The last few weeks have been pretty busy for me on the photo front – between Shoot London, Ireland, summer in the city and the irresistibly photogenic products at Jelly Pong Pong, my camera has certainly been getting a work out.

That said, I’ve never been particularly comfortably with my photography skills. Am I being artistic or simply cliché when I snap the houses of Parliament silhouetted by the sun? How do I capture the beauty of an open field in Ireland? What’s the best light for portrait photos? While I haven’t let such questions stop me from assaulting my blog readers with my photographs, they certainly raise a sliver of self-doubt when it comes to the images I share with the world.

Well you can all breathe a sigh of relief and stop averting your eyes from the photo sections of my blog as, thanks to Shoot Experience, the group that hosted Shoot London, I’ll be attending a two day documentary photography workshop here in London to teach me the ins and outs of how to use photographic images to improve the way I tell a story.

The workshop itself looks fantastic and is spread out over two Saturdays in June, hopefully giving me a bit of time to practice my new skills before returning for more of the instruction. Best of all, the course is designed for groups no bigger than six so there will be plenty of help for absolute beginners such as myself. I only hope my poor little camera is up to the challenge!

If you’d like more information about the Documentary Photography workshop hosted by Shoot Experience, check out the full workshop listing on their site. There are still spots available so sign up early. Otherwise, check back for a sample of my new and hopefully well improved photography skills in June.

Documentary Photography with Shoot Experience
WORKSHOP DETAILS
Venue: 1st floor, 32 Kingsland Road, E2 8DA
Tel: 0207 0 333 555
Dates: Saturday 13th & 27th June 2009
Time: 10:30am – 4:00pm


On my weekend wander through Soho, Oxford Circus and Covent Garden I came across a number of hidden gems of stores, including a few vintage clothing stores, a place devoted entirely to fancy socks and, best of all, the adorable Jelly Pong Pong, a boutique cosmetics shop along a back alley of Covent Garden that wins hands down this week’s most attractive merchandise award.

Cupcake Bath Fizz from Jelly Pong Pong

Cupcake Bath Fizz from Jelly Pong Pong

Founder Susan Chyi writes on the website,

Jelly Pong Pong…a name which will always be strange to many, was born from the notion of wanting to invoke the eccentricity that is innate in all of us. The fascination & awe that we arouse simply by being different and perfectly unique.

Delicious cosmetics at Jelly Pong Pong

Delicious cosmetics at Jelly Pong Pong

While there are Jelly Pong Pong products throughout the world in upscale salons, their store is tucked away in London and I was so happy to have come across such a sweet surprise. If you want to visit Jelly Pong Pong for yourself, you can stop by their store at

Jelly Pong Pong
9 Shorts Gardens
Covent Garden
London WC2H 9AT

Alternately, their website lists the places where their products can be found worldwide.

Delicious!

Soap Popsicles from Jelly Pong Pong

Soap Popsicles from Jelly Pong Pong


Today marks the one year anniversary of moving to London.  What an amazing choice I made when I decided to head east from college instead of west and home.  I am so proud of what I’ve accomplished and what I still have before me in the next few months.  Take a look back at my very first post after arriving in London!

This past weekend brought with it the absolute most glorious weather I can remember in London to date.  On Sunday afternoon, my friend Em and I took the opportunity to explore Oxford Street and Soho in London. Take a look at our wonderful city:

Summer in London, Soho Square

Me in Soho Square

Me in Soho Square

Razzle Dazzle in Soho

Razzle Dazzle in Soho

Streets of London

Streets of London


And so with a shower of shiny confetti and applause, the saga that has been this year’s Britain’s Got Talent has ended. Of course the main news of the night is that Northern Scotland’s musical conundrum, Susan Boyle didn’t take the top prize but was in fact second overall, losing out to one of the two dance troupes, Diversity with saxophonist Julian Smith coming in third.

But enough about what actually happened – more importantly, such an evening highlights the fact that the true difference between the US and Britain lie not in any language, political or cultural dissimilarities but entirely in their television programming. As my flatmate Ann and I commentated the TV event, it quickly became clear that, forget tea parties, revolutions and democracy, when reality TV hit, our two great countries would have broken up anyway.

Now, I realise this show has made its way to America but I’m fairly certain the American version (which I haven’t seen) is no where near as, for lack of a better word, camp. Of course there were the breakout acts (Susan Boyle, Hollie Steel, Julian Smith, etc) that are truly talented but the range and, even more surprisingly, success of some of what would be considered the joke acts in the States was quite impressive. Both Ann and I watched, bemused, the Greek/Irish dancing father and son duo Stavros Flatley (“there must be something in the performance live we can’t see through the TV,” I offered. “Ha! They’re funny to watch,” from Ann). Together were gave our own critiques of 2 Grand, the lovely granddaughter-grandfather pair who were, again, in my opinion not quite finals material (“well, they’re not that bad, people seem to really like them,” was me. “Ha! They’re funny to watch. And don’t realise Simon’s completely taking the piss out of them!” Ann explained). Even singer Shaun Smith, a fairly talented act – but a bit of a poor man’s Kris Allen in my opinion, especially given his song choice – raised some questions as to how he ended up in the finals (“well, he’s not that bad, and he looks a bit like a 30’s gangster, that’s a cool look” was my effort. “Ha! He’s funny to watch, he looks constipated and like a thug.” Thanks Ann).

