First Look...

Here's the first look at my new niece or nephew! My brother and his better half Jo are expecting their first baby in Feburary next year and he sent me a couple of scan images of the new addition to our family. This was the better image as you can clearly see it's spine and little fingers - sweet or what? Looking forward to the new arrival, it'll be my Dad's second grandchild and he's made up about it and I get to be an Aunty proper.

Congratulations Darren & Jo!

The Young Photographer!

Here's a photo of my gorgeous daughter using my camera while we were away on holiday, she keeps saying that she wants to get into photography so lent her my Canon 300D for our trip to Paignton Zoo and here's a sneaky one I took of her using it. Managed to drag her along to the camera club I belong to and she's slowly enjoying that (I think!) and she's done some B&W developing at college as part of her Art & Design course. Chemicals and all that darkroom business aren't for me though, would prefer sitting in front of Photoshop with a cup of tea :-)

Nose Stud

Had some success this weekend with the nose stud and my attempts to get the ball end out of the threadless shaft. Wanted to prove to myself that I could do it before buying any more ends as I didn't want to have to visit the piercer every time I fancied a change ;-) Anyhow I've managed to do it once so have emailed to find out what price the plain ball ends are and have decided to get some to match the circular barbells for my ear, they seem to look quite cool as a matching pair. I've also managed to source some seamless rings on the Tonguestuds website which might make a change from the circular barbell. The site says they are easy to open without needing pliers or anything so hope they are right!

All in all the nose is healing really well, the four months are almost up and am down to bathing it once a day now. The hardest part is over so it'll be investigating the tattoo next, my daughter is off to get her belly done in a couple of weeks so can hopefully find someone to have a chat to then about it.

AV Competition Night

Pretty hacked off this morning, our camera club had its first AV comp last night and I had hoped to do quite well in it. My shows tends to have some unusual slide compositions which I think makes for a more interesting viewing than slides continually come up on screen dead centre. However the judge was obviously more in the “less is more” camp and didn’t really appreciate my efforts along with the techniques I had used also on some of the slides, painterly effects which makes a change from a straight shot. Although the club is all about photography I’m not sure that AV’s come strictly under that category, to me they are more about being entertaining. Anyway the one that won it I have to say did nothing to float my boat at all, just lots of photos of these groups of monk statues from about a zillion different angles. Then having told us what makes a good AV, the judge shows off one of his that broke all the things he said we should do! It will make me think twice about entering again, do I produce something with I find aesthetically pleasing and accept the fact that it wont get more than a public viewing or do I produce something that will please the judge but that goes against the grain of my creativity??? I think several of the members enjoyed what I produced and maybe that’s the whole point, pleasing judges can be a futile exercise as they all have differing views about what is good, you are in a lose-lose situation from the start.

The Wedding Photos and Other Stuff

Finally finished off processing the wedding photos this weekend, compiled a slide show using Proshow Gold, and added some music to it courtesy of Mr Walt Disney ;-) Thought it would be very Claire! Created a VCD for them to play on the TV and then put all the photos onto various DVD's so she can have a play. Used the slideshow to create a screen saver and PC executable file so all in all a job well done. Bought a lovely beech effect frame on Saturday with two revolving photo holders so have printed out four of my favourite shots and will leave it on her desk for when she gets back to work. Think they are back now from Canada so am dying to see the photos from their break but expect knowing them it'll be a while before they are ready :-)

My baby is also off on two weeks work experience for the next fortnight, wonder how she will get on. Her first week is at a local school doing Art & Design, and her second week will be at a photographic studio doing all sorts of things. In fact we had to go over on Saturday for a brief interview and I found the chap a very interesting person to chat with. Loved his Wi-Fi gadget which sends his photos from his camera to his computer within seconds of pressing the shutter - brilliant!

The Wedding!

What can I say about the wedding other than it was a very emotional day. I’m normally a bit of a cold fish when it comes to weddings having done the divorce bit but the speeches almost had me in tears. It was a long day for me as “official” photographer, I got picked up just after 12 noon and didn’t get home till almost midnight, lots of running around and changing of camera settings but it was quite an experience. Can’t see myself repeating it mind, people are not my forte, apart from candid shots, but hopefully the bride and groom will think I did a good job ;-) RAW is a good option for anything as important as a wedding and it gives you plenty of scope for adjustments, I’ve run off a few B&W ones too as they are quite classic for weddings, eliminating the colour seems to highlight the emotions instead. I certainly take my hat off to those people who do wedding photography for a living, they certainly earn their money, I was very stressed beforehand but once I got started I think I began to relax a bit. Our planning of a list of wanted shots went out the window in the end, I didn’t know anyone there apart from the bride and groom and so didn’t know which group shots were which so in the end we went with the flow and I let them decide which groupings they wanted and just clicked away with the camera. Fell in love with the cake, it summed up the bride to a tee, it was very untraditional and covered in all her favourite Winnie the Pooh characters, she wanted a relaxed and laid back kinda day and I think that’s what she got. They are off on honeymoon now soaking up the stunning scenery in Vancouver giving me time to process the shots, in between juggling a million other PC jobs!