Links à la Mode: The IFB Weekly Roundup

Hell yeah, baby! My submission's got picked in Independent Fashion Bloggers' weekly ”Links a lá Mode” competition! It feels like winning ELLE Award or something, although it's a weekly thing and every week someone gets lucky. But still, I want to explode into f*#%ing glitter and fall down like sparkling magical dust, just like in Walt Disney's movie intro! It's fun and I like that kind of fun!

If I'm not wrong then earlier this competition was held in IFB forum, but as it got shut down, the results are displayed on the site's homepage! Which is even cooler because according to the stats of the site, there are nearly one million page views a month! Pretty neat or what?!

There was in total around ninety submitters and only twenty of them will get picked for the list. My selfie was used in the banner which gives me more reasons to celebrate! I submitted my “DIY: Shooting “White Polar Night” OOTD” blog entry which I posted last week.

I thank IFB for this fun experience and congratulate other participants who got chosen for this week's Links à la Mode! 
Here is the list of other bloggers who got picked!

Links à la Mode: The IFB Weekly Roundup

• Attire Club: Criticism And Attacks On Fashion
• Corals and Cognacs: A Blogger's Guide to Prepping for Fashion Week
• DIY Doyenne: Forget Numbers, Build Engagement
• Fashion is Evolution: 5 Fantastic Photography Books for the Creative Beginner
• Frantic But Fabulous: How to take care of your lingerie (so it lasts longer)
• Healthy Fashionista: The Fashionista's Guide To Foraging
• Inspirations and Celebrations: 2013 VMA Best Fashion - Top 5 Celebrity Looks
• Jessydust: 2013 Trend: The Baseball Cap
• Lara Lizard: So we are superficial!
• Nicole Kelly: How to recreate an outfit
• Noveltie: Perspective: Current State of Fashion Bloggers
• Mr. Walk & Talk: My Top 10 Tips for Smarter Shopping
• Runway to Style: The Fall 2013 Designer Collaborations Worth Knowing
• Savage Gem: Honest by 'Transparency'
• The In Club: Religion and Fashion- Friends?
• The Neon Blonde: 18 Fashion Tips I Wish I Had Known Before I Was 18
• The Style Enigma: The LBD In The Workplace Dos and Don'ts
• The Well Appointed Catwalk: Armani Diapers and Other Designer Crossovers
• We Are Ready Made: Conformity is the Language of Corruption
• Who's Aalo? DIY: Shooting "White Polar Night" OOTD

  SPONSOR: Eastdane Miansai, Grenson, Wolverine 1000, Bailey44, Billy Reid, Hepburn Monroe, Mens R&B, Jack Spade, Pantherella, AQ/AQ, & Herschel Supply  

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Beauty and the Bling

Internet is filled with all kind of awesome fashion photographs. From crazy editorials, high fashion look books to amateur photographers' work who create professional looking imagery for own fun. Yet not all images are pleasing ones' eyes or worth sharing.

Few days ago I came across this editorial on V Magazine. And oh boy, all these colors and bling blings made me so excited to share it on my blog. The story is photographed by Richard Burbridge and styled by Robbie Spencer, Peter Philips with his team made the cool make up.

This is the craziest series of mind blowing photography I've seen in a while!

All mighty source of these photographs is VMag.

If you enjoyed fashion photography picks a lá Aalo, why not follow!

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Shooting ”White Polar Night”, OOTD

Have you ever photographed with balloons? If I'm not wrong then this should have been my fifth shoot with balloons! But because it's my 300th shoot or even more, you can't really sue me for lack of creativity!

Balloons are cheap and fun props that can give childish or mysterious spirit to your imagery. And they are reusable! Don't just pop them with needles, don't create pointless garbage.

In this shoot I am wearing a DIY sleeveless shirt. The color was so intense that I couldn't leave it in the thrift store. Not to mention its super low price. It was awesome and exciting, yet its imperfection left me in doubts. ”When it doubt, through it out,” they say. But not with this thought. The point was, it had a terrible print on it, which went all the way through the fabric to the other side. What a fucking idiot prints ”bastard” on a shirt? That's what means ”värd” in Estonian! And the other reason was that it was like XXXL. A lot of work before I could finally enjoy it. But the fantastic color and really really nice and high quality cotton kept me thinking, ”I need this, but what the heck should I do with it?!”.

So I cut it tighter and unsleeved this beautiful monster! To be honest with you, I removed the print in photoshop. I was kind of busy shooting it for my Lookbook.nu. But I'll promise, I will do some killer prints on it, to level it up to a kick ass bastard. I had something illuminati theme in mind. I know it pisses Christians up as hell, but listen up, this one is different. I thought it would be cool to print two eyes in front and one big eye on back, with a text “stop watchin'”. Didn't it mean “all seeing eye”, the eye symbol? Well, stop watching, retardo, and mind your own shizl!

