2013: The Best Yet…?

It may be a little early in the year to start having musings like this, but… I get the feeling 2013 may well end up being my best year yet.
I’m a person who absolutely LOVES having a full diary. I love being busy and I have so much lined up this year that I feel it will be very rewarding.

My personal portfolio  of work is growing rapidly with help from my 52 Week Project on Flickr, I have my first ever wedding shoot coming up (which is also my first commission! EEE!!!!!!) in the summer, and a few shoots with aspiring models too!
I’m hoping to donate a few posters to the Every Day Sexism Project campaign in exchange for some publicity, which will be amazing for getting my name out there; plus helping out a cause I am so passionate about will be so rewarding in itself.
I am determined this year to GET SHIT DONE.
“Ohhh I want to read more, but I don’t have the time”. NO. You DO have the time. But you spend it on Tumblr looking at photos of cats when you could be lost in Middle Earth. STOP IT AND PICK UP A BOOK.
“Ohhh that novel I wrote when I was young- I want it to be published but it has to be rewritten first.” SHUT UP. Just bloody WRITE the damn thing then! Sit down and just WRITE for hours like you used to do when you were young. Get lost in the story. SEND IT OFF.
“Ohhh I’m not as skinny as I’d like to be.” YOU ARE A STUDENT. That means you have free access to the swimming pool in designated time slots. FUCKING GO AND SWIM OFF SOME CALORIES. It’s not even that far to walk to get there! (Do NOT get a taxi.)

Quite besides all my personal projects of the year so far (and it’s only March; JESUS!), I also have so many exciting plans lined up for the summer!
Dom’s 21st birthday is next weekend, and we’re going to Laser Quest. I’ve never been before but I’m really excited! Basically paintballing without the pain! ME LIKES!

Plus, as a birthday present to him, his mum and dad are sending the two of us to Venice in the summer (?!?!?!?!?!) !!!! Which I am BEYOND stoked for! I’ve never been to any part of Italy before, and Dom’s always wanted to go to Venice. It’ll have some incredible photo opportunities for me, and it will be amazing to see it before it sinks. Plus, I’ve not been out of this country for about ten years now. I need to go somewhere with SUN, dammit!

This year is also my 21st, and for that we’re going to go and see Cirque du Soleil in London! I am SO EXCITED!! I’ve wanted to see them perform ever since I was a little girl and I FINALLY get the chance to!

In April it’s my best friend Grant’s 21st; for that him and I are going to see Derren Brown for the second time. It’s an all new show that’s not even been announced yet. I love Derren Brown so much and I’m so looking forward to seeing him perform again! I might even get to meet him a second time!

As if all of this wasn’t enough, we’re also heading to Download Festival in June! Which means I will finally get to see Slipknot live!!!! Not to mention Motorhead, Iron Maiden, Rammstein, 30 Seconds to Mars and Bullet for my Valentine!!!! AHHH! I’m so stoked I might be sick!!

This year looks as if it might well be the best yet! Now just to get through these fucking assignments and the fun can begin! 😀

52 Week Project Update. (Shameless Self- Promotion)

So yesterday I posted the 7th in my 52 week project. Honestly? That’s the longest I’ve stuck at a project consistently before so I already feel achieved.
The fact that I actually quite like this one is a bonus too! I haven’t found it’s inevitable flaw to make me obsess over and hate it yet. 🙂

Please feel free to go check it out, along with the other photos on my stream!

http://www.flickr.com/photos/bryonyharwood/8518077233/in/photostream

 

 

My Life in Letters: Q.

I’ll be honest. There is not a whole lot in my life I can drone on about to flesh out this letter. I’ll give it a go though…

Quack. – That’s a cool word right?
Hmm… I once dated a guy who was a Quadruplet? Does that count?

This letter is difficult it seems.

I TRIED. I’M SORRY. HERE’S A PICTURE OF A CAT WITH BREAD ON IT’S FACE TO MAKE IT BETTER:

Anyway, moving on. I am now coming up to the 6th in my 52 week project on Flickr! I would really love it if you would go take a look at my project 🙂

http://www.flickr.com/photos/bryonyharwood/with/8490181156/#photo_8490181156

I upload one photo a week and usually that day is Friday. So if you would like to keep up with my project, then do please add me as a contact on Flickr! I will certainly get your views up in response! 😀
Feedback is also always amazing 🙂 ❤

UNTIL NEXT TIME, KIDS!

 

Resolutions Update!

