Life Inside the Doll House

Our evening started well enough with some fun balloon play and dancing to the Moshi Monster soundtrack... but then somehow it descended into chaos and a hotbed of tempers. Mostly mine, if I'm honest. That happens around here sometimes. Bedtimes can be a real flashpoint!  It is a miracle that there are any photos tonight.  I played around a bit with flash and black and white. It didn't give me anything usable though. f/2; 1/200; ISO 800 f/2; 1/200; ISO 800 f/1.8; 1/125; ISO 3200 f/1.8; 1/200; ISO 400 I'm off to chill out now. I need to find my happy place again. 

Bear and I are becoming rather fond of trips to the coffee shop before her Monday music group. It's not a bad life really... My photographic eye in training was drawn to this backdrop. I couldn't quite get the picture that I wanted and the white balance is off. I still kind of like these pictures though. They capture a nice moment and they have the makings of good pictures. Taken with iPhone          Taken with iPhone It was late before I got around to picking up the camera and I was without natural light or the will to grapple with white balance.  My kids love soft toys. This is Roo and his Minecraft pig.  This is Rexy and his favourite bedtime teddy. 

A day for recharging batteries - both mine and the camera's. Bear discovered our Six Dinner Sid book yesterday and she loves it. I have read it about a million times so far. I have also been covered in Lego stickers and subjected to the Moshi Monsters' Movie soundtrack over and over. A good day! f/3.5; 1/600; ISO 800 I have been thinking of creative ways to use shutter speed but I currently lack the knowledge or skill. I am looking forward to playing around with some ideas in the near future.

We are National Trust members. I used to joke that parents of boys should be given free National Trust membership upon the birth of their first son. Now that Bear is here I can see that places like the National Trust are just gold for any family with small children. Basically, as far as I can see, two groups of people have National Trust membership - families with young children and elderly couples. The families push over-burdened buggies and walk around with collections of sticks, pine cones and big leaves. The elderly couples come prepared with their own pull out chairs and flasks of tea. I imagine that I will have had my fill of the National Trust by the time we are elderly. I like to think that we will be spending our weekends somewhere new and exciting, like Marrakesh.  (This post has a huge amount of photos! No captions tonight) Before we headed off to the National Trust, the boys had football training and Bear got stuck into a bit of play dough.  ...

A super quickie tonight as I am off to the hairdresser and Friday night awaits. Today looked a bit like this... Happy weekend folks!

I had this Click It Up A Notch article  in mind when I was taking Bear's picture tonight. I took the pictures in colour but I knew that they were destined for black and white. The light was just about as bad as it could possibly be. The aperture was wide open and I couldn't get the SS up any higher than 1/100 but I think that I got away with it by using a few of the tricks I have learned so far - back button focus, continous shooting using Al Servo and experimenting with different focal points. I also made sure to stabilise myself by keeping both elbows on the floor while shooting - and not breathing!   The first pointer in the article is that good black and white photography "is all about the light". Directional light and shaddows give a more interesting picture. The light source can be anything from a window to an open fridge door. I used the torch on my iPhone!       f/1.8; 1/100; ISO 3200 f/1.8; 1/100; ISO 3200...

Everyone was well today so I was able to return to my Wednesday's in London projects. Today I was excited to play around with shutter speed. As you know I have accepted the fact that I need to stay above 1/200 to avoid blur in my photographs of my jumpy kids. It was nice to be able to delve lower than that today and really slow things down. I didn't have a tripod but luckily I was able to place my camera on a wall. I also used the 2 sec timer to make sure that no camera shake was involved. I thought that photos of running water would give the most interesting effects. I found myself a cosy spot in Trafalgar Square and got busy with the shutter speed. Here is what I got - from fastest to slowest. Notice how the ISO drops with each picture to compensate for the slower shutter speeds. f/5.6; 1/800; ISO 3200 f/5.6; 1/400; ISO 1600 f/5.6; 1/250; ISO 800 f/5.6; 1/125; ISO 400 f/5.6; 1/40; ISO 100 f/5.6; 1/30; ISO 100 f/5.6; 1/25; ISO 100 ...

Bear has been practising using her scooter. Over the years our hallway has been battered with various wheeled toys and general mayhem. The space probably seems huge to the kids, but it really is not.  I used my grey card for white balance and I set the shoot mode to continuous with Al Servo for focus. I was reasonably pleased with what it managed to capture. I look forward to using this combination in better light. f/2.5; 1/200; ISO 1600 f/2.5; 1/320; ISO 3200 f/2.5; 1/320; ISO 3200 Here are some throwback hallway shots. Our flooring and lighting have changed this year, which is why the colour is so different. I am sure that most if not all of these were shot using AWB.