Bucket List - Top 10

I've been in Destin, Florida for the week with my cousins as a small getaway vacation. My birthday was yesterday and I spent the day at the beach. Thank you for all the birthday wishes! Every night Emma, who is always in my pictures, and I sit here and talk. Tonight we were discussing some of the places we wanted to visit. This conversation led me to create a bucket list. There are so many beautiful places and things to see in the world and to travel and experience them all would be a dream come true. One day I hope to have visited all these places and events.

Being a photographer it would be amazing to be able to take pictures of all these events and possibly put together a book with all the pictures and pages describing each event (writing the book on my bucket list is on my bucket list). I think traveling and exploring the world is the best way to truly understand and appreciate life. I'll only list the top 10 places, because this blog post will already be too long.. 

Holi Festival - India

Holi is a religious spring festival celebrated by Hindus. Holi festival may be celebrated with various names and people of different states might be following different traditions. But, what makes Holi so unique and special is the spirit of it which remains the same throughout the country and even across the globe, wherever it is celebrated. Bright colours of gulal and abeer fill the air and people take turns in pouring colour water over each other.

The Running of the Bulls - Spain

The Running of the Bulls is a practice that involves running in front of a small group of bulls that have been let loose, on a course of a sectioned-off subset of a town's streets. The most famous running of the bulls is that of the seven-day festival of Sanfermines in honour of San Fermín in Pamplona.

Venice Carnival - Italy 

The Carnival of Venice is an annual festival, held in Venice, Italy. The Carnival starts forty days before Easter and ends on Shrove Tuesday, the day before Ash Wednesday. 

Pingxi Sky Lantern Festival - Taipei

During the Pingxi Sky Lantern Festival, stalls selling paper lanterns, miniature toy lanterns, food and fireworks line the streets. At night, hundreds of lanterns are simultaneously launched from a school field and visitors can buy their own lanterns. Before launching the lanterns, people can pick the lantern color and write their wishes on the lantern. Sparklers are an option add-on. It is believed the wishes are sent to heaven and bring luck in the New Year.

St. Patricks Day - Dublin Ireland 

As the one national holiday that is celebrated in more countries around the world than any other, St. Patrick’s Day is the day when everyone wants to be Irish.

La Tomantina - Italy


La Tomatina  is a festival that is held in the Valencian town of Buñol, in which participants throw tomatoes and get involved in this tomato fight purely for fun. It is held on the last Wednesday of August, during the week of festivities of Buñol.

Lollapalooza -Chicago 

Lollapalooza is an annual music festival featuring popular alternative rock, heavy metal, punk rock and hip hop bands, dance and comedy performances, and craft booths. It has also provided a platform for non-profit and political groups.

Halloween Festival - Salem Massachusetts

Halloween is the time of year when the shades of the dead whisper from forgotten places and spirits walk among us. The Witches of Salem honor this time with Festival of the Dead, an annual event series that explores death’s macabre customs, heretical histories, and strange rituals.

Day of the Dead - Mexico

Day of the Dead is a Mexican holiday celebrated throughout Mexico and around the world in other cultures. The holiday focuses on gatherings of family and friends to pray for and remember friends and family members who have died.

The Olympic Opening Ceremony 

The Olympic Games is a major international event featuring summer and winter sports, in which thousands of athletes participate in a variety of competitions. The Olympic Games are considered to be the world’s foremost sports competition and more than 200 nations participate.

Hope you find these places and events as inspiring as I do. 
Comment and let me know some of the places on YOUR bucket list!


XX A U S T I N

Website Redesign, Book Publishing, Business Cards, and Stickers! Monthly Update - June

I have been so busy this month. I've hit a stand still with my photography and needed a new start. I found myself wanting professionalism that my work, in photography, was lacking. For starters my website design grew old and was screaming for a redesign. That was one of the first things I tackled. I organized my work through categories to make everything a lot easier for viewing. I also cleared up the layout so it was more spacious and user friendly :) 

Along with the redesign I'm testing out different designs and materials for my business cards I'll be getting made at the end of the summer. I didn't really prepare for how difficult it would be to figure out what exactly I want the design and layout of the cards to be along with the images and paper material options I have. So I ordered a few samples which I will be viewing and deciding on in the next few weeks. 

