Polaroid Child

 On the 14th December, my latest single 'The Fear Won't Go Away' came out on Soundcloud for all to hear. It is completely self produced and one of my favourite songs I've written in a long time. This year has been a rollarcoaster of emotions for everyone. With the lockdowns bringing about feelings of loneliness and friends passing away, this song really refelcts a lot of I've felt this year. The lyrics are a combination of old messages that were sent by old friends and the emotions I feel while reading them. I really do hope that everyone has enjoyed listening to this song that means ever so much to me.  Recently on this blog, I've written a lot about grief and how it has effected my life over the past few years. Creating music to help express the emotions that I have been feeling has helped bring some sort of relief. The feedback that has been recieved from previous posts has also been incredibly positive and encouraging to keep on going. 

Dame Ann Leslie has been a journalist for over 50 years mostly working for the right-wing tabloid, The Daily Mail. She has openly spoken about many difficulties she faced during her long career and as a woman working in a male dominant industry, sexism and sexual assault in the workplace was normalised at the time. In 1962, Leslie started her career in Manchester working at the Daily Express at only 21 years old. She later moved to the Daily Mail, where she remained for the most part of her prolific career. Broadcast journalism interested young Leslie greatly and she managed to become a regular current affairs broadcaster at the BBC, Sky and multiple other international broadcasting stations. Across the course of her life, she has won multiple awards, interviewed some of the most influential people of her time and even been referred to as 'the most versatile reporter ever'.  In recent years, Leslie has become more of a controversial figure in the mainstream media with her outsp...

Throughout the past eight weeks, I have been learning about the history of the journalism industry. There are many things I have learnt that have given me in-depth knowledge about a subject I have never considered learning about before. Other things such as learning about women in journalism, has made appreciate how much each movement of feminism has enabled female journalists today to be able to do the work that they do.  Learning about the history of the BBC really made me think about how diverse our media industry is now in the 21st century. We are so lucky to be able to express ourselves with a lot less censorship or legal boundaries stopping people of all races, sexualities, gender and classes being able to be involved in the media. The move towards digital has allowed people from all different backgrounds to become a journalist in some shape or form. The digitalisation of the media has meant that there more people's interests are written about and catered to than ever before....

TV has been around for about 8o years but they weren't generally for the public to own in their homes. It was originally advertised in 1936 as 'illustrated radio' and was run by people working within the radio industry. During the war, wireless radios were the way that the majority of people in the UK received news and entertainment. All television broadcasts were stopped on September 1st 1939 with the delectation of the war and didn't resume until June 1946. The government chose to do this because it was thought that the transmitter would draw attention to homes during the Blitz. In the early days of television becoming popular amongst the public, the BBC dominated the market. They had built up a reputation of being a trusted news source. On 2nd June 1953, the BBC broadcasted the Queen's Coronation worldwide. More than 20 million people watched throughout the UK, which was the first time in history that a radio audience was outnumbered. Little did anyone at the tim...

How do I move on? How can I go on? These are questions everyone may ask themselves when something in their life drastically changes. Whether its a breakup, moving to a different place or the end of someone's life, they can be a tricky thing to deal with. Some people may never move on from losing someone and others choose not to talk about it all. For many of the friends that I had years ago, they choose not to talk about the people we lost. I'll never really know why they decide not to talk about the experiences we had with them but it's their choice and just something that I have had to learn to respect. People deal with grief in so many different ways that it's not fair to say that there's a right or a wrong way to cope with loss, especially when they're not receiving help. In my own experience, moving on has been incredibly hard. Having to admit to myself that those who were in my life before don't get to continue theirs hurts more than anything else that...

Hello, I’m Sapphire Anastasia and these are the highlights of this Wednesday. With the US election, coronavirus infections rising and the government passing new legislation, it's an interesting time to be alive.  Coronavirus Death Rate Skyrockets  The UK now has over 50,000 coronavirus related deaths recorded making us the country with the highest death toll in Europe and the 5th highest in the world. Since the pandemic began, there have been over 1.2 million confirmed cases within the UK and it has been recorded that disadvantaged areas and ethnic minorities have been impacted more. Lest We Forget the Unknown Warrior Today is 101 years since the first remembrance day, where each person in the UK is silent for two minutes for those who died in the war. There was service held at Westminster Abbey that marked 100 years since the burial of the Unknown Warrior, who represents the unidentified soldiers that were killed. Trump Shows Up to Veterans Day Event Donald Trump appeared for...

Johnny Depp has lost his libel court case against the Sun over an article they wrote describing the actor as a 'wife-beater'. He lost.  Judge Mr Justice Nicol threw Johnny Depp's case out of the court, ruling that the Sun's description of Depp as a 'wife beater' is 'sustainably true'. The case was heard over the course of 16 days in July at the Royal Courts of Justice in London, where the judge claimed that Depp had put his ex-wife, Amber Heard, in 'fear for her life' on three separate occasions.  The Sun have stood by their claims that Johnny Depp is a 'wife-beater'. After the trial was over, a spokesperson for the Sun said: 'Domestic abuse victims must never be silenced and we thank the judge for his careful consideration and thank Amber Heard for her courage in giving evidence to the court.' This trial has now cast doubt on Depp's claims against his ex-wife in the ongoing court case in the US.

