5fives with Izzy Diccoco

Meet Izzy – she’s such a creative soul who radiates happiness (and I love her photos so much – and I’m not just saying that because of her third answer)! Here’s her website: We Died For Beauty – now over to Izzy…

Ex journalist/Pr person, now sinking creative tendencies into photography, grew up by the sea attended University in London, now living in Yorkshire. Proud mum to two lovely girls. Obsessed with the media and arts in general, I love telling stories, reading stories, not necessarily from books – I guess I am trying to tell stories with my photos. Untrained, self teaching myself as I go along so am on a huge learning curve all the time…

Your top five photographically inspiring websites?

1. Christine Zona. Professional freelancer from San Francisco, I love love love Lomography and I love her work.
2. Christian Oita. He’s a portrait photographer, which isn’t necessarily an area I am strong in, but I really like his style.
3. Angie Muldowney of course!! I’ve always liked to take photos, but it was coming across Angie’s Etsy shop and main site that inspired me to take it a bit more seriously, I love Angie’s style and the statement images she sometimes produces with a little bit of Photoshop magic.
4. Tumblr, I love Tumblr, you can search tags for specific interests, there is a good mix of offerings and some great photography blogs. Photojojo is probably one of my favourites.
5. Nick Pickles is an ex colleague of mine. I remember once, along time ago, standing outside the PR agency where we were working, moaning about having to work with uninspiring HP digital cameras… now he is a pretty brilliant music photographer, plus I am really really jealous of what’s in his camera bag.

Your top five movies?
(Oh this is so hard, I did film studies at Uni and am ordinarily hard pushed to narrow it down to 1o faves!) No particular order

1. My Neighbour Totoro
2. Inception
3. Nikita
4. Almost Famous
5. Amores Perros

Your top five online shops?

1. Etsy – Just because I love finding people (or myself) unique, hand crafted pressies.
2. Truffleshuffle – I do love a bit of quirky retro.
3. The Lomography Shop – Goes without saying. I have a daily growing wish list of things from this shop.
4. Coffeehopper – artisan coffee roasters in Lancaster. I am fond of a good espresso, this place has lots of unusual roasts. Some of the best blends I have tasted!
5. Blaze On. I can’t get enough Fairy Lights and pretty ambient lighting in my house. This is a go to shop for me.

Your top five photos you’ve taken?

1. A World That Never Was. Taken Cornwall, 2011.
   We were taking in the sunset at Widemouth Bay one evening, the sea was about as calm as you’ll ever see it here so the girls were paddling in the sea and generally larking about. I got this one of my eldest by sheer dumb luck with a bog standard Olympus digital camera, a bit of fiddling in Photoshop to apply an out of focus effect and voila. Definitely one of my favourites.
   
2. I’ll See You In The Trees. Taken Yorkshire October 2011.
   Out on a walk with my DLSR and other half in the local park. Quite a lot of digital painting in Photoshop but I love the finished result.
   
3. At The River. Taken in Paris April 2012.
   Quite pleased with how I edited this one to give it a shabby vintage type feel, it was a really really dull day when this was taken at Notre Dame.
   
4. The Lonesome Poppy. Yorkshire 2012
   There was no intent on taking photos this day, I was simply out on a walk down through the local fields when I instagrammed this.
   
5. Fading. Yorkshire 2011.
   Another shot from the local country park of wildflowers.
   

Your top five eras in history you’d travel back to?

1. Art Deco Era. Probably my favorite architectural and design style, I think Paris at the birth of Art Deco was probably a pretty spectacular place to be.
2. The Swing Era. 1940’s-ish. I come from an Italian family and was raised listening to the kings of Swing such as Sinatra, Martin, Bobby Darin etc.
3. The JFK years in America. I am hopelessly obsessed with his presidential reign and the history and legacy of the Kennedy family in general.
4. Ancient Greece would be pretty fascinating.
5. I’d like to have witnessed the Moon Landings for real. I grew up in the era of Space Shuttles and now we have amazing advanced space explorations going on, but the moon still fascinates me.

The power of lists