Along with business cards I will be getting stickers made! This is probably the one thing I am most excited for. There will be two different designs printed, designed by my high school art teacher, and friend, Andrew Dart. Each having one of my characters on it; King & Unicorn Grease. If you follow me you'll know about each ;) The King one is finished (and can be seen above/on my website) and ready for printing, but the Unicorn Grease one is still in the process of designing. But once I have both finished copies I will post them along with a link for ordering.

I'll be printing more than I'll know what to do with and stick them on anything and everything I can get my hands on. So be on the look out. If any of you would like a sticker book or just a few to stick around just send me an email and I'll be glad to send you some! info@austinsullivanphotography.com

All of this leads up to me officially announcing that I will be publishing a book! 

I've been talking about/debating whether or not I was going to get one published or not for the past three years, but never felt that the time was right. Well I have grow so much since I have started photography and have such a huge collection of work and photographs that I feel that right now is the perfect time for me to go through with it. This will be my first endeavor and the book will be 100% written and designed by myself. I'm extremely excited to share this with all of you after keeping it a secret, for the most part, for a little over a month. I have the book title but knowing me it will change so I am not going to be able to share that with you until it is final and set in stone. I will however share with you an image from a shoot I did specifically for the book. That image can be seen above. 

The book will be composed of both photographs and writing. It's going to be what I like to call a "photographic biography". Letting you see the images I have created over the years along with personal information on my growth and development as a photographer. The book will hopefully be printed and ready for sale around Christmas. The only thing that will be hard is not sharing any of the images from shoots I have planned the rest of the summer and into the fall. Of course I will be showing you some because that would be too awful to just disappear for that time, but I really do want this book to contain as many "never before seen" images as possible. Although there will be a large portion of images you have seen from the past. Everything's still under editing and development so I can't say anything is really set in stone as of yet. But it is happening, and will be done.

I hope all of you are doing fine and enjoying the summer! 

I appreciate all the love I have been receiving and also all the emails you all have sent on the website. It means the world to me. 

XX A U S T I N

LOOKBOOK

So I'm laying here writing this inside of a blanket/pillow fort I built, listening to the immense amount of thunder and watching the flickering of lightning bounce around my room. It's 5am and I haven't slept in almost 24 hours. I don't know why but every summer for a short period I go through this weird faze where I literally cannot fall asleep. I can lay in bed for hours and will not be tired. It doesn't matter if I wake up early in the morning and have a busy day and tire myself out, I cannot sleep. It's awful. At least this night I get to listen to the rain and thunder. I haven't built a fort since I was little and I figured, what the heck; lack of sleep will make you do and oddity of things. But this is comforting and soothing. 


Aside from the little insomnia rant above, the reason I'm writing this post is to update you all on a new social media site I recently joined. I've been knowing about it for a few years but never really took the time to look into it and really figure out what it is all about. But when school let out a few weeks ago I went on and nosed around and really liked it. It's called LOOKBOOK.nu. Basically what the site is, in a nutshell, is where you take a picture of yourself and you list all the clothing you are wearing. You can fan others and 'hype' their looks, along with commenting. I thought it was a really neat way to share you fashion ideas and also pick up a few from other look bookers. 


The community on lookbook is amazing. Everyone is super friendly. I only recently created an account and only have 3 looks posted at the moment and have already received more hypes, comments, and fans I could have asked for in such a short period. If you haven't already I highly suggest visiting the site and creating an account of your own. You can view my page --> HERE <-- 
Below are some pictures I have on the site.

xx austin