Easter Sunday.

I'm feeling pretty relaxed and happy right now.

We had a simple Easter dinner despite thinking that it might be a massive family thing but it was nice.
My sister did the cooking and she made an almost crazy amount of food, especially cake.
We brought a load of cake around to Moon's and then to my uncle's house as well. I feel as though this blog has been neglected in favour of my Tumblr, but I never use Tumblr to really post my own work so I suppose it's more of a sign that I've not done very much.
I really want to get into writing more about inspirational artists but my life's a bit up in the air right now.
Anyway, Project Report tonight and then I can say I've finished Uni, practically.. scary.

Suzie.

My cat loves having her portrait taken.

From my Gran's garden.

I thought that while her garden is overgrown with so many beautiful flowers, I should take a photo of them. It's sort of a back-up for a birthday present for her in August, I think I could do something really nice with these. How nice has the weather been? I was up Boxhill yesterday with Moon and every conversation between people going by us was about the gorgeous weather. Ah, if it stayed like this until September, I wouldn't complain. Fingers crossed for Glasto.





I'm switching between Lightroom and Aperture at the moment.

Possible layouts.

I figured that as I haven't done any real work since Wednesday I should at least do one of the easiest parts of what actually have to do. So I've done some exhibition presentation mock-ups for my project report. I'm in two minds as to which ones I want to use but I'll probably go with the five, not just because it's cheaper but also because with the jeans the story isn't as relevant as the others so I'm not sure. I want to include the jeans because I like the image and I want to include Gabriella, but her text was more about practicality rather than absurdity so I'm sad that I'll probably have to miss her out, especially considering she as probably helped me out most out of everyone.


The interview for Gareth's documentary went well today, he says it's going to be a while until he edits it all together but I'm looking forward to getting a copy of the pilot in the post, and if he puts it on Youtube I'll get it up here too.
Here is a clip from his documentary 'A Pioneer Perspective', which was broadcast on the Community Channel in 2008.

London Zoo.

My sister and I had a day trip to London Zoo yesterday, there was a lot of walking involved but we had a nice day being tourists and looking at animals. It wasn't too busy or too full of families with screaming children. The tigers were asleep and hopefully I took some nice photographs. I've uploaded a full set onto Flickr.

© Ruth Johnston 2011.

Since returning from NUJDM I have decided that it would be a good idea to revive my Flickr. I also want to move everything over to Lightroom but I think that it would be a better idea to do that when I have more time, so, along with a new website, it's being put on the back burner for the time being.

I'm being interviewed for a documentary tomorrow by Gareth Lewis, who participated in my half-Chinese project. Coincidently he was also thinking of doing a documentary on the same subject and he's finally put the wheels in motion to get a pilot filmed so he can begin applying for funding. I've never been interviewed before but it's quite convenient that I'm fairly recently clued up on the subject and know what I want to say.

Also, I have plans in July to head over to Hong Kong with my mum and sister, I'm quite excited about it, mainly because I'm quite up for taking as many photos as I can.

NUJ Delegate Meeting roundup.

So, I've had a little bit of time to reflect and catch up on the extreme lack of sleep I had to deal with over the weekend and I have realised what a brilliant weekend NUJDM was.
I've met some great people and if I gain nothing else from working with the NUJ Student Team, I've got that great experience. I don't know what I was so nervous about but now I know I could do it again and for some reason my confidence actually feels as though it's through the roof.
A link to all the work I did has been set up on a profile on the NUJDM 2011 website.

Eventually I'm going to get round to uploading my personal images from the weekend, but I think between editing my profile and looking at other people's articles that that is quite enough for today.

Now it's back to reality and concentrating on starting my project report for my final unit as well as finishing off my RDB, not as exciting as tweeting and photographing all day. I've got some fun things planned for the Easter break but I really do hope that I can muster up the enthusiasm to get this work out of the way, just because, apart from Viva, that's it.
I hope the weather stays nice for me, just because I've basically been underground for 5 days and it would be nice to catch some rays.

Here is a photo of me taken by fellow student delegate photographer, Dougal Wallace, it looks much better than I thought it would when he took it. The girl who thinks that she isn't in the photo is Angie, she was my roommate for the weekend, I definitely want to keep in touch with her.

National Union of Journalists Delegate Meeting.

This post is going to be structured weirdly compared to my usual style. As I am technically at the NUJ Delegate Meeting for work experience and more importantly as a Photographer, I'm going to do rolling updates, so everything will just appear as one big post.
As things go, apart from the terrible internet, everything has been quite exciting, and I've thoroughly enjoyed my first official day at the conference.

I'm currently using Lightroom to work through the conference as it auto-watermarks my image, which isn't one of my favourite things but I'm uploading straight to Flickr so (when the internet works) it makes everything a lot quicker. I think under a professional circumstances where I do have to work quickly it's great to use, but having made the huge move over to Aperture less than a year ago, I'm not sure when I'll have the time to do something that huge again, saying that I may move by the Easter holidays.

07/04/2011




I've never been to a conference before so it's exciting to see so many people so passionate about issues within their fields.

08/04/2011




09/04/2011

The NUJ's oldest delegate attending the conference, Roy Jones aged 81.

The youngest delegate attending this weekend, Josh Taylor, aged 19

10/04/2011

Initial text planning.

Here are the jottings for what text will accompany my images. I've written a piece for each item. My main concept basically evaluates how stupid people are, that is all, I should probably jazz that up a bit.
So I'm going to whip these into InDesign tomorrow and print them onto nice card for Tuesday. Fingers crossed I don't mess up on the font or sizing, and that I can cut them properly.