Trash the Wedding Dress!

"Now why would you want to do that to such a bloody expensive thing?", I thought when I came across an article with this very title by Dahlia Rideout on divine caroline. The article features winner pictures of a photo competition "Trash the Wedding Dress". Here's my favourite one:

Photo by Bartosz Jastal, Poland, 2009.

Reading through the article I was then once more utterly amazed that this photo contest takes place regularly and is organised -amongst other ones- by the Wedding Photojournalist Association. Their website states: "WPJA is a professional organization composed of photojournalists and wedding photographers from around the world. What sets our members apart in the industry is their candid, documentary approach – a distinctly artistic vision toward wedding photography."

And that's exactly what's going on. Here's one of the most original wedding shots I've ever seen:
Photo by Deborah Kates, Illinois US, 2009.

Looking at the amazing shots on those websites I reconsidered and thought: "Actually why wouldn't you for such a great shot!?!".

Just think about it: there is no other occasion where you will wear your wedding dress ever again. After the wedding you spend another couple of hundred to have it dry-cleaned, then you wrap it up and put it somewhere until your grandchildren either find it eaten by moths or cry out in amazement: "Unbelievable, did you really fit into this dress when you were young grandma?"

I think you will agree with me that it would be better to have a great framed trash-the-wedding-dress picture at your wall or even on the attic which is actually interesting to look at and the line you hear will be a different one: "Wow grandma! Are you a princess who had to go to a great deal of trouble before she could rule just like the Disney ones?!"

I know it hurts a little when thinking about the price, but it's everybody's own choice whether one wants to be cool or lame!

Bobbins and Bombshells

... is the name of Karen's blog. It almost goes without saying that I found her blog through a photograph on Flickr ;-):

Photo by Karen, Jazz Lawn Party on Governors Island, June 2009.

I'm not quite sure how I came across this picture, as I certainly did not search for terms like Jazz, Party or even Governors Island on Flickr. However, since I quite like certain flavours of Jazz and am generally interested in dance, the picture must have caught my eye. Karen has go a series of shots on Flickr of the Jazz Lawn Party event. The one above is one of my favourites. The frame is nicely filled with dancing people and a lot of them are actually facing the camera despite the randomness of the captured moment (so I cheekily claim please correct me if you read this and I'm wrong Karen). There is another great picture of a woman with a parasol; check out Karens Flickr site, it's somewhere on there!

Photo by Karen (I think?). Enough of the bantering about jazz garden parties that we unfortunately missed though. Another thing I found interesting on Karen's Flickr Page and her blog were her photographs of vintage dresses. While the photographs are not that great and technically perfect, the shown vintage dresses and accessories are indeed!

One of the dresses I love most is the one in the picture on the left since it reminds me of Raumpatrouille Orion, which is by the way my favourite SciFi TV series. It is in black & white and it is in German, sorry to about 6.7 billion non-German readers ;-). Anyways, the dress is cool and if I got her right, she is designing and sewing them herself, how cool is that?! If you are interested, you can buy the dresses from her online store.

She also writes an entertaining blog about vintage. She's got some old Vogue covers and patterns on there! I just love the 50ies and 60ies style. There is more on Vintage Vogue on an older post of mine, check it out and have fun!

York PhotoSoc - Competition Next

Following up from the post yesterday, here's my second favourite from the York PhotoSoc competition 2009.


Photo by Kerry Grainger 2009.

It is not very surprising (at least to me, as I am interested in doing more dance shootings like this one myself) that I like this photo: it's a great silhouette in natural lighting conditions, dynamic, about dance, and a cool outfit is involved!

Particularly the fact that the dancer's face and hand are lit, whilst everything else remains a nice silhouette adds this extra bit to this shot for me. Only thing is that there could be slighly more sky on the right hand side, but I suppose it takes quite a few shots anyways to capture the whole model in mid-air!

Check Kerry's Flickr page out, as there are more interesting shots like this one!