President Palin.

I can’t believe that anybody is taking her seriously as a vice presidential candidate. I’d love to see a female in the White House, but would never vote for someone just because the candidate wears lipstick (pig, pitbull or otherwise). This woman stands for everything I am against. And I don’t like hockey either.

After seeing this interview with Matt Damon on the subject, I promise never to say his name again in the manner in which it is said in Team America.

The whole McCain/Palin campaign is riddled with hypocrisy. McCain saw that the people were responding to Obama’s “Change we can believe in” message. So what does he do? He starts running the same message. The question is, does anybody out there really believe it? Does anybody look at McCain and think, “Yes, that is a man who inspires me with hope”? When I look at him, I think that I really should be paying more into my pension fund.

As for Palin and her anti-choice views, Jon Stewart said it best on The Daily Show when he pointed out that, when Palin made the statement that it was her 17-year-old daughter’s decision to keep the baby, decision is another word for choice. Who gives her the right to make that choice for the rest of America?

I’ll end my mini-rant with a note to my country people: as an American who has been living in the UK for ten years, I believe that we now have the chance to correct the world’s view of the USA with one action: vote for Obama/Biden. It’s not just America that needs it.

I had an interesting shoot the other day. Inspired by the shoot I did with Kerrie Keeling for my online magazine, Adam Brindle, owner of yourgardener.com, wanted to do something stylish and fun to promote his business. We decided to go for a very fashion style image, to get across the idea that his company employed a different kind of gardener. I should probably mention now that I’ll be shooting a nude, “calendar girls” style calendar for Adam and his boys in the near future in aid of breast cancer research. Don’t worry, girls - I’ll let you know where you can get a copy!

Wedding photographers commonly refer to this time of year as the “Silly Season” because it’s really busy. The thing is that Silly Season seems to be getting longer and longer…mine started in January and I can see it stretching to December! But it’s great to be busy.

The only problem is that I haven’t had time to post a lot, but I’ve got loads to share with you in the next few weeks, including a few pics from a recent trip to Italy and the cake I mentioned in one of my other entries (the bride used pics from our pre-wedding shoot on the cake).  

In the meantime, I thought I’d put up just a couple recent photos from one city and one country pre-wedding shoot. Enjoy!

Sometimes, I really love my job. One of those such times was about a week ago, when I was on a pre-wedding shoot with one of my couples. Like I did, they are having a movie-themed wedding. They’re even getting married at Bafta.

But the best part of it is that my pre-wedding photos are going to be printed onto their wedding cake. With that in mind, we decided to do a 40’s movie-themed shoot so that the cake could have a selection of images of them pretending to be in different movies.

Everyone who knows me knows I’m a complete film nut, so I was looking forward to this shoot. I stuck my overcoat and Bergman-esque black trilby into a bag and away I went. We shot in the Tower Bridge/London Bridge area and had loads of fun while we were doing it. Even the reluctant groom got into it after the first few shots.

Needless to say, the couple loved the images. Even the bride’s mum wrote to me to tell me how delighted she was. It’s always good to keep the parents happy, too! Here are a few of the shots from the day. And don’t worry…I’ll post pics of the cake after the wedding.

Word is starting to get around about the charity wedding ball I’m throwing in November, so I thought I’d better blog about it. The idea behind THE BIG I DO REDO is to get Britain back into their wedding outfits in order to raise money for Pancreatic Cancer UK. As many people know, I met Patrick Swayze on The Oprah Winfrey Show last year. When he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, I decided to dedicate some time to fundraising for a UK-based pancreatic cancer charity. Deciding to stick to what I know, I came up with the idea of a charity wedding ball.

The event will be held at the fabulous ANdAZ Liverpool Street. Tickets are currently on sale and going fast, so if you are interested, click here for details. 

We are raising money in a number of ways. First is through a big wedding auction on eBay. Wedding Suppliers across the UK are donating their services and products to be auctioned to the highest bidder. We already have donations from Cliveden House,  Giles Sherlock Event Design, Swarovski and SWAG, to name a few. I am donating 3 post-wedding “I DO REDO” photo shoots. If you are a wedding supplier and would like to donate something, please email us.

We are also asking couples across the country to resell items from their weddings. The tiara you’ll never wear again. The shoes that are gathering dust. Even the dress, if you’re up for it. On eBay, you can choose to donate anywhere from 10-100% of the profits to Pancreatic Cancer UK. 

