The next photobook I want to buy is Venetia Dearden's Somerset Stories: Fivepenny Dreams. Recently published by Kehrer Verlag, it is a portrait of the inhabitants of Somerset, a county in England's West Country. Recording the close connection between the people and the land, most of these photos are of farmers and caravaners. These moving photos show a world that is slowly disappearing as development encroaches on their peaceful idyll. Secretly (actually not so secretly) I have always wanted to live on a farm and be completely self-sufficient, and this book solidifies this desire- I always talk of settling down in upstate New York or on my mother's family farm in North Carolina but these photos have made me incredibly homesick for England so maybe I'll have to think about settling there. One thing is for sure- next summer when we go to visit England I want to take my boyfriend on a road trip around the countryside as it has been far too long since I've been out there. We're going to London in a week but we don't have enough time to go out of town, so definitely next summer...
All photos Copyright © 2009 Venetia Dearden from PDN.I've been thinking about combining my two blogs as I have found that the things I want to write about cannot always be clearly labeled as just fashion or just photography, so I end up having trouble deciding where to put certain posts. My other blog originally started as a place to only put my photographs and any news about my photography, but I began to post other photographer's work also and then other subjects that weren't fashion related. Then I began to feel that many of these other subjects belonged on this blog as they are sometimes design related and are always inspirational, so the blogs have become a bit muddled, at least in my mind. I need to do a complete re-design of the blog and I want to move platforms from Blogger, possibly to Wordpress. I also need to do a re-design of my website so I am looking for both a great web designer and graphic designer- they need to be affordable as I'm unemployed at the moment, but I am pretty desperate and can trade my photography skills for some help. If anyone has any ideas, please send them my way- thanks!