Sunday Style: First Try

As I said on Friday, I love fashion.  I love being creative, and putting clothing and accessories together to create a unique look.  I enjoy observing the outfits of others to come up with new ideas of how to coordinate different items.  I love fashion.  

I've been wanting to add fashion posts to this blog since it started, and well, folks, today, it's time!   I have been excited about this all day!  I took a whole bunch of what I hoped would be excellent photographs of myself... and they were bad.  

 It's been a bit of a frustrating process though because, well,  I'm not going to post them.  Yeah.

I'm awful at photographing myself.  First of all, I'm not as photogenic as I would like.  I can pull a sultry/ seductive thing moderately well, but I try to smile, and I look like a bit of an idiot a lot of the time.  

Kind of like that.  Also, I like macro effects for fashion photography, and these are hard to pull on yourself.  Along with this, the lighting in my apartment really isn't conducive.  Basically, I should have waited for Danny to get home from work so that he could help me with this, but, I didn't.  One of these days I'll ask him to take me outside and photograph me until I feel really pretty.  One of these days.  He's just busy, and there aren't too many daylight hours at this time of year.

So, my first set of photographs were pretty much failures.  I was using a flash, and you can tell.  It's washed out.  Like, really washed out.  Also, the flash is reflecting off of my tights, which is not cute.  I was having a hard time posing for the still camera, which was lower than my face.  I wasn't particularly pleased with any of them, and my self esteem was a bit low.  Then, I got on my computer to complain about blah blah blah, I'm so not photogenic, blah blah wahhhh blah fat blah so bad photography no photo good wahhhhhhhhh.... and I noticed that my Photobooth was open from when I was playing with it earlier.  Because I like to try and fix the problem when I'm upset, instead of wallowing in self pity and loathing like an obnoxious and toxic pessimist, I started taking some photographs.  The light was shining down through my window, my makeup, so carefully applied, looked much better close-up.    The shots weren't full body, and it was easier to use angles to make my legs look longer. I am very, very pleased with the resultsAre they amazing quality?  No.  Was this a good lesson for me in creativity and self-esteem?  Yes.  I learned something today.  Today is a great day.

I'll be trying to post a new Sunday Style every week, to keep me on track with dressing well.  My real reason, though, is that getting my photo taken, when it turns out well, increases my self esteem immensely, and, since like most young women, my self esteem could be measured in mililitres,  I'm going to decide that this is a good thing.  Even though my self esteem has increased tenfold over the past year or so, I'd like to feel even better about myself than I do, because it gets in my way, so if this is going to help, fabulous.  I'll take it.  I'll have it.  I'd like to feel consistently confident.

So, I hope that you enjoy.  I hope that you like my outfit, and think that I look pretty neat. I love how these turned out, and I feel great about them, which makes me so happy. I hope that you like the photographs.  I'm going to stop rambling now.  Or, at least try.

Uhhhh.... here I am (below) with an Abraham Lincoln mug covering my face.  Yay!  Fun, right?

Sorry about the rambling.  I get caught up  in things sometimes when I'm writing posts for this blog, and then try to apologize with silly photographs that have no relevance to what I'm posting about with the hopes that they will fix what I may have broken by making things more complicated with my rambling that happens when I'm nervous and oh god, I'm rambling again now, aren't I?  Ahhhhh....

Have a nice Sunday.  Here I am in some clothes.

Dress: H&M

Shoes: Aerosoles

Tights: Kmart... yes, really.

Earrings: Street Vendor

Sweatshirt (also seen in the Lincoln mug photo): Forever 21

Shorts: Target

Travel and Pack

So many blogs do "packing" posts before they go on vacation.  It's pretty awesome.  These lovely people of the internet will artistically place all the stuff that they are taking with them on the floor, and take photographs, so that their readers know what it is that they have when they are on vacation.  The outfits they will wear, the cameras they will use... it just makes me happy.  Since travel, fashion, and photography are three of my loves, this makes sense.

Thus, I have decided to do one of these packing posts.  I'm in West Grove, Pennsylvania at the moment, visiting my family.  I grew up in this house and it is always pleasant to come back and visit!  My family just had an addition put on- a sunroom and a patio, and wow.  It's so gorgeous.  I'm so happy for them!  My parents had been talking about doing this since I was a little kid, and I'm thrilled that they finally took the plunge and put on the addition.  The spaces are lovely, but they are also rather wonderfully decorated.  I'll probably be sharing some photographs on the Travel and Toile Facebook Page.  Which, by the way, is pretty awesome, so you should totally check it out.  For reals.  