Finally, although we are having THE BIG I DO REDO in London, people around the country are encouraged to throw MINI I DO REDOs. It’s kind of like a Macmillan Coffee Morning, but at night and with alcohol. 

We’re all really excited about this event and hope that it will capture the imaginations of the nation. There are so many ways to get involved that there are no excuses! And if you are worried about getting back in your dress again, you can find some advice here on helpful ways to fit back into your gown. Coming soon on my You Tube site, you’ll be able to watch my first attempt in three years to squeeze into it. It was scary.

Anyway, thanks for reading…now let’s get fundraising!

Apologies to all my loyal blog readers for breaking the number one cardinal sin of blogging: not doing it often enough! The good news is that’s because we’re really busy right now. To make up for it, I’ll post a blog per day over the next few days.

Anyway, back to business. Here are some images from a wedding I shot at the Mandarin Oriental in early May. You can even read about the couple in the London Paper here. It was a beautiful wedding. The thing about Julian and Stella was that they were both up for anything when it came to the photography. Playing on the oriental theme, I did some research and found that origami actually started in China, not Japan. So I set Kate (my assistant) the task of making loads of origami birds, which I then hung from a rope to surround the bride for a photograph. Of course, I couldn’t ignore the groom, so I had some fun with him too. It had come out during our pre-wedding shoot that he really loved reading Brides magazine, so I bought a copy and shot him with it.

Yesterday, James phoned me, sounding like an excited schoolboy. “Do you want to do something naughty?” he said. At this point my mind started to race, thinking about what forbidden fruit he had in mind. “There are a couple tickets left to the premiere of Indiana Jones at midnight. Do you want to go?”

So we went. Along with a host of Fedora-wearing fans.

The anticipation in the cinema was intense. Even the Renault ad got a cheer from the crowd (please note the Sex and the City and Mamma Mia! trailers got the opposite reaction).  Soon the familiar Paramount Pictures mountain appeared, indicating the ride was about to begin.

Are you familiar with the phrase “when the gods want to punish us, they answer our prayers”? Well, that’s a pretty good way to describe my feelings about Indy IV. Since the rumours started to circulate three years ago that another Indiana Jones was on the cards, I’ve been excited about it. After all, this was the film series that made me want to be an archaeologist as a little girl (we can all see how well that worked out).

So what’s the problem? What wasn’t a problem is a better question. After George Lucas ruined the Star Wars franchise, I was a little worried about his involvement with Indy IV. But, et tu, Stephen?

I’m just going to have to come out and say it. If you don’t want to know, stop reading now. Indiana Jones has always been about Nazis, Judeo-Christian myth, good versus evil, and great one-liners. So where did the freakin’ aliens come from?

That’s right. Aliens.

The plot, in a nutshell, is that Indiana Jones finds a crystal skull that turns out to be an alien skeleton head. When the head is returned to the body, shit happens. Along the way, he is reunited with long-lost love Marion Ravenwood from Raiders and her son, played by a Marlon Brando-esque Shia La Boeuf. A quick note on Karen Allen’s acting: she’s been a yoga teacher since Raiders. It shows.

I’ve been reading all the interviews in Empire with the Indy IV production team. Speilberg kept saying that they were staying true to the Indy tradition of storytelling, doing real action sequences and avoiding CGI.

Avoiding CGI? So they actually cast all those flesh-eating ants and the comedy-value gophers? I remember the good old days when a snake was a snake, a bug was a bug, and a rat was a rat. Sigh. There are more examples, but I can’t be asked to go into them.

I think the biggest problem is that, instead of being taken along on a journey with well-developed characters, we were bombarded with plot points, shallow bad guys and even shallower good guys. It felt more like an excuse for Lucas and Spielberg to make references to all their past films, like Encounters and American Grafitti, than a proper film.

Let’s be honest with ourselves. The entire purpose of the film was to set up Shia La Boeuf as the inheritor of the Fedora, as Harrison Ford hangs up his whip to sip cocktails by the pool with Calista Flockhart.

If I knew someone in the cast and I had to say something nice to him about the film, I’d say that I liked Indy’s reaction when he saw Marion again and the fridge thing was pretty funny. And I suppose the CGI gophers were cute.

