Print. Sculpt. Stitch.

One of the fringe events the Friday afternoon with Blogtacular was that of the #photowalk. In my case I was put into the walk with Supal Desai [the creator of Chevrons & Eclairs where she blogs about her travels around the World as she works as a management consultant] meeting at Notting Hill Gate and making our way to The Portobello Hotel.

This was a wonderful little insight into the world of travel blogging, learning the techniques and the artistic eye that is needed to create the great images for a place you are working with. We first started outside of the Hotel with a talk from Supal over these points as we took photos of the lovely white building and bright flowers. We also had some portraits taken of the colourful attendees with some great tips on how to make for a more natural pose by moving and shifting your weight slowly as photos are taken, getting you out of your own head and making for a much less rigid pose.

We were then invited around the hotel, with the beautiful vibrant coloured walls and grand staircase entrance and a lovely tea room next to it, all greatly decorated with these iconic caricature pieces of artwork. We were also shown one of the uniquely designed rooms that one may stay at which was in this bold golden yellow colour and emanating this great vibe of luxury with the large rounded bed and draping canopy and a distinguished looking bathtub with array of pipes. All in all creating this wonderful looking Hotel that I would love to stay at.

Then sitting in the tea room we were given cream teas and freshly made warm scones, Supal went through the things a hotel would expect and the sort of process writers go through when working with them [or attempting to]. Make sure to put focus on a unique character that the hotel has whether that be the views, art or food and make sure to photograph these well. Something I need to develop and work on more within my own work is having people in the photos, doing things and engaging with the room.

We were then joined by a head of media with the hotel. He went through some of the tasks he goes through when faced with Bloggers wanting to work with them, in his case we are all under the same leaf with other written media such as magazine journalists. And so this does of course make our task more difficult to get as we may not be as well established as a large magazine such as Vogue would be.

All in all this was a superb show into the job of a travel blogger, something which I myself have no experience in and I would like to thank the Blogtacular team and Supal Desai for setting this up Photowalk up! Really makes me want to go out and explore more places and it really opened my eyes and made me think Should I be Going into Travel Blogging?