2010 April | Lara Jade Photography

Ever since I was a little girl I always dreamed of having my own wonderland to such an extreme I’d go searching for it.. I was brought up watching fantasy movies – I didn’t want to be Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty or Ariel, I wanted to be Alice and my dream was to find my own wonderland. I often wondered how I’d find it, I’d spend days thinking about a world far from this bland reality we called earth. I wondered if there was an escape, a void, a secret door, a hole in this world I could escape into. I didn’t care what was behind it, that was the fun part – I needed to find it. I wanted it so much I’d actually crawl underneath the small gap underneath my bunk bed to see if there was a secret world, I’d look inside the closet, past my grandma’s fur coats hoping to touch snow and feel the chill on my skin from Narnia, I’d make dens and tree houses in forests and role play a different world. I’d swim every Saturday underwater and see how long I could hold my breath, dance with my eyes closed and my ears filled with the sound of beautiful music: I’d make different worlds in different scenarios.

I am still that little girl, dreaming. However, I’ve come to realize what I was searching for was right in front of me, I can make my world, my vision – right in my camera. I may not be in it, but I can create my vision. I can take that vivid imagination, pinpoint the exact moment, sketch is down, write ideas and then put that image to life.

(Photo above is of me and my sister around the age of four & five playing dress up)

The last few months I’ve realized how powerful social media is – I’ve had the opportunity to experience the full extent of how powerful this is through networking and being around inspiring people. You only realize how small the world is when you meet a group of people who then get talking and they know someone else you know, it’s amazing when you think of how everyone is linked and this is mainly because of networking on the internet.

I am not ashamed to say how I’ve built up my base purely from the internet and using social media websites. I started off at the age of fourteen using the website DeviantART – it enabled me to interact with a well established community of artists from all different mediums. These people at the beginning are the ones that shaped me to the artist I am today, through criticism and encouragement and the constant following of my work whenever I took the next step. Later on I joined websites such as Flickr – which was a similar platform to engage with like-minded people and trawl through thousands of inspirational images. I still use these websites today – along with Twitter and recently I’ve started using Myspace again and I can 100 percent say that this is still a successful way of marketing myself and my work – it’s a form of encouragement and inspiration to say the least. If you’re reading this and you’re just starting – PLEASE look into using social media to get yourself started, join these websites, network, have fun! If you’re reading this and you’re a professional, then look into social media as a way of improving what you already have. Here’s a tip from me – “Don’t ever be satisfied with what you have. Push yourself, always try to better yourself”.

Only recently have I took the step to meet many of the people that have followed me or artists whose work I’ve admired – and it’s overwhelming how many of those people feel inspired by you and how ‘close’ you feel to them. I enjoy meeting new people, most of the people I’ve met have lead to a new door opening in my life in my work and personal life. We are all artists, we live and breathe the same air, we think the same, we spend countless hours stressing over how an image should look, we all get frustrated with the ‘starving artist’ element, we all want to be somebody, want to be unique. We ALL want to be ourselves but want to be known for being an individual. We put ourselves into our work.

LJ.

Childhood

The Power Of Social Media