Annie's Pilgrimage

Image by Melissa Gaggiano

  Excitable me here! The other day I visited a bookshop with a gift card in hand. It has been a while since I last bought a book so I was looking forward to my little splurge. What with my burgeoning love of photography it was little wonder that I chose this book - Pilgrimage by Annie Leibovitz.
    As the title implies the book covers Annie's pilgrimage, over the years, to the homes of people that interested her. This photographic essay is part history lesson [but not the boring kind] with a personalised account. I am seeing the homes of Virginia Woolf and Emily Dickinson [to name a few] through the camera and personal senses of Annie. This book is a treat.

There's A Flower In My Garden

    While I await the maintenance of my camera, I thought I'd share with you some lovely, floral photos I took earlier this year.
    I grew these flowering plants from seed myself. And my daughter nicked my floral headband all by herself.



Image by Melissa Gaggiano



Image by Melissa Gaggiano

Not Always What They Seem

... So don't take anything for granted.

Image by Melissa Gaggiano:
My eye on film, literally speaking.

    A few nights ago I dreamt that I attended the swing dance festival down Mordialloc way. In my dream a band performed on stage. Parents and children sat in chairs and listened.
    Today I attended the actual festival, truly imagining that I'd see swing dancers, which was partly what drew me and my camera to the local festivities. Alas! Alack! My dream turned out to be a premonition. There were adults sitting on the grass. There were the occasional child twirling and wiggling on the mat available for dancers. There were bands, and a stage that had the words "swing stage". But, no swing dancers.
    Okay! Admittedly, I was just a little disappointed. But I didn't let that stop me from taking a few photos and enjoying the festivities. There were the usual carnival rides, and many cultured food stalls. After all this was part of the Bayside Food and Wine festival.
    I certainly could not have left without picking up a sweet treat. I bought two chocolate brownies [preservative free] from a Gilbert & Marcel stall. It was soooooo delicious.
    I cannot show you the photos just yet, because I used ye olde camera with ye olde film. So you'll just have to wait for ye olde film processors to do their ye olde thing. Is my saying ye olde getting a bit olde? Sorry about that. I thought I was on a roll [Oh look, a pun].

    I came away from today having learnt a few lessons about festival photography...

• Pack ear plugs. Trust me, when you are taking photos of bands you need to get close to the stage, which means extreme exposure to loud noise, which is really, really bad for your ears.
• Pack a water bottle. Even if it is not a particularly hot day. Photography is quite active and you will dehydrate quickly. And take little sips now and again so you are not busting for the toilet 20 minutes later.

I am so glad I attended the festival. It was good to get out amongst the folk. And it didn't really matter that I didn't see actual swing dancers. Which, by the way, gets me thinking. I still want to take photos of swing dancers. Maybe I could find a swing dancers association [if such a thing exists] and take photos at one of their events. Add it to me list of must things to do this year.

Going Old School

    Things have been quietly busy. I have been trying to balance my days so that nothing is left to the wayside. I have been staying on top of clean ups [although I must admit, that even though I vacuumed this morning, I cannot bring myself to clean the dishes], playing with the girls and fitting in my craft work between all that. Plus making a little time to read.
    My crochet project is still in progress. I always aim to make a minimum of 3 squares a day.
    I am reading Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility for the umpteenth time.

    This week I felt like I had lost one of my senses. My camera, an Canon EOS 1100D, has gone away for maintenance. I hardly missed an opportunity to take photos with this camera. In fact the camera was whipped out every couple of hours, of every day. What can I say? There was always something interesting to photograph.
    After a few days of photographer's withdrawal it occured to me that I was not completely camera-less. I crawled under the house and pulled out my old Ricoh KR-5 Super II, and bought some old fashioned film from down the road. Thank goodness ISO 400 is still sold.

Image by Melissa Gaggiano

    Now I'll be able to do a photoshoot at the local Swing Dancing event on the weekend. Woo-hoo! Photographer's delight! Here I come.

To read about my passion for photography, simply follow this link.

What Will I Do

Ack!

The camera has gone away for maintenance.

Whatever will I do?



Image by Melissa Gaggiano



Image by Melissa Gaggiano

11 x 11

One hundred and twenty one granny squares done.

Image by Melissa Gaggiano

Click here to check out the entire progress of my granny square project.

Little Mouse

Image by Melissa Gaggiano

    When I was a little girl my Lego collection began with this one little mouse. I only know for certain that I was given this mouse way before I was seven. This being because I was seven when I received my first bucket of assorted Lego bits, which happened much later.
    I remember how this mouse came with house cleaning tools, though these have long since disappeared into a black hole [probably turned up in an episode of Star Trek]. This mouse was certainly well loved. On closer inspection I can see the ears were also particularly well chewed. I must have been hungry.
    A little internet research tells me that this little mouse was part of a Lego division known as Fabuland. Isn't that a fabulous name?

Image by Melissa Gaggiano

Image by Melissa Gaggiano
[My photography assistant]