Blogtacular-2015-FI
Inspiration

Blogtacular 2015 – The Lowdown

I was quite late to the party on Blogtacular last year, only finding out about it and buying my ticket a couple of weeks before the event but I was straight on it this year as soon as tickets were available. I mentioned in my last post that the blog has been a bit neglected recently and I was so excited for the Blogtacular 2015 weekend to arrive because I knew that I’d come home super inspired and ready to get back to it. And guess what? I did!

Blogtacular-2015-Panel

The weekend started with a train journey to London and a cheeky glass (or two) of wine. After a quick pit stop at the hotel I met up with Kim from Finest Imaginary (my first Blogtacular friend from last year) and we hit up Liberty (queue gasps at the prices of very expensive handbags rapidly replaced on the shelf) and Carnaby Street before heading over to the welcome dinner for Blogtacular attendees and meeting up with Nikki McWilliams for a good old catch up over amazing cocktails and delicious Thai food at Cha Cha Moon.

Despite knowing that we had to be up at 6am for the photowalk Kim and I had a fairly late night but still managed to drag ourselves out of bed the next day, sorted ourselves out with a coffee (Kim) and a McDonald’s breakfast (me) and headed over to the South Bank to meet the group.  The photowalk was led by the amazing Xanthe Berkeley and Samee Lapham and we split into two groups to wander round the surrounding area snapping away at anything interesting – and there was lots! The beauty of the modern age (or the curse depending on how you look at it) is that one photography device is not enough, so most of us were swapping between a DSLR and a smartphone (immediate instagrammage is so important!).

Here are some of my photos:

Blogtacular-Photowalk-1

Blogtacular-Photowalk-2

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After the walk we headed over to the Royal Institute for a quick cup of tea and the start of the main event. The first speaker of the day was Grace from Design Sponge who talked about how to get over your fears and embrace change, don’t overthink things and just do them and if they fail, learn from it and move on. A great start to inspire open mindedness for the rest of the day.

Blogtacular-2015-Design-Sponge

The next session I attended was Creativity & Inspiration by Marte Marie Forsberg and it absolutely lived up to its title. Listening to Marie talk about how she came to find her calling in life and, at 30, finally created for herself her dream career was truly inspirational. My favourite takeaway from the session was “we lose our energy to create something great if we are negative.” An important mantra for every day life.

Blogtacular-2015-Food-Styling

Later in the day I attended Marie’s Food Photography and Styling session which was equally as good and covered how to tell stories in your photographs through light, composition, colour and angles. Tips that can be applied to most photography, not just food. I already think you can see a difference in my instagram photos from putting some of this into practice.

Last up was the Styling With Betty Magazine session with Charlotte Jacklin and Charlotte Melling. They talked about how important it is to have references for a shoot and find your unique tone of voice to tell the story in your photographs.

At the end of the day came the goodie bags, this year’s bag was designed by Nikki who’d managed to keep it a secret until the announcement at the end of the day – super cute right? The bag also contained magazines, a Mollie Makes book and a life planner – a colab by the Blogtacular ladies and Lollipop Designs tailored specifically for bloggers to organise their posts, it’s so useful! There were loads more treats in there too – you can see some of them in the picture below.

Blogtacular-2015-Goodie-Bag

Blogtacular 2015 was, once again, a really amazing day and I came away with lots of new ideas and more blogger friends and contacts. I’ll be definitely be signing up for next year!

Bye for now, Cat x
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