I’ve done pretty good with my resolutions so far this year. I’ve not thrown in the towel on any of them yet and it’s already been a month! 😀

So, first off, I’ve started my 52 Weeks Project. I had a bit of a delayed start thanks to illness, location, lack of camera etc… but I’ve started it now, and I just published week 2 the other night.
Please go check out my Flickr stream, where each photo will be uploaded, plus a few others here and there outside of the project. Please help get my views up and leave me criticism. Help me get better!
http://www.flickr.com/photos/bryonyharwood/

As for healthier lifestyle, I’ve been half good half bad… I’ve found a gym I will be joining very soon and mostly been eating pretty damn well. A few Dominos slip ups is fine for only the first month, right? 😛

The technology free night a week hasn’t happened yet. Frankly, I forgot about that resolution until I re-read my post… whoops… I will be starting that soon though!

As for having fun? Well I’ve got a lot planned coming up!
This weekend marks mine and Dom’s one year anniversary! Exciting!
He’s planned out a whole weekend too, and won’t tell me what any of the plans are. I’m excited! 😀
I’ve also got a lot of other things in the works… if money allows. 😛

So far, so good!!

New Year, New Resolutions.

So, the world didn’t end. Let’s take a moment to pat ourselves on the back for once again avoiding an inevitably firey and painful death because a bunch of nuts once wrote a book, or in this case, stopped writing one.

In other news, another year is gone. I don’t know if it’s how busy I’ve been this year or just generally my increasing age, but the years seem to be going by at very unnerving speeds. I swear it was only the other day I had my 18th birthday. Now this year I am poised to take up my position in the eyes of British law as an “adult”. I shiver at the thought.

With the New Year, come New Years Resolutions. I normally make these with the best of intentions of keeping them… I always fail miserably. This year I think I worked out the source of this issue; I set my goals a little too high. For instance, last year I vowed I would take an amazing, jaw dropping, well processed and original photograph a day. Trying to achieve this after year of absolute zero motivation and inspiration may have been the reason this didn’t happen.
This year, I want to make resolutions I know I at least have a shot at keeping.
So, without any further ado, here are my resolutions:

1/ I want to take a photo a WEEK. Not one every day, just one every seven. That gives me a whole six days to plan out the next photo, and inevitably the end result will be better as a result of proper planning. This project will be called “52 Weeks” and each photo will be uploaded to my shiny new Flickr account, to document my new “style”. I will link my Flickr below. I think you should all, yes even you, you reading this right now, go and check out my stream. Please. Keep me motivated.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/bryonyharwood/

2/ At least once a week, as well as taking a photo, do something else artistic. I’ve been guilty before of putting one of my arts before the others I enjoy. I tend to be focused on one type of medium so heavily, that a year will pass where I haven’t written a single thing. This will change 2013; on top of a photo a week, I will also either write a poem a week, complete a chapter of one of my many novel projects, etc.

3/ Have one night a week where I have a technology free night. This sounds strange coming from someone who blogs, wants to start a YouTube channel and relies on a computer for most of her work, but I want to give it a go. Turn off my phone, shut off anything that requires a plug to work, and just do something else. Paint, read, draw, even just sit and talk to my boyfriend for a night. I think it will be really nice and therapeutic to take time away from the Internet for a few hours a week.

4/ I would like to lead an overall healthier lifestyle. Now, I’m not one to take on insane diets. I don’t feel the need to go to the gym every day of the week. And I’m not wanting to do that. I feel the “diet” and “slimming” resolution is so cliche these days, I’m pretty sure about 90% of the world are taking on resolutions like this. I don’t want to be one of those.
No, when I say “healthier lifestyle” I mean in general. I want to be mentally, emotionally and physically healthier. I want to consume less sugar, do more home cooking (I do a lot anyway, but I feel it’s limited, I want to try more cooking techniques) and actually start eating breakfast before noon. Overall, I want to be happier in myself.

5/ Finally, I would like to ENJOY this year. 2012 for me was a whirlwind of stress and bad news. And rain. So much bloody rain. So much rain that we couldn’t do half the stuff in the summer we had planned. This year that will change. I want to do all the things I’m planning. I want to go to a load of festivals, go on trips, see more of the world, and just generally get out more. I want to have FUN. I don’t want to spend the whole year being stuck inside with only my degree to occupy my time. I want uni to be more FUN. And the only way to do that is to just bloody DO the things I plan on doing, rain or no rain. If I get wet, then I get a towel and carry the fuck on.

2013, COME AT ME BRO!

My Life in Letters: P.

There are so many wonderful things in my life beginning with the word “P” that I am spoiled for choice! I’ll just stick to the main ones to keep this post under a century long.

