here I am again - months later

well life is so busy at the moment - I am manic at work where we have opened a third office with a fourth about to be opened and a fifth and sixth in the pipeline for next year. On the home front, Daniel and his fiance have moved out of their flat and in with us so they can save for a deposit on a house - can't do that and pay rent and bills each month :( that's a sign of the times unfortunately but it's nice having female company around the house :)

I have become a great aunt again to Abigail who was born on 13th September - she is beautiful of course as is her older sister Isabelle :) Below is Abigail and I will upload a picture of her with her sister when I have one one this computer x

here I am again - months later

well life is so busy at the moment - I am manic at work where we have opened a third office with a fourth about to be opened and a fifth and sixth in the pipeline for next year. On the home front, Daniel and his fiance have moved out of their flat and in with us so they can save for a deposit on a house - can't do that and pay rent and bills each month :( that's a sign of the times unfortunately but it's nice having female company around the house :)

I have become a great aunt again to Abigail who was born on 13th September - she is beautiful of course as is her older sister Isabelle :) Below is Abigail and I will upload a picture of her with her sister when I have one one this computer x

Time to finish this blog

I have enjoyed this course and have loved seeing the entries in the competition. Gill has done really well with hers as well as everyone else and all have really put some thought into what they are taking :) My theme for this exercise was Macro and as such I am uploading some photos from Anglesey that we took last weekend :)

Wild miniature cyclamen, which was growing around the base of the trees. It was so pretty :)

I did do some housework on this photo like moving twigs and grass that I didn't want in the picture - left the leaves there, one because there were way too many to move (left the hoover at home ;)) and two because it lends itself to the time of year - Autumn :)

Unfortunately this dragonfly did not want it's photo taken on anything that you could really see him on - he stayed on this rock formation which was a water fountain :( so inconsiderate of him...... but he was gorgeously marked with green and brown stripes :)

and of course there is always the obligatory photo of my partner in crime when it comes to photography :)

The first photo was taken for Gill's entry into the Tec Pro Workshop run by Cheryl Johnson of Feelgoodphotos :) it includes 4 things to take to her desert island and they are 'toothbrush' in case there is a man friday, walking stick and tom tom together with her sudoku book whilst waiting for man friday to arrive :)

Well that's all from me for now on this blog just suffice to say that I will be carrying on taking photos and hopefully I will be able to post the odd one on here just to see if I am getting any better at it. I am looking forward to reading the blogs of all the students in this course :) Thanks for making it an enjoyable course everyone :)

At an End

The tec workshop is nearly at an end now - we have completed our 4 modules and hopefully I have learnt to be more patient and not rush into taking a photograph and not getting the shot I really wanted. Having said that today we were out in Anglesey and were taking photos of moving targets, which means you have to be quite quick there or miss the shot so there are times when you have to be ready all the time and others when you are taking still life that you can take all the time you want to get that final shot. I will upload some of the ones I have taken today as soon as I have vetted them ;) Unfortunately I did not have the time to take my self portrait for the competition at the end of the course but will enjoy looking through everyone elses and seeing what else they have to do during the course of the competition :) I hope that everyone has enjoyed and learned as much as they can on this course and that they as well as I will take on board (slowly in my case) the points raised and go on to get that 'fantastic' in their eyes shot. Don't forget to enjoy the photography and not to take it so serious that you lose sight of why you started it in the first place. Look out for those pics on here soon :)

B&W

This weeks theme is taking photos with a view to converting them to black & white images - you have to take the photo with different contrasts in so that you can make them 'pop' when you convert them :) this is done (for me anyway) using photoshop cs2 and layers which I have just discovered how to do by using a cdrom that came free with Digital Camera Magazine for October - well timed I would say :) I have not had time yet to go out and take photos with this view in mind so I have had a 'go' with the ones I took last week at the Vintage Car Rally so here are a couple that I have converted :)

and I have to say that it's not as easy as you think as you have to do layers and erase the bits of layers you don't want altered but I enjoyed it once I realised what I was doing :)

Reflect Your Theme

Well this module is really interesting and calls for reflection... I have sat and thought about what reflection means and in my thinking it can mean a couple of things - reflecting on the past/future, reflections in a mirror/glass/puddle etc and also taking time to reflect on what is happening now. Firstly I have a couple of photos, which I took over the weekend with reflections in them. They were taken at the Boat Museum car park in Ellesmere Port where there was a vintage car rally - what spectacular cars there were - just lined up for photographing :) I was using only one lens at the time and that was my Sigma 105mm DG Macro so all my photos are close up. I do still need to do focal length part of the module so watch this space :)

The exif data for the wheel is as follows:-

Aperture Priority

ISO 100

Exp - 1/100 sec

f/5

focal length - 105mm

and for the wing mirror

Manual

ISO 100

Exp 1/400 sec

f/2.8

Focal length 105mm

and I must upload my most favourite of the day wich does not have any reflection to speak of but I just love the way it turned out for me :)

This was taken kneeling on stoney ground - you know the sort - white gravel car park ground.... but it was worth it to me - the exif data for this is as follows:

Aperture priority

ISO 100

exp 1/500

F/2.8

focal length 105 mm

GOOD MORNING

At this moment it is sunny outside - which is quite good if it holds as there is a vintage car rally at the Ellesmere Port Boat Museum today and I would like to see what photos I can get from there :) That aside I have been extremely busy this week with my Dad being in hospital again so photography has taken second place and not managed too much :( Did manage to get to Woodside Ferry in Birkenhead though to try and get some decent pictures of the QE2 which was doing a final tour of the UK before being sold off to Dubai as a floating restaurant :( sad that it is.

I managed quite a few shots and at the end of the evening I realised that I had left my camer ISO on high..... so my photos are awful. This post is a reminder to people on how NOT to take photos. Please check your ISO and any other setting for that matter on your camera - especially if it is an event that you may not get a chance to do again. The shots I have take are really grainy and not good quality at all but I have the record of the event. Here are a few to show you what I mean.

As you can see the grain on the photos is way to much. The B&W one of the QE2 I thought wasn't too bad as B&W lends itself to the grainy effect but none of them are of good quality unfortunately - one lesson definitely learned by me I think.