it is nearly midnight, i’m wearing countless layers of clothing plus a coat over it all, and this is my first experience with exploding fire up close. sissy is on the fourth floor sleeping like the tired baby she is and i’m slightly worried all this noise is going to awake her and she’ll cry because i’m not next to her, but down here. i am holding tightly the nearest person to me as i am cold but also i wasn’t sure how loud all of this was going to be. it’s dark so no one knows who everyone is, and faces don’t matter. suddenly, we all jump because grandpapa didn’t warn us when he would light up the fire but then it was just all sorts of wonderful blindness after that. it finishes really quickly, you know. there is supposedly two thousand something fireworks in a pack but that is barely a minute of exploding time. we climb back up with deaf ears and colour in our eyes.

i recently started a blog (life with lula) consisting of the many everyday photos i took on my phone, words and thoughts and questions and answers. my phone is always with me, so it acts like my camera when it’s not around and a memo for ideas when i know i won’t remember it later on. i thought it was necessary to separate the professional work from the photos taken on the sidelines but i’ve been getting requests to update this blog more than i do, and i also got an iphoneography job (more on that later when i feel like i’ve established a proper concrete ground for it) for maybelline new york, which kind of made me realise that any kind of pictures is pictures. so i’m combining the two blogs together - expect much more posts.

meantime, here’s a few favourites ranging from quite some time ago to yesterday.

(the great wall. it was snowing that day so the climb down began a mini skiing adventure. all i remember was not being able to feel my hands.)

(strangers looking at snow)

(roadtrip in october)

(december bonfire)

(driving up a nearby suburb in sydney on a sunny day)

(amy camping under the school library air-conditioning instead of attending english class on a hot day)

(newly renovated starbucks on george st, sydney)

(kids at the aquarium)

(school yard in spring)

i am currently having my first ever experience with snow since i was six years old. it’s so magical; a little part of me is continually trying to convince the other greater part to calm down and to remind her that it isn’t all that terribly fascinating. but it is. i’m visiting my grandparents’ hometown, though i’ve been to so many cities here in asia already that i’ve lost count and direction. but i never tend to remember by names, only by memory. it’s really amazing to travel; it’s probably the only understandable excuse to temporarily remove yourself from all the attaching strings and commitments. ever since september, i have been shooting commercially and purely for commission non-stop. it got to a point where it would be considered a rest for me finally when i don’t have a camera in my hands. i know it shouldn’t be that way, but knowing the things around me too well often makes me feel like they’re not that special to photograph. that’s the problem with over-comfort, you have this permanent idea that they will always be there. then, the excitement in you dies as the familiarity grows. the hardest part for me was finding the courage to swallow that sense of unsettlement. for a while i just wasted time like it was nothing even i obviously knew it wasn’t nothing but actually in fact everything. then luckily i just woke up one day and had the urge to run. run so fast, i could eventually, somehow catch up to all the time i have lost. and i don’t really like to prefer physicality over emotions but in this case, distance is momentous. i think it’s one of the reasons why ‘far away’ has such a thrilling and positive connotation. being far from where i normally am has gradually brought back the very precious fervour in me that i hadn’t experienced in a while. 

i spent christmas and the days that followed in beijing and it was incredibly cold. i don’t think sydney has ever gotten minus degree weather and i guess i wasn’t totally prepared for it, spending the first couple of days sick in bed. then snow came, and i became a prancing pony. 

i hope you all had a very lovely holiday season. 2011 was such a crazy ride and i think partly it was because i decided to go along with the flow. just before the january hit, i visited a place in which traditions said it would give you whichever you chose: wealth, leadership/fame or happiness. i’m not exactly sure how much i believe in these kind of things but i chose happiness anyway because it kind of represents everything. 2012 will mark the eighteenth year, the end of school and more discoveries and failures in which leads to lessons. but i’m not limiting the year; anything is possible. it will be your year if you believe it will. 

