Breaking into heaven

Breaking into heaven, originally uploaded by Bexley98.

Hi ho...another slack few weeks of photography following my camping trip.

If you keep an eye on my flickr site, you'll notice I've been working a fair bit over the last few months with texture and toning. The effects can be beautiful and whilst I'm no master, I'm quite pleased with the shot above and a few other of my efforts.

My attempts pale in comparison to two flickr masters of toning, Lara Jade and Rosie Hardy. It's really rare that I'm genuinely moved by anything, but these two have the kind of photographic talent that you can't teach.

I will never be as good as they are....and whilst that's slightly dissapointing, it's enormous fun to try and also to be wowed by thier work. Despite her photographic maturity, Rosie just turned 18....and over the 200 or so photo's she has on her flickr site, you can see the evolution of her photographic style from fairly typical studenty 'teen' stuff to start with to jaw-droppingly, mind bendingly brilliant stuff in the last few months.

Rosie's work is made all the more emotive by the fact that she lives and studies photography in the UK and has a boyfriend, Aaron (also a phenominal photog) in the US. Their relationship runs as a kind of soundtrack to the photography on thier respective flickr sites and thier shared blog.

I've kept an eye on Lara's work since she featured in a UK photography magazine...I think it was Practical Photgraphy? Her work is arguably more gothic than Rosies...there's some wonderful interpretations of fairy tales in Lara's flickr portfolio, and her work is instantly identifiable, kinda art deco meets gothic....genius? We throw that word around a lot, but she is amongst the best.

It just makes me want to pick up my camera...