In any case, I'm here because my little sister, Julianna, is graduating from high school.  I'm so proud of her! She's going off to school in Boston in the fall to major in Marketing and Communications.  And so the Buck clan spawns another artsy girl.  Hooray!

So, yeah.  Here's my stuff.

Hehe that's my new martial arts uniform!  Complete with my badass muay thai shorts.  Can you tell how happy I am about this???  I'm so happy.

West Grove, Pennsylvania, USA

Inspiration Fridays: Lily Cole

She's one of my favourite models.

I've had some people tell me that I look like her... which I take as a huge compliment, because I think she's absolutely adorable. 

She just has such a cute little face, and kind of droopy eyes that give her a very endearing quality.

I don't see the resemblance, actually, but I'm just thankful that people think I might be as lovely as she is!  (I'm not)

I love her modeling, but I think even more than that, I am a fan of the type of work she gets hired to do.  Often, she wears slightly gothic clothing, or things reminiscent of a princess.  This makes me very happy.  Roses, pinup, and lolita are common in her photographs too.  She looks little and cute, yet wears things that are sexual and risque.  I like that.  Young appearance, with a serious edge. 

How Lily Cole portrays herself is the type of person I want to be.  Who she is, I don't really know.  I know very little about her as a person, I just admire her body of work as an artist.

It inspires me.

These Kids Are so much Hipper than Me

Please, may I introduce two members of that counterculture that isn't organized enough to be, nor wants to be a counterculture- the hipsters.  These two are particularly good.  They border on scenester just because what they are doing is so poppy/ Japanese.  The backpack, let me start with the backpack.  Woah.  That person with it on is a guy, and he looked to be about twenty years old, and he's rockin the miniature, cutesy stuffed animal backpack.  That's.  Awesome.  I wish I had the courage to pull off something that eccentric, but I don't.  Maybe that's for the better, but he just looks so fun!  The girl looks a little bit like  a Lady Gaga wannabe.  These two were just hanging out one cloudy August day at South Street Seaport.  I didn't talk to them.  They walked around the area in circles- I don't know if they were intentionally trying to get people to notice that they were much cooler than everyone else.  It was working.  Check out the girl in the yellow in the top photograph.

Now they just have to whip out their American Spirits and a PBR and they are good to go.

I am nowhere near that cool.

Manhattan, New York City, New York, USA

Swinging Around

Teddy bear princess doll, on the swing in my parents' backyard!

West Grove, Pennsylvania, USA

Photographer Feature: Ari Morales

No, these photographs were not taken by me.  They were taken of me!  

I needed some new and exciting headshots for my main career (acting) and had them done while Danny and I were on vacation in Austin last week.  The photographer is this wonderful guy named Ari Morales. His work is just stunning- I've been impressed at every turn.  I was so glad that he wanted to work with me.  

Please check out more of his work at http://www.arimorales.com/

Austin, Texas, USA

Music to a Woman's Ears

SALE.  It's fascinating how much joy that one word can ilicit.  I know that when I see it, my heart begins to pound, my palms get sweaty, my eyes get bigger, and a feeling of excitement courses through my veins until I can lay hands on a new piece of lovely clothing.  So that might be a slight exaggeration, but it's kind of intriguing how slight that exaggeration really is.  As a mostly reformed shopaholic, I actually adore the word sale, and all that it is connected to.  New stuff, mostly.  I like buying new stuff.  And I really do like the process of buying it, not just the owning of it.  Taking the new skirt home is nice, but digging through racks and racks to see if you can find that special something, then laying eyes, on the one print or fabric that catches your eye or your fingertips, taking it to the fitting room... bliss.  Utter bliss.

Manhattan, New York City, New York, USA

Like this?  Try taking a look at All You Need Is Love for another photograph that might evoke joy.

Child's Play

I was having lunch with a few friends of mine in Chinatown the other day, at a favourite restaurant of mine.  Before this time, I had only been there for dinner.  During the day, Chinatown is always full of people, and the stores spill onto the sidewalk with all of their neat merchandise.  The store next to the restaurant was no exception.  And, it was epic.  Hundreds of small stuffed animals hung on descending chains, crowding one another.  Very few of them were exactly the same, but they did seem to be at least someone organized by type and color. My inner child and outer geek flipped out, and I started cooing over the fun toys and snapping photographs of them.  This is one of my shots.

Manhattan, New York City, New York, USA

Think this is fun?  Take a look at Pink Is Pretty.

Beautiful Disaster

Destroyed Wedding Dress

West Chester, Pennsylvania, USA

Like this?  Bouquet, Lion and Tea?  might be your cups of.... tea...