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Showing posts from April, 2015

Day 298/365: We're Forever Blowing Bubbles...

It's been a while since my last bubble post, so here you go. I wanted some more birds eye shots in addition to the bubbles. This sort of picture requires lots of pictures taken in burst mode and then deletion of most of them. My camera does not cope well with burst mode when shooting RAW. It freezes after every 5 or so pictures. It is so frustrating and one of my ever growing reasons to get an upgrade as soon as possible. The other reason is noise, which I really noticed in these pictures even though they were shot at ISO 800. That's relatively low for me. 

Day 297/365: The Big Gappy Grin Post

I think that the photos speak for themselves tonight. After much wiggling and jiggling the tooth fell out in Rexy's sleep. We thought that he had swallowed it but luckily Roo found it in Rexy's bed. I am sure that the tooth fairy is winging her way over here right now. Capturing transient moments like these is the whole reason that I took up photography in the first place. The loss of a front baby tooth is a big deal. When I look at pictures of Roo at this stage I realise that I have completely forgotten how he looked at that time. The moment would be gone forever if it wasn't for the photos. 

Day 296/365: Hungry Hippos

I've been feeling a little down about my photos again. Of all the things that I just cannot get my head around, colour management drives me crazy the most. In one way or another the colours just always look a little off to me. It's so frustrating. I took things back to basics a little tonight with the help of my little grey card. I wanted colour but not the hassle so I placed the grey card into some test shots and then used that to set WB with the dropper in Lightroom. Actually, Bear's tights would have done the job pretty well anyway. I need to do so much more of that exercise in future. The problem is that it works pretty well when in lots in natural sunlight. Things get really complicated in poor lighting and noise messes around with the colours too. I need to do some more reading to get my head around it all. In other news, Rexy's tooth is hanging on by a thread. He feels both excited and repulsed by it in equal measure. I am expecting the ga

Day 295/365: Sick Day for Rexy

Poor Rexy woke up early with a very sore throat and temperature. There was no way he was going to school today and so I quickly declared it a sick day for him. We got Roo to school and returned home straight away, where we remained until school pick up time. Rexy wanted to spend some time beating his (already very high!) personal score on Bopp-it. Bear on the other hand was keen to recreate her new favourite game from Granny B's house - "washing my feet". She spent quite a while on this little game, and she might have ended up completely naked and in this sink! I will spare her the future embarrassment of posting those photos. The theme for this weeks 52 Project is Bird's Eye.  I might just fling this one in and have done with it.  Later in the day we did an arty activity that I have been wanting to try out. It's called puffy painting or something like that. Basically you make a mixture of flour, salt, water and food colouring... ...

Day 294/365: Whitstable Beach

As planned I went 100% RAW today. Luckily we had planned a family meet up in Whitstable, one of our favourite places, and there were lots of opportunities to take some memorable pictures. Granny L rented a cottage by the sea for the weekend and we joined her and Aunty G for lunch and a stroll on the beach. It was a blustery day! I was very aware that I am now using much bigger files, which made me a bit more selective about what photos I kept. On the whole I think that is a good thing. I also noticed that the camera took longer to process images and even froze a couple of times. I don't think that it would cope well with a prolonged period of burst mode. Things felt a little different from an editing point of view too but I can't quite put my finger on how. I was aware that it was up to me to do things like add sharpening and contrast and I guess that I was conscious of the need to do this to every picture. On the whole, it just felt that I could push each of the sliders wit

Days 289-293/365: Red and RAW

Hmmm I am not sure how Red and RAW have ended up in the same post, but there you go. I was on a course all of last week and was left with very little time to update the blog. My mind was very much on the colour red because I needed to a submission for the 52 project. I have also been thinking a lot more about composition this week. I am reading this fantastic book by Tony Northrup, which is really helping to bring some ideas and techniques together for me. Day 289: I ended up taking photos at the last minute, just before bed. I had red on my mind but held out little hope of taking "the" shot I would submit because of the high ISO I was forced to use. The red has turned out pretty crazy in that first shot. My camera used to handle red especially badly when I kept it on portrait picture mode. It is much better now that I keep it on standard. I think that the horrible effect here is due to bad editing. I read something recently about how JPEG files can only cope with a little