Life Inside the Doll House

Looking back over the past week and a half I am dismayed and overwhelmed by how much as been going on around here. Rather than doing one huge post, I will break it down into individual days.  Day 179 was the tail end of half term and I fancied a long awaited trip to Madame Tussaud's in London. I have been interested in going here for years but felt that the kids were too young to get anything out of it. I myself went when I was  about Roo's age and I enjoyed it.  Photography was a bit tricky because of variable lighting and crowds. Here is what we got.  At first the kids were unsure of the whole experience and they didn't know many of the celebrities. I was impressed by how well they come out in photos. The almost look like the real deal! With a little warming up and courage, the kids were willing to jump in.  The Star Wars bit was by far the favourite bit though.  All in all, it ...

It amazes me that even this far along on my second 365 journey, I am still tweaking and changing my approach to editing all the time. I still feel that I have so much to learn and the never-ending quest for my own "personal style" continues. This week I have found myself using the HSL and Split Toning panels in Lightroom more than ever. I am very much in the habit of bumping the orange luminance slider to brighten up skin tones, however I have been a bit scared to use the other sliders too much apart from perhaps to tone down a distracting background colour in the frame. Then I watched a Clinkin Moms tutorial this week which taught me that a small bump in orange saturation and a reduction in yellow and orange hues can further improve skin tones. I am particularly interested to see what happens with that tweak in hues because I long felt frustrated by the green tone that my pictures take on when I post to certain, but not all, social media sites. My photos become green tinted...

I felt like getting a little creative this week. I have noticed that the lens distortion is so much more noticeable on my new full frame Canon 6D. I pretty much never leave a photo uncorrected these days. However, I really do like some of the distorted effects that you get with a wide angle lens and I would get a fish eye if I could afford it.  I wanted to play around with distorted portraits of the kids because I think that the distortion exaggerates their cute kid features. I know that it doesn't look natural but I enjoy the cartoonish look that wide angle close ups give. Ideally I would have put my old 18-55mm kit lens on the camera but it wouldn't fit. I settled for my trusty Tamron 24-70mm and kept it at 24mm.  Day 172 Day 173 - I also have a soft spot for out of focus shots and played around with this concept. It was late and I was feeling tired and lazy, so these don't quite hit the mark. I did enjoy a little play with split toning though....