[-JERRYCOOKE PHOTOGRAPHY-]

Well, it’s a busy, exciting time at the moment. I can divide everything into four equal sections. In date order, they are:

Firstly - Skating: Saturday is the national style slalom championships and I’ll be travelling up to London to compete. I’ll be heading up on Friday and coming back on Sunday. I’ve got less than a week to train up and work out my routine, so I’m getting a little stressed out about it. Ho hum, I’m sure that I’ll be fine and I’m not particularly worried about placing highly (though it would be nice to at least equal the 4th place I managed last time).

Secondly – Birthday: It’s exactly one month till my 20th birthday. I’ll be having my traditional beach party (I guess it’ll be my last one)!

Thirdly – “The Move”: In just over a month, Mum and I  will be moving to our beautiful new house in Cornwall. Most of me is looking forward to the move (the new house is far nicer than this one), but a small part of me is sad to leave this house that has been my home for the last three years. The best part is that I’ve got a brand new room (one that’s a whole 2 foot bigger than my current one), with four shiny bright new white walls which I can cover with photography. I’m also going to have a broadband connection strait into my room, which will be fab! I’m planning to have a “house-cooling” party to say goodbye to this place and then a “house-warming” for the new house when I’m settled!

Finally – Photography: I’ve had my new camera set to full manual recently, so that I can improve my knowledge of using apepture/shutter speed/ISO corretly. I’ve also been using my 35mm more and more, in the past two weeks, I’ve shot six rolls of film. The ironic thing is that I wanted a 35mm because I felt like it was cheating, using the cameras auto settings all the time, but now I use the digital in manual mode and the 35mm in auto. Go figure. Anyway, hopefully all this extra practice will do a little to help my university applications in a couple of weeks.

That’s all for now! I’ll give some feedback about the IFSA nationals once I get back after the weekend.

On Friday, Mum and I trekked down to Cornall (For Non-UK Users – Cornwall is a peninsula in the extreme South-West of the UK) to check out our new house in Redruth (Midway between the North and South coasts of the region). Redruth is a little town (smaller than Exmouth) and our new house is just off the main street and is placed conveniently between a cinema and a supermarket.

It’s a beautiful little house, a renovated cottage. It’s got a lovely modern, yet friendly décor, with new white walls, yet plenty of exposed beams and original stonework. The living room has lovely fire-place with an old railways sleeper as mantle. The bathroom is pretty big with a fab big bath! I’ve got the smaller of the two rooms (mum’s got to fit her gohonzen and piano in hers), but it’s got broadband and TV piped in. It’s got a nice big window with exposed stone-work around the outside. It’s also got a funky little fire-place! The best bit for me is finally having a home internet connection, now I’ll finally be able to chat to my friends at uni in Wales plus I can actually upload pictures from home :p I really like the kitchen, nice worktops! Plus it’s open plan, so that the space feels far bigger.

We’re going to be moving at the start of September, so I’ve decided I’m gonna have to have a ‘house-cooling’ for when we leave here and a ‘house-warming’ for when we move into the new place. Two excuses for a party :p

The only variable next is whether I can get a place at Falmouth Uni to do ‘Photography’ (top of my list) or Truro for ‘Photography and Digital Imaging’ (my back-up option) or Pool for ‘Digital Imaging’ (My back-up back-up). If I don’t get into any of those three (I can’t imagine why I wouldn’t, my portfolio is pretty good and I’m certainly determined) I’ve decided that I’ll spend a year doing normal, contracted work two days a week to make up the rent and spend the rest of the week doing photography (freelance paid work and non-paid ‘self-advancement’ stuff) and then apply for the 2007 cycle when applications open in September.

The bad news is that my IXUS was (is) still being repaired when I went down, so I couldn’t take any digital pics of Redruth and Falmouth. The good news is that I managed to find a mint-condition Canon Sureshot Supreme 35mm in a second-hand shop. Was a brilliant find! Only cost me £3 and it was in ‘as-new’ condition with original leather case and fully charged battery. It’s got a nice autofocus and auto-advance, though it’s a little loud. The thing I found funny is that it was produced in 1986, the year I was born. I bought a few rolls of film (unfortunately I managed to ruin one of them, since I’ve not used a 35mm in years) which I’m getting processed onto CD and will be ready by Tuesday (so you’ll have to wait till then to see the shots. The other bad news it that I only found the camera ‘after’ we’d gone to look at the house, so I’ve not any shots of the house itself.