I was threatening that I would finally come to Berlin just for several days of meeting my friends finally and doing a serious museum inspiration tour, the same would be for London, but with a different Monika!):

http://www.neues-museum.de/nm/index.html?r=vestibuel

The other is to a very weird blog that I came accross my research for my eyesight project:

http://artofmourning.com/miniatures.html

I was particularly into these little pins with eye miniatures, there has to be a picture in there for my project!

Bridges Walk

Yesterday we invited Monica to visit with us a venue where we will be working soon (and thus some reconnaissance was necessary).

One thing led to another and we ended up walking almost 10 miles towards South Queensferry from the Dalmeny estete, in a mixture of lashing rain and sunshine peeking through the clouds. The walk ended with a meal in the famous Hawes Inn (it is featured in novel 'Kidnapped' by Robert Louis Stevenson) just by the Forth Rail Bridge. The pies were on a small side I thought, but after several hours of intense walking (and talking, it is always good to have deep conversations about meaning of life with longknown friends) this kind of food was very welcomed. We demolished some profiteroles, apple crumble and pecan pie too. We have returned home on a completely empty Edinburgh bus and we slept like babies.

Can you imagine that someone tried to saw off the bronze horse that stands in front of the Dalmeny House?! I though that these kind of things happen only in my homeland...

Indian Summer

The autumnal mood is officially on in Edinburgh and after the coldest summer in last two decades (with temperatures averaging +12 degrees...) we have entered the period of so called Indian Summer. The images to illustrate it come from a birthday party of our friend Michelle that actually happened a while ago but that setting sun view from a kitchen window perfectly illustrate the feeling of an end of summer.

Monica is back with us from her visit up in the North of Scotland and Sky (and she summed her experience with stating that she would be happy to move there tomorrow if she could!) so watch this space for some new images as we will be doing some more visiting!

Visual communication fail

Don't don't don't grill the babies... we sang with Simon when we spotted this sign in one of the Edinburgh eateries in the Royal Mile. Someone got it all horribly wrong!

Murder by Music

Some bastard in the flat above ours got himself an electric guitar and his girlfriend is now jumping up and down to the sound of his sad plonking. You might soon be sending me parcels to jail...

London rush and riots

Last week I dragged my poor husband all the way down to London to work on a portrait commission for The Photographers Gallery. I have managed to wriggle in the Victoria and Albert museum as my photoshoot's location (hence we spent most of our time in West London though I went on a brief venture into the East end of the town, still troubled with the recent riots - I had to pick up studio keys for the second part of the working day and on my way in the underground I heard an annoucnment about Brixton station being on fire...).

It was a great stay though (this time we booked a room with a window, a permanently sealed one but let's not be picky) a bit stressfull (it was a work trip after all but as one fellow photographer friend commented London is always good to go to for work reason) and rushed (so not time to meet family or friends - sorry guys!) but I met many friendly and helpful people (special kudos to a lovely press officer from V&A and my charming subject who proved to be extremely photogenic and patient and I seldom work with complete strangers so it was an enigma how the cooperation is going to look like).

I had at least 3 passers by asking me if I need any help when I was flicking thourgh my London A-Z outside of the Euston and Hoxton underground stations trying to arrange map along East to West directions thus shattering a myth of uncooperative Londoners.

And of course it would not have been all possible without Simon's help and support. He is not just a voice activated light stand (as we jokingly call his duties patiently executed during working with me on my portraits) or just my London guide. His presence and encouragement are sometimes the only things that stop me from running away screaming with utter fear from the photoshoot that took several weeks to arrange! It would simply not be possible without him.

It was lovely to come back to our smaller in scale, calmer and slower in pace Scottish capital. Especially after waiting for 40 minutes at King's Cross train station's mail hall right in the middle of the rush hour. The sheer amount of passing faces can make one dizzy.

So here is the visual material. Oh, if you would like to know - I have just picked up my negatives from processing and they are all waiting to be scanned. So far at least they look correctly exposed and some of them look like they have some potential...

An authentic notice on a house railing in one of the main streets in Kensington. I hope it comes from the 1940s (judging by the font):

We have spotted this plaque on a house in Cromwell Road on our way to hotel. Is says that Albert Hitchcock lived in the house! Poor chap, no wonder that our hotel window was sealed completely, this road is extremely busy!

My better profile at the V& A's outrageously decorated cafe:

I hope I will one day have enough time and money to actually go to London for a couple of days just to dive in the richness of its museums collections (we have managed to squeeze in a couple of photo exhibitions - one in Tate Modern and one in Purdy-Hicks gallery nearby, as V&A was visited mainly for scouting best locations at the Hintze sculpture gallery).

So when are you coming, Monika?

Friends and survivors

I did not feel like bore you, my dear friends with descriptions of my life in recent weeks (well, not exactly living, more like functioning for work...) but since some nice things happened, I decided to make a post about these nice things. We all have times when we do not feel like crawling out of bed (especially when nobody is offering these tens thousands of $$$) especially in face of another working day to finish at 4 am but I hope that we got into grips with our working lives now and life is back to normal again: cups of tea, watching The Hour, reading books and more regular working and bedtime hours. Certainly no travelling (during the weeks of my absence on the blog we went on assignments to Leith AND London and Simon was sent to Ukraine for almost a week) and feverish email and textmessages exchange while hopping in and out of underground amidst recent London riots...

I have even managed to visit a performance during Edinburgh Festival! Sejin very kindly offered to take me to a new Ruby Wax's performance ('Losing It') and I have enjoyed every minute of it. I think only in Britain it is possible to do a comedy show about depression and get it genuinely funny. Thank you Sejin, it was not only a big laugh but also a big eye opener, especially for someone like me, who comes from a culture that treates depression as something one can just shake off within several days and if you are not able to do that you are just being silly. More about Ruby and her preformance here.

Which leads me to another dear friend Monica who is now visiting from Germany! Last time we saw each other when she very kindly agreed to be my vitness at my Oxford nuptials. Since then lots of dramatic things has happened in her life so when I have finally met her at the Edinburgh airport I gave her a big, well deserved hug for survivors. It is good to see her healthy again, bubbling with her usual sense of humour and to have again these long discussions about the meaning of life, the Universe and everything. She will be back with us again in couple of weeks after her horseriding holidays in the north of Scotland.

Both ladies presented me with some lovely and usefull gifts - the body weight monitor is from Sejin (ok, now I happy as I have cut out the fluffy, British bread and I am consuming Vasa aka Ryvita here instead which made a substantial difference in the size of my bum and waist) and the sleeping mask is from Monica and is a bliss during light summer nights in Scotland when it gets dark about 10 pm and light at 3 am again. When all this melatoning was suppose to be produced by my exhausted body? Last two nights contained the deepest sleep I have ever had in our southfacing flat! Thank you!