So, perhaps Americans want acts that they feel fit the bill of real talent, and solid evidence for why it is so as opposed to something that makes us laugh. And that keeps the likes of chubby half-naked men jumping around the stage, or even the horrendous DJ Talent out of the semifinals and finals of our shows. But the differences don’t end there. As soon as the competition ended, it was only an hour wait while votes were called in and tallied before they were announced on live TV – apparently a benefit of living in just one time zone. While we waited, the next topic of discussion was the prize. While I’m sure the 100 grand is certainly the main goal for many of the performers on the show, this part of the prize is very rarely mentioned. Instead, the network ITV has spent the whole season promoting the fact that the winner gets to perform at the Royal Variety Show in front of the Queen. In fact the £100,000 seemed so accessory that it was barely ever mentioned.

Now I’m sorry, but that just seems like a bit of a crap prize. I’m sure her Majesty the Queen is a lovely woman but to be voted the most talented act in Britain and be told that you’re off to perform in a variety show with a lot of other people who were chosen for reasons that had even less to do with talent in front of a Monarch who has to sit through such a show every year seems a bit of a let down. Ann carefully explained to me that this was not, in fact, the case for many of these performers for whom such an opportunity would be akin with say, the world’s biggest Harry Potter fan getting to read some of their fiction to JK Rowling (let’s put this in terms I can understand here).

Alright, so there’s a bit crap talent, a bit crap prize and a bit crap voting. In the US, while calls and votes for these kinds of shows are toll free from landlines and free from cells with free calling or texting, in the UK every single vote costs money, from a relatively inexpensive landline call to text message voting that can cost up to a £1. While this does act as a deterrent from ballot stuffing (no one is going to vote 100+ times if it costs them 40p a pop) it also really discourages casual voting – I never would have considered voting last night although had it been free, I might have given poor little Hollie Steel some support.

In the end, we’ve discovered that Americans take themselves, and their talent competitions, a bit too seriously and perhaps should lighten up while the British, while claiming across national TV that they have talent, might want to consider adding a question mark to the end of the show title.

But as Simon Cowell could tell us, that’s not news to anyone.


Sunday dawned bright and clear and the bovine inhabitants of Doolin gazed cheerfully around us as we prepared to leave the town. As the bus was getting ready to go, the owner of the hostel where we had stayed asked, quite seriously, if any of us wanted to stay behind as his current lodger and assistant at the hostel had just left. I had a seriously lengthy internal debate about how feasible it would be to actually take him up on his offer. To be honest, the only thing holding me back was my obligations and work at Spoonfed – otherwise I would have been off the bus in a minute, tour or no. Fortunately, before I could make any rash decisions, I was distracted by the arrival of one of the girls on our tour and her “date” for the “Rate my Date” game proposed by Kevin and forgotten by half the group. The poor guy was quite good natured about the whole thing and we offered him the rating of 11/10 due to his being the only point of comparison. On that note, we headed out of Doolin, leaving the hostel, the four pubs and the six streetlights behind.

Our first stop was Burren National Park although along the way we passed through the town of Lisdoonvarna, home of the Irish Matchmaking Festival. The Irish Matchmaking Festival, we were told, began with pure intentions of providing farmers and young women throughout Ireland with suitable matches but, since the advent of international tourism and desperate 30-somethings, the event has turned into a debauched orgy-like festival and is now a top destination for many singles around the world.

Perhaps the most polar opposite to such a lavish display of humanity was the Burren National Park. The Burren’s name comes from an Irish word “Boíreann” meaning a rocky place which is about the most apt description one could find. I had no idea such a landscape was in Europe, let alone Ireland. It was almost lunar and definitely a bit eerie. The Burren is an exposed platau of limestone rock that covers about 1500 hectares. It is windswept, desolate and, as one girl on our trip rightly put it, a bit like Mordor (I don’t know if it was the fonts on the signs and shop fronts or the landscape but Lord of the Rings was definitely continually brought to mind on my travels through Ireland).

We couldn’t stand the windchill for too long, however, and instead made our way towards the Poulnabrone portal tomb. This tomb, which stands almost unaltered from it’s original, is about 4500 years old and was said to be a portal to another world. Unfortunately it was roped off so I didn’t have a chance to explore, but it was certainly a moving moment, being in the presence of something so old, above the bodies of bronze age soldiers of ancient Ireland.

Another stretch of bus ride brought us to Clonmacnoise, a monastic settlement from 547 founded by one of the early Christian monks of Ireland. Of particular note were the unique stone crosses, the tops of which are enclosed in a circle, throughout the settlement. These, we were told, are thought to be an early way of incorporating pagan belief systems with new Christian ideas as the circle would have represented the sun worship of pagan traditions. Additionally, the settlement was home to a monastic tower and would have been a centre of learning, travel, trade and culture – that is before it was destroyed, multiple times, by various invading forces. What’s left, however, is another beautiful reminder of Ireland as it was hundreds of years before.

We were nearing the end of our tour and the final stop before we returned to Dublin was to be at a one of the world’s oldest whiskey distilleries for a tour and a taste-test. While the distillery itself was no longer actively making the spirit, it was still the holding place for the spirits as it matured over 5+ years into full Irish Whiskey (there were three brands associated with our distillery including Kilbeggan which we sampled). It was a good tour, and it was interesting to see the inside of a distillery that could still work today (and occasionally does) yet has been brewing spirits since 1757 – they’ve been getting drunk on whiskey there since before my country existed (and somewhat embarrassingly my country also put them out of business temporarily when supply dried up during the prohibition. They got back on their feet, though).

After what seemed like much too brief a three days, we were headed back into Dublin. While the tour group officially disbanded at 5:30 when we arrived back in the city, so many of us, including the tour guide Kevin, were staying in the city that night that, instead of heading off on our own, we decided to do a group dinner and hit the Dublin pubs for a final night of celebrating Ireland. Overall it was an amazing adventure – and I can’t recommend Shamrocker and Radical Tours enough as it was the great tour that made the trip so fantastic – and I really can’t wait to go back to Ireland.