Recently I moved to Leeds to study Journalism at degree level. When in cities, you tend to meet a diverse range of people so I have brought my camera out and have taken some photos of wonderful friends that I've made.  Aaron Aaron is an illustration student at Leeds Beckett and a VERY talented artist. He describes his everyday style as 'anywhere from Jojo Siwa on crack to emo as fuck' but loves making things like the mask he's wearing in the following photos. To see Aaron's art and find out more about him, you can find him on instagram @aaronbro.ke Isaac Isaac is a pop music student at Leeds Conservatoire and specialises in piano. In these set of photos we explored the more feminine side of himself. I'm sure there are many more photos to be taken this side of Issac in the future. To see his uni adventures, you can find him on instagram @isaac_middleton_ Felix and Aaron Dressing up and looking pretty was the inspiration for this. As usual, Aaron looked incredibly...

For this week's university work blog entry, we learnt about the popular press! How it started and how it is in the present. This is actually quite interesting as somehow the UK have let one man in particular have a near monopoly in its own press. The popular press came along with the rise of the capitalist imperative in western countries. As more people learnt to read, there became a potential to make profits from producing different publications that the different classes could read. The first value for money newspaper was The Daily Mail launched in 1896, which featured shorter articles and a very popular women's column. Closely followed by the launch of The Daily Express that was the first daily newspaper to feature news on the front page instead of only advertisements. During the interwar period, there was a decline in politically based articles and a rise in entertainment pieces. This came along through the beginning of market research looking into who was reading the newpa...

As a part of my journalism course, I have to write a blog entry about what we are learning about with one of my lecturers. This week was all about New Journalism! I hope you enjoy learning something new. New Journalism was the shift in the late Victorian era from newspapers being Gentlemans magazines to appealing to the wider classes. Many newspapers during this time started publishing more sensationalised stories that appealed to more people instead of sticking with hard-hitting news that mostly well-educated members of society would read. One of the most revolutionary people of his time is W.T. Stead, who is considered to be one of the pioneers of this movement. He started his career at the Northern Echo up in Newcastle where he became the youngest editor at age 22. He said that his position of power and influence is 'to be used on behalf of the poor, the outcast and the oppressed'. Stead kept his promise throughout his career by writing about prostitution. His article result...

Love your friends was a very heartfelt post about some things that happened when I was only 16. It was an incredibly strange time in my life. This post is more about the aftereffect of losing friends. I felt that it was the right time to write it as recently a couple of my friends lost someone they loved dearly and for me, it has been many years since my close friends died. I hope that this blog post provides comfort for anyone reading this. While I'm writing this, it has been just over two years since Mollie passed and a year and 10 months since we lost Natasha. It's been a strange few years in my life, to be honest. Two breaks up and others in my life have passed away. When so much grief happens in such a short space of time, it can bring along with it many negative feelings. I'm not a stranger to bad thoughts and bad times. Each and every day I miss Mollie and Natasha and long for them to be here again. At the same time, it makes me feel almost lucky to be living and giv...

 The last post I published was about taking photos with your friends. It's a subject that I feel very strongly about because memories need to be made and cherished by all.     In July 2018, my friend passed away. At the time, I  hadn't experienced anything like it before. My nan had passed away a few years before but she wasn't well and it had to be expected. When you loose friends at a young age, it's difficult to know how to feel. She was only 15 at the time. All the photos I have of us are stuck up around my room at uni so I can remember her and smile when one of the pictures catches my eye. The friendship group I had at the time was close up until that point. We all looked after each other and would express our love for each frequently. Even years later, I still can hear her saying 'I love you man' over and over in my head. It really breaks my heart that she isn't here anymore. All we can do now is live our lives to the fullest and pack as much in as pos...

Why You Should Take Photos With Your Friends Many events have led up to the point of becoming a photographer. My mum always took photos as she has gone through life and as I grew up. It’s interesting to look at what she has done throughout her life and the documentation of my childhood. Each picture shows something different and has a memory attached to it (even if I can’t remember the photo being taken). Within the past few years, I have fallen out with friends and had some even pass away. This has made me cherish each and every photo taken. Some of those photos are the last ones I’ll ever get to take with some of those people. Others I never even bothered to get photos of or with. It made me realise the importance of documenting each and every memory as we never know when the carpet  will be taken from underneath our feet. Moving away from the  place that I grew up to study somewhere else has made me  appreciate every photo that I took in my early teen years....

Photoshoots of 2020 So Far So far into 2020, I have done portrait photoshoots across the North with some very interesting individuals. Each person photographed brought their own artistic ideas to the shoot, creating a collaboration of ideas between us. Portrait photography is something I hope to develop my skills in over the course of the year so if you're reading this and would like to collaborate, send me a message on Instagram ( @shermanlovesthecure ). Tilda James The first photoshoot of the year was with poet and musician, Tilda James. Also known by their peers as Will, Tilda has embraced the queer culture that their move to Manchester has brought with it. For this photoshoot, we decided to include elements of drag, femininity, water and the destruction of gender binaries. Doing a photoshoot in a bath is something that I have wanted to do for a while now! Next on the list is to do a milk bath photoshoot! Tilda recently had an article written about their poetry published ...

The Astrids Headline Show - Photobook This feautures photos I took at The Underground on 17th January 2020. It includes press, backstage and performance shots of FIKA, Juliper Sky and The Astrids. If you would like to use any of these photos for any purpose, please contact @shermanlovesthecure on Instagram! FIKA Press Shots Portrait Landscape   FIKA Performance Shots Portrait   Juliper Sky Press Shots  Square Portrait Juliper Sky Performance Portrait Landscape The Astrids Backstage Portrait Landscape The Astrids Performance  Portrait Landscape