The first and most obvious one is Preeti, my best friend of all my friends. She is otherwise known as Preet, Tav, or bitch. I love her so much. The little freak.
We’ve been best friends for about four years now and not once had a fall out. She’s DABESTK?!
Besides being my best friend, she’s also like my sister. We have been through some pretty rough shit together and always been there to pick the other up. She’s amazing.

Another very obvious “P” is of course, photography. It’s what I’m studying at Uni and it’s what I’m hoping will become my career!
Speaking of photography, I’ve just created a new Flickr page. My old one felt a little outdated and I wanted to start a more “professional” page, to start a few new projects on and start building up a real name for myself in the industry.
It looks a little bare at the moment but I have several new projects in mind for the new year, so watch this space!!
If you could take a look and leave feedback, even keep an eye on it for my soon-to-be regular updates, I’d be really appreciative!!
http://www.flickr.com/photos/bryonyharwood/

I’m heading down to Oxford for a week tomorrow afternoon, so I will be having time to catch up with friends and family down there before Christmas.

If I don’t blog before, then I hope all of you lovely people have a wonderful Christmas and a prosperous New Year!! ❤

University is hard.

It’s come to my attention that I have now not written a blog for well over a month. Whoops.

The main reason for this is the amount of work I’ve had on with my degree. I’m studying a joint honours BA in Photography and Creative Writing. This semester, I’ve had two photography modules and one poetry module.
For one of my photography modules I was expected to create an entire book of 18 individual concepts within a time frame of approximately nine weeks. Pretty tall order, as I had another two modules to find time for too.
However, I’ve done it! I’ve sent my book to be bound now, and I’ve finished shooting for my other module too! So now, I can finally focus on my journal works and essays. Those, for me, are easier to do as they are less time consuming.
I sent my book to be bound last night, and I breathed a massive sigh of relief. However, it won’t be delivered until the 18th… which kind of sucks as I need to hand it in before then. I’m hoping I won’t be down-marked for that though; my tutor said that as long as we all have receipts to show we ordered it before the deadline then it is fine.
The theme I chose was to transform each poem I have written into a photo. It actually worked out pretty well to be honest. My photos translated really well.

I have about two weeks left of this semester now before we break up for Christmas; that means two weeks of trying to find the money to pay for presents and travel and all sorts of things- that’s another thing that makes university a pain in the ass; the amount you have to spend! I’m paying almost 4,000 a year for my degree, another 50 a week in rent, plus bills etc… all without a job or any kind of government help. Plus as a photography student I have a lot of supplies needing to be bought- the book alone cost me 30 and my other final piece will cost another 20 minimum. Then there’s 40 each time my printer runs out of ink- which is does very often as I have to print out every single thing I shoot… Sigh.
Next semester I will be working though. I wanted to work two jobs but my boyfriend has more of less forbidden me to do that as he thinks I will run myself into the ground with the stress of it. To be honest he may be right- a joint honour degree means I have twice the work load most have anyway, and I get the least financial help.

Next semester should be easier- the work load won’t be as intense, and having a job will help with financial problems.
2012 has been a really hard year for various reasons; it’s also been an awesome year, thanks to spending it with Dom.

Here’s hoping 2013 has some cool shit to offer me too. 😉

It’s Time To Take A Risk, Sweetheart.

So I’m now in my second year at uni, and already my mind is wandering to the possibilities that lie after graduation. Will I get a job? Will I like my job? Will it end up being anything to do with my degree?
All of these thoughts are starting to swarm, along with an overwhelming sense of pressure to “do” things.

One of my biggest fears is to die having not done any of the things I always say I’ll “one day” do.
Get a book published, have a job I enjoy, travel, see the world, live somewhere new… just to SEE things, and DO things with my life.

I was talking with my friend over a Starbucks yesterday, and we were talking about her great grandfather who had lived till he was 113. She told me about how she’d listened in awe when she was younger to his stories and the things he’d experienced. She said that she wants one day to be the one with a century worth of viewing the world and how it changes.
I mentioned how it was a shame that our species have such short life spans. The average life expectancy in the UK (as far as I’m aware) is 80. In the grand scheme of things, that is not very long at all.
As I mentioned this, I realised something; I’m 20 already. That leaves me with maybe 60 years left on average. That kind of terrified me.
I’m 20 and I feel I’ve experienced and achieved almost nothing. I always aspire to do so much more than I end up seeing through. And I want that to change.

