Life Inside the Doll House

A couple of quick, and poorly edited, photos from bedtime this evening.      Most of my time and energy went on my entry for the 52 project. The prompt for this week was A Part of Me. I thought about it for a few days and then I found an idea that I was happy with - my box of old diaries, letters and photos. It usually lives in a dark corner of our loft, but I dug it out for this photo.

The computer trouble has subsided and now we have internet problems. We are working on upgrading our whole system so hopefully things will be more streamline in the future.   For now, here is an update on the week...   Mondays are so manic around here as everyone adjusts to a new week and I get ready to return to work on Tuesday. Last Monday (day 205) looked a bit like this.   Bear loves Alice in Wonderland. She also loves striping down as far as I will allow given that it is freezing right now.     Please excuse the bear bottom. (Giggle).    Fitting all of the homework in around Bear's desire for almost constant 1:1 play is one of my greatest challenges right now.     Tuesday evening (day 206).       I returned late and tired this evening and so took some photos of this n'that. (Day 207) Certainly not my finest work, bu...

Gah, our computer is playing up and it is taking forever to do anything. This combined with three kids who need all of my time and attention and a house that is still upside down due to decorating makes for a very unhappy me. Anyway, here are a few pictures from the weekend. I have been really bad about my captions lately. They are all taken at f/2. I have  placed the kids closer to the windows which has enabled me to get my ISO down a bit and raise me shutter speed. I have lots and lots of catchlights now. I have spot metering on all the time these days. I am also using centre focus recompose as I have lost all faith in the outer focal points. I'm not happy about it, but there you go. Day 203 I am loving the new colour in our bedroom. It acts as a much nicer back drop than the yellow. Poor Roo has sore dry lips at the moment.           Day 204. Rexy has been dodging the camera a bit lately. I managed ...

It was such a relief to stay home and spend some time with Bear today. It has been a busy week with frayed nerves and lots of tears and temper tantrums. We both needed some quiet time to relax and reconnect again. "Mummy Fridays" are special days because we have no other commitments. We can just go with the flow and spend time doing what we enjoy. It has always been that way and I have fond memories of my "Mummy Fridays" with Roo and Rexy too. I shall miss them when we finally say goodbye to the preschool years.  This girl is 60 gazillion different types of awesome. Before she came along my husband and I would talk about how brilliant it would be to have a crazy cooky kind of girl who fills our days with joy and laughter. Girls like Lola from Charlie and Lola or that wonderful kid from Outnumbered made us long for a little girl of our own. In our imaginations our girl would wear strange outfit combinations and lots of hats. When Bear came along lots of people ...

I can hardly believe that I have made it to day 200 already. There is a chance that I might actually complete this project.  So I happened to be in London late yesterday (Day 200). I planned go shopping for some new clothes and thought that it might be a good idea to bring the camera along. I still had the Light  theme in mind and wanted to catch some of the city lights with slow shutter speed. I had so many great ideas in my mind, but it was impossible to pull any of them off. The challenges were that I was short on time, I was tired and carrying lots of bags, I felt distracted by all of the people around me and worried about someone snatching my camera or bag and I couldn't find a good place to place the camera to get a good composition or to eliminate camera shake. Even resting the camera and pressing the shutter button with a two second delay didn't manage it. I got some pretty dodgy shots like these... I guess you could argue that the top one has a certain...

Taking photos was a struggle tonight. Some days literally feel like a shot in the dark. To make it even worse, I am trying to take pictures to fit the theme of light for the project 52. With the long cold dark days of January and Bear waking me up many nights these days I really do feel like I am muddling through. This picture has had a lot of editing. I quite like the end result but can't help wondering how different it would look in print. f2; 1/60; ISO 3200 I tried some posed shots with light. Posed shots rarely work out.  f2; 1/250; ISO 200 f2; 1/125; ISO 200 It is always better to let them do their own thing and let their story tell itself. I was aiming for "leading lines" in the composition here, but there was to much going on and distracting me. I am conscious that their is such a mix of styles tonight. I'm still not sure where my heart lies.  f2; 1/40; ISO 3200 f2; 1/80; ISO 3200 f2; 1/80; ISO 3200