At some levels it was that kind of shoot that didn't take long to get it right. Sometimes the idea is so easy and inspiring that everything falls effortlessly into its place. Even the digital processing part went very smoothly without wasting tons of hours of my life.

 The funny thing is, that this can be done without a sewing machine. You can sew everything by hand and no one can tell. Can you tell that about my shirt? Because this is how I made it. I'm not done with it yet though. Also, if you would ever get tired of it, you can sew sleeves from other shirt to make it different. Because high quality long lasting clothes you can redesign, costumize and upcycle many times. They simply last years and years.

 Well Gaga is back, which means listening to her older songs. My forever favorite is acoustic version of her "Paparazzi". I must admit I was listening to it on repeat the whole time I was writing this post.

Did you enjoy this post and photos I took?

You can follow me on social media for fun updates and stuff that won't make it to the blog.

But you don't have to if you don't feel like it. We are humans and deserve the right to be our selves. Russia has a lot to learn from real world. Don't get me wrong, it's not the country, it's its asshole laws.

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The Frog from Berlin

Recently I rediscovered Lookbook and gosh: ”My name is Aleksander and I am a Lookbook.nu addict!”. For a week, I've been posting looks every day and on few days even twice. The feedback I am getting is amazing. People are so kind there: leave positive comments and send me super lovely e-mails. Well, some flirting e-mails too, it's like new dating site!

Anyway this sweatshirt I got few years ago from H&M in Berlin. I guess it was this time when I arrived at 7.30am and all the shops were opening at 9 or 10am. Somehow I remember I was ”spending” my time literally on the streets because everything was closed. And it was raining a bit. It was raining the whole fucking trip! Like seriously, great vacation, thanks weather!

The pants I bought from a thrift store, when I was visiting Estonia last month. Cost me only 5€!

To be honest, I can't be honest! Especially in photography, I photoshop the shit out of everything! I cheat with everything that is cheatable. I even photoshop myself skinnier. Not because I see myself as fat, sick and nearly dead (it's a great movie, please watch it!), but just a little something makes me always feel better. Although, now that I lost some weight, I spend less time photoshopping! LOL

About the shoot... I don't know where the idea came from, like always. So I threw everything to the floor and ducktaped a blue bed sheet behind the bed! We have vino tinto color wallpaper there, which is ugly and didn't matched with the idea anyway. Naked bed's been in my mind for many years and I remember one photograph I took of myself back in 2005 or 2006.

I used two of my 300 LED video lights. They have 300 tiny super bright bulbs, every time you watch into them, you are blinded for few seconds. But they are really comfortable to use, because of the adjustable power option and they are on rechargeable batteries. You see what you get, whole different world from using speedlights!

I still don't have a remote for my Nikon D800. I usually set my camera on timer to shoot 5 photos with 5sec intervals. The focusing is kind of cheesy because the focus locks when you press the shutter button, when you are by the camera pressing it! So I had to use a pillow as my stuntman to fix the focus and run onto the bed, throwing the pillow away and imagining looking fab and sharp in focus. Normally it takes me around 30min up to 1h and 100-160 shots to get 1-2 photos for the Lookbook. Sometimes even 10min, if I need only one shot and it's doesn't involve anything extreme posing or jumping. Plus photoshopping time, which takes usually 30min up to 1,5h per image. I didn't watched the time but I guess it took me about 15min to edit the white wall photo and about a hour to edit the bed shot. Usually not knowing what are you looking for in processing, is most time consuming. Here I struggled a bit.

And this is what I am charging for, my dear clients. Clicking the shutter button is the tiniest deal of it. It's my 8 year photoshop experience and time spent behind the screen. Okay, not really. My camera's price was 3000€ and then comes all the other shit, like different lenses, strobes and lights, stands, reflectors and 10 years photography experience. I feel kind of old saying these numbers.

I am 26 years old and I have a long, sunny and healthy life ahead of me!

Here is a little behind the scene picture I posted on instagram!

And here is me, being #1 male lookbooker this week! I guess it changes every minute but right now I am number one in top 25! Ahh!!!  

❤❤❤❤❤

My Lookbook dream is right now to be in the HOT section! Because Lookbook is sharing hot looks on tumblr and facebook. Would be a blast!!!

 

Aalo

xx

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By the way, did you like Lady Gaga's new music video "Applause" that was released today? I love it!