Dom and I are thinking of moving when we graduate. Maybe to Canada.
When he mentioned this to me I was slightly stunned, and instantly thought of all the reasons I couldn’t do that.
Now I’m only thinking “why should those stop me?”

I want to see the world right? I want to experience new places and cultures right? I don’t want to miss opportunities or chances. I want to LIVE life, rather than just imagine it.

So why the hell not? Yeah, go on then. I’ll move to a foreign country. I’ll travel on a whim. I’ll try new things.
You know why? Because maybe if I’m very lucky, one day I’ll be the one inspiring my great grandchildren to have their own century of stories to tell.

My Life in Letters: O.

For the letter ‘O’, I thought I would talk about my hometown, and the city of my birth, Oxford, England.
I’ve always been someone who’s lived all over the place, not due to my parents moving or anything, but just because I tended to move all around the place personally. However, out of all of the places I’ve lived, Oxford has been the most consistent.
20 years ago now, on the 16th of July, I was born at the John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford city center.
I lived in a small village outside of the boarders of the city after that, in and out of different areas of the outskirts.
I lived in the center of Oxford while working through my gap year, where I lived independently, before moving to Bolton for University.

Although I no longer live in Oxford, and I’ve spent time living elsewhere, such as Yorkshire and Manchester and Aylesbury, I will always consider it my original home. I doubt I will go back there to live permanently again after University, but it will always be another home to me.

The Time We Accidentally Called The Police On Our Landlord…

So we moved into our house a week ago now, and since we moved in, we’ve caused our landlord a fair amount of grief, including calling him in over problems with sanitation and cleanliness in the house, issues with billing and various other issues… however I think we may have topped it all with accidentally calling the police on him within the first week of living here.

Now, I know you must be thinking “How the hell could you ‘accidentally’ call the police on someone?” and let me assure you, there is a genuine reason behind this mistake. And yes, it was a mistake.

As I’ve mentioned, we’ve had a few issues with the house. One of these is the way that most of the things in the house have not been fitted correctly; basically the owner of this house did a very cheap job on it despite being perfectly able to afford to fix things correctly. A brief summary of some of the things he has done a botch job on include;
– The carpets being stapled to the floor several inches away from the edge. Yes, really.
– The shelf in the shower cubicle being fixed into place with a rusty nail and a hole in the tiles for a wall plug. (This one particularly amused me.)
– The edge of the shower basin being covered up not with poly filer, which would have been a very simple, cheap and quick solution to a crack, but instead covered over with duct tape.
– The general state of the house when we moved in. Mould in every single bedroom being one of the more minor issues here.
– The landlord providing us with a miniature dryer, yet no washing machine… this one confuses me beyond belief.

There is more, but I’m sure you get the point. Now I should get to the botch job in question, and the culprit behind this mishap. The bedroom doors are not accurately fitted to the frames. While in two of the bedrooms, this is just a minor irritation more than a pressing problem, in my house mate Steph’s bedroom, it went one better and was so badly fitted to the frame (not to mention that the handles on either side of the door weren’t the same as each other… as tends to be the norm for handles on the same door) that is actually jammed her into her bedroom. 

So after a night of the four of us watching a few films with dinner, we headed for our bedrooms. Steph, after entering, pulled the door shut behind her, only to find that when she wanted to open it again, the handle wasn’t activating the mechanism inside the frame to open the door. 
Dom, Matt and myself then spent the next hour trying to open the door from the outside, while she pulled from the inside, to no avail. We took off the handle, we pushed it, kicked it… nothing. We were starting to think we had no choice but to kick the door down to get her out. 

Now, as you can imagine, a week after moving into a new house, we weren’t too keen on the concept of damaging a door of the rented property perhaps beyond repair, and then being forced to cover the costs of this damage that was the landlord’s responsibility in the first place. So we decided that before resorting to breaking down her door, we should call the non-emergency fire service number for advice on what would be the best course of action.

We got through to the police service, who after lecturing us on “this isn’t really a police matter” eventually listened to us stating that we wanted to speak to the fire service, no the police service (the reply to which was slightly sheepish), passed us through to the fire department, who said that they would contact our landlord, and if he did not respond, they would send someone down to break the door down. 
A few minutes after this, we got a call back from the operator, who sounded very embarrassed, and explained that for some unknown reason, the police, who evidently decided that this was a job for them, not for the people from whom we’d requested help, had taken over the case and had called the landlord on our behalf, rather than the fire service, as we had wanted.

So, cue a very nervous and irritated looking landlord arriving at our house at 12.30 am with a box of tools, because his tenants of just over a week, had called the police on him, because a door had gotten stuck.