Saturday 26th June saw Disco Fever take over the Kalamunda Club, with party goers attending in bright colours, reflective sequins & big hair to raise funds for this year’s upcoming Zig Zag Festival.

The volunteers that make up the Zig Zag Community Arts committee, & the Friends of the Festival too, work tirelessly to bring together the performers, stalls, parade & food that we have loved over the past 25 Zig Zag Festivals.  Even if you can’t spare them an hour of your time during the year to assist them in person, you can still help them by participating in the events & specials that raise the funds to help finance their events.

The 70s Night held at the Kalamunda Club was one such fundraiser.  As such, I’m donating 10% of all sales made between 1st July until 30th September 2010 to the Zig Zag Community Arts for this year’s festival.  That’s right – everything from my Cambodia & China categories, as well as my fine art prints are all having 10% of their sale price go directly to the Zig Zag Community Arts.  Not 10% of the profit, but 10% of the overall purchase price!

And as an added bonus, photos from the 70s Night & from this year’s Bushdance have a special discount rate for prints due to being organised by the Zig Zag Community Arts Inc.  These discounted prices are only available between the 1st July until 30th September 2010 & are only valid on photographs from those two events.

Saturday night saw the the absolutely fabulous time warp to the feverish 70s, held by Zig Zag Community Arts. Featuring live sets by Flashback & special guests, including Songstresses Roxy & Sophie, violinist Rebecca, horns by Gerrard & Michelle, & harmonies by the Chicken Supremes, the dance floor only emptied when the band were on break & everyone was eating!

The Kalamunda Club filled with 180 disco divas, hippies & a few punks for a night of fabulous music, games & fundraisers for the upcoming Zig Zag Festival 2010. The costumes, fashions & wigs were totally far out!!

But what 70s night would be complete without that quintessential song from Saturday Night Fever? Flashback broke into the BeeGee’s reknowned Staying’ Alive & the crowd whooped in delight! But better still was the boy who stole the floor – wearing The White Suit & dancing Travolta’s famous moves was Steven Donovan. He owned the dance floor; the crowd formed a semi-circle, surrounding him & the band as they cheered him on. Certainly one of my favourite highlights from the night!! Stephen was absolutely fabulous!

For a sneak peak at the photos I took on the night, head on over to my facebook page. Feel free to tag yourself if you’re there!
There are many more photos to come & will be hosted here, at dragancaor.net

Head on over to RedBubble to take advantage of 10% off canvases & framed prints!

Thanks to the power of the internet, you don’t even have to get your calculator out either! All you need to do is choose a lovely print - the 10% has already been taken off & the price you see is freshly discounted.

What better way to have a Wintry Sale than to add discount onto discount? Ask me for a discount code to use at the check-out to receive a further 10% off – yep, that’s a great big, friendly 20% off!

   

~ ♥ ~
These discounted prices are only available until
7am (GMT+8) Wednesday 23rd June 2010.
~ ♥ ~

Is there a particular photograph of mine that you’d like printed & don’t see at my RedBubble profile?
Ask me & I’ll upload it for you.

Boeung Tonlé Sap, or Tonlé Sap Lake, is the largest freshwater floodplain lake in the world. Unique to the Tonlé Sap, twice a year the flow of the river that feeds it changes direction.

15km from the town of Siem Reap, floating on the waters of the Boeung Tonlé Sap, is the village of Chong Khneas. A village with its way of life deeply intertwined with the lake, the wildlife and the cycles of rising and falling waters.

This 60 page hardcover photobook takes a glance into the way of life of the people of the floating village of Chong Khneas.

Available from Blurb Books online for (AUD)$89.95 plus postage.

Read the rest of this entry »

Zig Zag Community Arts are at it again!!

On 14th March, they brought Stirk Park, Kalamunda, to life with music & laughter; this time with a range of musical sounds from performers NumGuts Bush Band & Black Chook Chutney.

Dances were demonstrated by Jenny, flautist of NumGuts, & called by Tony & Kevin, also of Numguts, & the crowd picked them up quickly. Young & old alike took to the grassy dance floor, slowly at first but with increasing flair & vigor.  A brand new dance, designed by Mike of Zig Zag Arts, graced the park with it’s depiction of the old Zig Zag railway line.

Photographs from the evening are available to view within the main gallery.

[right: Tony performs with his band, Numguts]

Now that I’ve finished studying my shiny new diploma of makeup for film, theatre & media, I’ve been spending a fair bit of my time back working on my Shoe Project.

This week I’ve collected most of my related photographs onto my spare hard-drive & have subfoldered them into categories relation to the type of shoe or it’s state of disrepair. There are a number still to retrieve from backup drives & a lot still to process from last year. It’s sad how many are left to do, but it’s a personal project so it holds the lowest priority rating of my processing folders. However I’ve had a bit of a break this week & have gotten through processing over a thousand mostly personal shots. I’m rather happy with that.

Along with all of that processing, I’ve managed to get in a couple of shoots for the Shoe Book.  After finding a home published job for sale online that used my own words from the forum on this website & from my Livejournal, I was feeling rather flat & uninspired to continue it.  But a few good friends pointed out all the work I’ve put in so far, & pressed me hard to keep going.  So this year that is my priority.  There will be as many related shoots as I can fit in, & all my spare time will be spent working on it.  After all, there’s four years of work in it so far.

