life while being lost

A long time has passed since I posted on here, and yet at the same time it doesn’t seem that long. I did miss blogging a lot and kept planning to come back to it throughout the whole time, but my life was quite different last year in a lot of ways. I’m fully back now, with many blog posts scheduled in advance and relaunched with new design on WordPress, so do let me know what you think of the design or if you experience any issues!

Creative Block/Disappointment

Not only I went away from the blog for a while, I was also not shooting much. At least not my own personal shoots, which was what I’m passionate about the most – it always kept me going. There were a few reasons for it, the first one being that all the bigger creative editorial shoots that I was planning kept falling through or got postponed. Maybe I was aiming too high too quick – it was big awesome locations and big teams, which lead to people/situations letting me down a lot.
With the smaller shoots I did, I felt like I was letting myself down as well, because my favorite thing was still storytelling and creating dream realities, but it kept falling short of how I imagined it, it never felt good enough. So when photography became something that made me feel stressed out and disappointed in myself each time I thought of it, I knew I had to let myself step away from it for a bit and breathe.

Good times and new people

Another reason was something completely different – I was actually having a lot of fun once I wasn’t working on my photography and concentrating on social media as much. I used to be so drawn in to posting, checking likes and comments, planning and worrying, which was why I wasn’t going out as much or having fun outside of my house. And then last year I realized I won’t be young forever or even that much longer and I felt like I still had partying left in me. I also met a lot of new people and got a boyfriend last year, so I found out that keeping these relationships alive also takes a lot of time.

So what’s next?

I learned a lot about myself while I was away from here. I’m still struggling with the same things and probably always will do to some extent, but I realized that it doesn’t matter how bad I made myself feel before when I thought that I’m “failing” – it will never compare to the feeling of loss, that absense that not doing personal photography created in my life. I feel like I’m about to burst and I never had so much to say or create, never had so many plans or ideas (just need to figure out how to make them real and take my time doing it without pressure). I already have been posting regularly on instagram again for a few months (follow me @ailera) and have been working on moving/relaunching this blog.
I’ve started small this year, with a lot of model agency tests and blogger collabs, (which I’ll start posting next week). I’ve also been carrying a small point and shoot film camera with me everywhere and I’m trying to use it a lot. So you can expect a lot more film diary/creative writing type of posts here (it probably won’t be as long as this post and hopefully won’t bore you to death). And at some point soon I’ll start shooting more creative/conceptual/editorial things again as well, so hope you stick around!

Last year on film

Me and my friends went out in Camden a few times and had some picnics in our fave spot on the Primrose Hill.

a few times the night took us to some weird places – like the flat below with a cheetah hiding under a table..?

Last summer we also went to Open’er festival in Poland by the sea again (previously called Heineken Open’er).
It was amazing 5 days again, even if it was raining half of it and my friend Gabriele hurt her leg the first night, so we didn’t get to enjoy the sea as much this time around. (Though at least her not being able to walk properly did get us a few perks, like being allowed to take a shortcut through the backstage to get to the stages and nice clean toilets and showers.)

Last year in Open’er we heard: Radiohead, Foo Fighters, Lorde, The XX, Royal Blood, Warpaint, The Weeknd, The Kills, Prophets of Rage, George Ezra. You can see a little clip from the concerts below:

(the bottom picture in the collage above and the picture below was taken by my friend Mykolas, thought I’d include it as I’m never in the pictures myself).

Also I never got around to posting about it (and developed these shots way later too), but we went to Lollapalooza Berlin in autumn 2016 and it was another amazing festival. (Which meant seeing Radiohead TWICE in one year!! A dream, as they’re one of my all time favorite bands). The weather was super hot and nice for September, so our summer got extended for a bit.

In Lollapalooza we heard: Radiohead, Kings of Leon, The Temper Trap, Nothing but Thieves, Aurora, Catfish and the Bottlemen, James Blake, Róisín Murphy.

it was also my first time in Berlin and I fell in love with it! Everywhere we went we found unique places and buildings and BARS (I’ve never been to so many unique amazing bars, none of them were alike or anything I’ve seen before).

In the picture below is the most amazing house on the edge of a big old cemetery, it would be a dream to live there.

cute airbnb we stayed in

A summer before my best friend Dovile got married (the redhead in the images below) and I planned a Harry Potter themed hen party (we’re obsessed with HP), in these images we’re chilling in a middle of a lake near a castle (or sailing to Hogwarts…..?). It was only the beginning of a great day and night.

We also did many vegan BBQ’s in my friend Jorige’s garden.

The past few years I’ve had a part time job and we all went out for drinks… a lot:

And finally, when my friend Dovile visited me in London we finally saw the Harry Potter and the Cursed Child play (after working a few doors down from the theatre for a long time and meeting the cast many times….)

thank you if you stuck around until the end of this long post! I know that my film images are not perfect, a lot of them are not even that sharp – but I’m done being a perfectionist to the point where I stop creating. I love these in all their bluriness and I love the memories I get to keep.