So, my verdict?  See it, but don’t expect to love it. I won’t be buying it on DVD. And I’m definitely going to stop praying for another Back to the Future. 

Today is a very exciting day. It is the day that Julia Boggio Photography is launching both our new in-house, on-line magazine and our YouTube site, where you can see behind-the-scenes footage from photo shoots.

The concept behind the magazine is that it is a gathering place for the Julia Boggio Photography community. You can learn more about some of the other interesting people who use us for all their photographic needs. As a benefit to our community, only clients are allowed to be featured or write for the magazine. Also, it gives me a chance to flex both my writing and my photography muscles, two things that I love to do.

So, without further adieu, here it is. Comments and suggestions for the Autumn/Winter issue are welcome. Enjoy!

Aside from my joy at hearing that a Cranford Christmas special is on the cards, I am absolutely ecstatic and full of anticipation for May 22. Yes, it’s the day that Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull hits the big screen around the world. I still remember when I saw Raiders for the first time in 1981. After that, all I wanted was to be an archeologist. My moniker was going to be New Jersey Julia. (This lasted until Top Gun came out. Then I wanted to be a fighter pilot and flip the bird at migs. I’m not sure how I ended up in advertising).

Last night we had our neighbours around for a couple glasses of wine and some cheese. Inevitably, Indiana Jones came up in conversation and my neighbour Amy said, “I love the bit where he walks over the people in the subway station.” The room descended into silence for a moment until James pointed out that she was thinking of Crocodile Dundee. Crocodile Dundee, for god’s sake! I summarily marched her out the front door clutching the Indiana Jones trilogy and told her not to show her face again until she could answer the following questions:
1) What animal is Indiana afraid of?
2) Which Star Wars characters are etched into back wall in the Well of Souls?
3) Where did Dr Henry Jones, Jr. get his nickname Indiana?

This whole debacle has reminded me of a conversation that James and I had a couple weeks ago, funnily enough, about Indiana Jones. I declared that it was going to be the film event of the year. James then informed me that film pundits are saying they thought the film might struggle to engage a new generation of filmgoer. (Cue the Lego computer game version of the film that’s being made). I suppose that if Amy, who is only 5 years younger than me, failed to catch Indy Fever as a kid, then it’s very possible that Indiana Jones is - gulp - a mark of my generation. Sort of like when my mom swoons over William Holden and I say who? 

Perhaps my love of Indiana Jones borders on obsession. After all, we did walk down the aisle to it at our wedding (on a string quartet, of course. We kept it classy ;o) James and I are also toying with the idea of asking the local Odeon if we can sponsor a fancy-dress viewing of the film. I just love that B-movie sense of adventure, the romance, the humour and hunky Harrison (although I’ve recently realised he’s only one year younger than my dad). For all those Indiana Jones fans out there and Amy, bring on May 22! And I can’t wait until he says that famous line, “That’s not a knife…”

Once a year, I like to spend a week with my mentor, Martin Grahame-Dunn of Illuminatus Now , to make sure I’m heading in the right direction with my photography. This year’s course was built around the goal of aspiring to fellowship, which is the highest degree of qualification with the Master Photographers Association, British Institute of Professional Photography, and the SWPP. There are three levels of qualification: licentiate, associateship and fellowship. Currently, I am at the associate level with all three boards and will be building my portfolio to go for fellowship next year.

I flew out to Spain for the course with fellow photographers Milad Hussain and John Baikie. John’s girlfriend Natalie came along as well to be our model. That’s me stomping on her in the picture above (photo by Martin).

Although we were in the lovely environs of Spain, we spent the majority of our time in intense photographic training. Of course, they hadn’t had rain in a while, so it started pouring as soon as we arrived. I seem to have that effect on dry countries. That meant we were confined to the studio for many of our shoots, instead of going out into the countryside. However, I think this was a blessing in disguise; being in the studio really challenged us to think of new ways to photograph Natalie. 

One of the most intriguing things to come out of the week was how different our three styles were. Same model, same lights, same space, completely different shots. For those who are interested in seeing the full portfolio of work we created with in-depth lighting diagrams and our thoughts about training for fellowship, our book, Nothing but Natalie, will be available to purchase within the next month. I’ll post details when it’s ready.

Anyway, below is a taster of the images I shot of Natalie. Enjoy!