(connecting flight got cancelled and so i spent an extra day in the same clothes, barely getting any sleep in a nearby hotel because the wakeup call was 5am)

(sissy pressed up against the hotel window glass)

(first day of snow when it barely covered the ground with white)

(a bed in which i occasionally crash in)

see, here’s one of the problems with society. we’re sometimes too comfortable with what we have that we stop looking for more. it’s a human habit to stay safe instead of welcome the strange with open arms. we often look around and think, “well, this is all i need right?”, but then kick ourselves when we realise that it’s tragic how blind we’ve been. and it’s so, so much better, and you ask “where’ve you been all my life?” 

sorry i was away for a few weeks, i’ve been living and learning and discovering. summer is here in sydney, but this year i’ll be having a white christmas (finally).

these two pictures hold quite some meaning. it was a night in september, we were three hours out of the city, in a small town when we stumbled upon a party in a nearby forest. it wasn’t a party really, more just this unity of people i don’t know. it was so dark that i couldn’t see where i was going, and my god the air was cold. but every hand and fingers i felt was numb too and somehow knowing that you weren’t alone is comforting and makes it all okay. we jumped up and down in mud and pretended to smoke with our dragon breath. the next morning, i drank the strongest coffee i could get because i slept way too late and woke way too early and i remember a nearby girl with this perfect, straight fall of a plait in her hair and her younger sister was jealous of how pretty it was, and their argument with each other went on forever and ever. it was so clear in my head - one of those random memories that just sticks - because it was funny that by the end of it all, they were crying and when their mother asked them why they were so unhappy, they couldn’t remember.

on my last day in new york, i left manhattan for brooklyn to shoot with kayla. we wondered through the main street of gates avenue with a bag filled with printed tees, sitting on stranger’s house stairs and then took shelter outside a child care centre when it began to rain (hence the wet patches and wet hair in the two portraits in front of the brick wall). we watched it pour for a while, but eventually i shot anyway because my camera’s been through worse weather conditions. after that, the sun began to make a cameo now and then. that day i also discovered a brilliant vintage shop in brooklyn, where everything was cheaper than $20. i visited during their ‘half price off everything’ special and it was heaven. i took the subway back to my hotel and i am still so proud of how i got back: purely blindly guessing all my transfer trains.

that night was the wrap up party and we had drinks in the library room @ the hudson. the next day everyone was heading to different places. we laughed, talked in circles and afterwards, jess gave us the biggest hug i’ve probably ever experienced. i still don’t know how to exactly describe my time at NYFW but this video pretty much sums up the amazing craziness:

pictures from the shoot:

model: kayla graninger @ direct

a few night earlier, I was with willie and karla and we were pretty high on energy. we went up to the roof of the soho house where they were fairy lights everywhere, a magnificent view of the city, a pool and to top it off, a girl came over to us and swore that she just saw a shooting star in the sky. I sat there and in a split second, something sunk in. believe it or not, that was the first official time since I came that I believed that I was in new york. 

two big jam-packed exhilarating weeks in NYC has made me feel right at home. it seems like I had been there my entire life and I know of no other schedule. it’s crazy to think that I’ve left already. I already miss everything about the city, but especially about living out of a suitcase, the many turns of corridors to get to my room, the bagels, the food in general, the continuous shutter setting on my camera when I’m shooting runway, the rooftop of the hudson hotel, the fashion shows, the ninety percent of my life spent in traffic, the energy, the bright lights, the 24 trading hours, inspiration around every corner and most importantly the tumblr 20 and every single person I met along the way. when you’re surrounded with crazily, talented artists, you can’t wish you were anywhere else. I am going to make sure that I visit often simply because nothing can compares to it.

this trip has given me the chance to do what I’ve always wanted: shoot every day, every minute, non-stop and nothing else. 

(outside MILK studios)

(tumblr boys in a circle at dinner)

(backstage passes)

(band @ the gretchen jones presentation)

(jess in the back of a cab)

(opening ceremony’s fashion night out)

(top two; nyc at night)

giving you a temporary escape from fashion week and letting you see the city that I’ve been living in for the past days.  I finally got to explore central park with jess when we could squeeze it between our shows. new york is really, really beautiful.

(night time)

(view from tumblr hotel lounge)

(view from the 18th floor @ hudson hotel)

(top three: central park)

(top two: baseball game @ central park)