I’ve uploaded a small selection to my gallery.  These include photographs of shops (with permissions) & shoes from a mixture of booked & spur of the moment shoots.  Many thanks to all of the random strangers who have granted me leave to photograph their feet instead of running away screaming from the strange girl with a large camera!  Not just Perth either – I have quite a solid number from my trip to Beijing last year.

The other night I had the opportunity to photograph the pair of Red Shoes that have a story I will never forget.  That’s them above, along with the piano that goes with them.  Yes, you read that right; they’re a matched pair.  Those shoes haven’t been wearable for about a decade, but their owner is not intending to part with them any time soon.  She still has a mischievous glint in her eye when she tells their story.

And therein lies much of the point to the book.  The stories & desire behind a pair of shoes, or the compulsive need to own as many as possible.   As my mother & her best friend both say, “If the shoe fits, buy it in every colour.”

A few people have emailed me lists of their shoes, &/or photos of them all lined up, so that I can start planning shoots around them.  If you’d like to have your shoes & their anecdotes involved please drop me an email,  draganin at dragancaor dot net.  No matter their state of wellbeing or how ‘boring’ they might appear.

Alternatively, over at Livejournal you can leave a reply on one (or all) of three posts regarding this project.   Anecdotes are being collected here.  There are also  two questionnaires; an overview of your shoes & one that relates specifically to Chuck Taylors by Converse.

Friday 13th November was more red than black out west in Scarborough this year.

The Australian College of Beauty Therapy’s Diploma of Fashion, Theatre & Media Makeup students hit the popular tourist beach; armed with sunblock, brushes, latex, adhesive…. & a few bottles of stage blood!  Council & surf life savers forewarned & at the ready, the girls & their models trekked from as far as Toodyay, Rockingham & Roleystone to Perth’s best-known beach with the sole plan of doing some gore-some makeup & having fun in the process!

Heads turned & questions were asked,  the students assayed the public’s fears & let them know it was all makeup.  A couple of friendly boarders were willing to join in one makeup shoot & pose as the rescuers (left), all the while yelling, “Help!  Life guards!  Shark!”  & waving their arms.

The Diploma girls proved that no one was safe from shark bites when they didn’t stay between the flags; victims ranged from a 6 year old boy, through to adults in their mid twenties – even a washed up mermaid.

Working covered by shirts, hats & numerous reapplications of sunblock, they remained working under the shade of the gazebos until each makeup was complete but for the final, location reliant, touches.  Preventing burn & staying hydrated was forefront in everyone’s mind.

After a hearty barbecue lunch, complete with a variety of salads, the girls packed up, cleaned up & headed home, their presence at the beach no more than memory & captured photographs.

Thank you very much to the Rangers & to the Surf Lifesavers at Scarborough for making the day possible!

To view the full set of photographs, click here or the class (photo above) to be taken to the gallery album.

Lately it seems almost everyone I know has at least one pair of “Chucks” or a fake.

For my shoes book  it’s starting to look like the good old Converse Chuck Taylor All Star (“Chuck” for short) are going to take up a chapter to themselves.  Now, believe me, I don’t mind that at all… but I figured if there’s going to be a chapter on them, then I want serious amounts of words strewn in there amongst them too as to why there is an entire chapter on just one shoe design in so many flavours.

I’ve done up a little questionnaire for people to answer with regard to this shoe type & have hosted it on my Livejournal account.  I’d greatly appreciate it if you could take the time to answer the questions – even if it’s just to tell me that you don’t own any & why!  Pass the link to this questionnaire around to your friends & anyone else you know who might be interested in taking part. The more answers, from the most diverse range possible, the better!

In addition to this, if you live in Perth, Western Australia (or near enough that you can travel here) I’d love to photograph you in/with your Chucks.  There are a number of shoots being lined up later this month & over the next few after that, that are centred entirely on this single model of shoe.

Some of the photographs from my recent trip to China are beginning to trickle through the processing & reach the site.  There’s just under 5,000 photographs to get through, though some of those are my holiday shots so will end up printed for my albums & wont be going into the gallery.

First to go up are the photographs from the Mu Tian Ya section of the Great Wall of China.  Mu Tian Ya is about a 2.5 hour drive from Beijing, though that’s certainly dependent on the time of day & amount of traffic. Peak Hour in Beijing is second to none.

It was beautiful up there; sunny & hot, roughly a 34 degree day (that’s 93.2 fahrenheit for those of you not using the metric system) but the shade inside the guard towers was at least 10 degrees less, the ancient stones keeping the cool. The smog/haze wasn’t the greatest, but certainly wasn’t as bad as Beijing was 6 days later.  The Chinese characters painted on the mountain [apparently] read “Honest Mu Tian Ya” – while I can speak a little Mandarin, I cannot (yet) read it.

Mu Tian Ya has been open to the public for 12 years. It’s not overly touristed, like Ba Da Ling is, but it’s definitely getting there. Read the rest of this entry »