Life Inside the Doll House

My second 365 project is compete and I am overjoyed. I wanted to go out with a nice family shot but it didn't quite go as planned. Now that I have my interval timer I set my camera up to take a series of photos at 10 second intervals. As the photo was taken late in the evening, I also used my flash and bounced it off the ceiling.  It started off well enough.  But then we added more people and it tilted into chaos... And then, just because we clearly had a handle on it, we decided to get the whole family into the picture.  Hmm, I don't think we will be hanging any of these on our wall but they certainly are real.  Just to make sure that I was super completed, I even threw in an extra couple of days.  365 +1 365 +2 I didn't take a picture the day after that, but today we had the school plays. As this project started on Rexy's school play last year, I really wanted to add the pict...

Tonight I have engaged in one of my very favourite activities - drinking a glass of wine whilst editing my photos from the past few days. Life in the Dollhouse, and beyond, can get a little hectic at times and it is so blissful to enjoy the calmness of the evening and focus on the wonderful life we have here. I have only one more day left on this second run of the 365 project. I am mostly relieved to have reached the finish line again and of course there is a hint of pride too. It has not always been easy to keep going!  However, I also have to acknowledge a significant amount of sadness and some degree of anxiety. The anxiety relates to the past and niggling concerns that I have learnt nothing and have waisted my time and money on a hobby that I have no gift for, but it also relates to the future and asks questions like "What next?", "How can I continue to grow?", "What memories will be missed if I don't shoot everyday?" and "What if I stop ...

We really are on the final countdown now and I have a giddy excitement brewing inside.  Day 354 - Rexy has not been so interested in having his photo taken lately. We have been joking that everyone will think that he has vanished from the face of the earth if we don't have evidence of his existence. So he kindly let me take this photo of him. I am really enjoying my speedlite these days. It is so amazing to get decent pictures at a low ISO. It is also fun to bounce the flash around to see the different effects. This one was off the wall to the left of Rexy.  Day 355 - I got a new toy. I was so excited to see this interval remote control because I have been wanting something like this for ages. It is frustrating that interval timers are built into Nikons but not Canons. For years I have watched with envy while women on Clickin Moms have captured their Christmas Days in 10 minute intervals, with them in the picture too. Honestly this little gadget will be so usefu...

The long evenings are closing in now and I am regularly finding myself shooting at bedtime with no decent light. I was inspired to get my flash out again after watching a really cool video about capturing motion with second curtain sync. I was very frustrated to discover that I cannot convince my Canon 6D to perform second curtain sync with a third party flash. I couldn't quite justify shelling out a few hundred pounds for a Canon Speedlite last year and so decided to go for a much cheaper Yongnuo YN560 III along with the YN506-TN flash controller. I wasn't sure how much use I would get out of a flash and just wanted to play around. I was particularly interested to have a go with off camera flash.  Generally speaking I am happy enough with the Yongnuo but it would be wonderful to take advantage of the ETTL function and have the camera and flash communicate with each other. At the moment I need to keep adjusting the flash strength up and down to find the perfect exposure. ...