It's beginning to feel alot like Christmas!

I can't believe we are now already at the end of November and with that comes the annual festive freebie workshop 12 Days of Christmas by the inspirational Cheryl Johnson. As usual before the course starts we have to take a festive Self Portrait - definately the hardest part of any of the workshops.

Heres mine for 2011

Will be back soon with more from the course :D

Autumn Colour

I went out yesterday with some of the Speen photography group yesterday to capture some autumn colour. It was very dull and misty so the tripod was out but I soon gave up with it. The result of that meant an awful lot of my shots were soft and noisy but I managed to get a few shots I am happy with.

That's it for now. Hopefully will be back with some shots from CJ's 12 Days of Christmas workshop if I'm lucky enough to get in :)

I *Heart* Faces - Beautiful Eyes

The challenge over at I *Heart* Faces this week is "Beautiful Eyes". This is my current favourite of DD2. Still waiting for DD1 to relent and let me take some of her!



Check out the other entries over there now.

I *Heart* Faces - Water

It's been ages since I took part in the photo challenge over at I *Heart* Faces. This week is water. Waiting to get the pool out again if the weather ever decides that it is actually summer!



Check out the other entries over there now.

Race for Life

Yesterday we took part in a Race for Life in High Wycombe. Team ZEEG were me, Erin, Eden and Erin's friend Georgina and Team Harley-Waters were my MIL Ann, SIL Emma and Katie and Abbie. The course was twice around The Rye a lovely open park. Paul, Noah, Alan and Tim were there supporting and Noah joined us on the last lap. It was a gloriously sunny afternoon - the complete opposite to a week before when we spent a very wet day at Legoland!

Before the race


With their fairy wings


We ended up finishing in 3 groups - Erin and Georgie went ahead early on and finished in 53 minutes, me, Eden, Katie and Noah finished in about an hour and Ann, Emma and Abbie (in her pushchair) finished about 5 minutes later.

With our medals and a well deserved ice cream


Team ZEEG have raised £300 twice our target and Team Harley raised £352. Not a bad result for a Sunday afternoon stroll :D

Beautiful People - part 2

Thought I'd update on the Beautiful People workshop following on from the last post. Stranger Danger was in fact about taking shots of a stranger and not street photography. The strangers I photographed were in Chris D's local pub during one of our group meets. I chickened out of the asking but did manage a few shots each of 2 younger male strangers (!), however, they were rubbish pics as the lighting was awful. Won't post them here either for permission reasons. The second part of the module though was about profiles. Heres one of Eden before her first Grade 4 Ballet class.



The last module was all about fun and was called Perfect Mayhem but it also included hand and feet shots. Managed to get a few shots of all 3 willing to pose. It wasn't as easy taking interesting hand shots and I wasn't particularly keen on the feet ones either.















On Saturday there was a wrap party which included an online scavenger hunt (still waiting to find out how I got on) and 3 photo challenges in the evening. Here are my 3 entries. Not great - we had half an hour for each one.

A bit late getting this challenge and then my hard disk was full so had to do a bit of archiving before I could upload. This one was what 3 items would you take on a desert island - mine were laptop, chocolate and my donkey!



Second challenge was called rainbow effect where you had to find an object(s) with your favourite colours. Mine are purple and green = a chive against a green pot.



Third challenge was to take a picture of your house at dusk. Copped out a bit with just a bit of the conservatory roof with some colourful clouds.

Beautiful People

is the name of the new portraiture course run by Cheryl Johnson of Feel Good Photos. Thought I'd post some of my images from the last 2 weeks. First up is the Self Portrait (urghh!) It had to have a summer theme and as I was short of time (and creativity) it was just a basic SP next to some flowers! Literally had to dodge the rain to get this and then wait for the sun to go behind a cloud.

First module was posing your subject and position of camera for adults. I collared my dad on Fathers Day and Paul as a last minute addition!

Second module was all about babies and small children. As there are no babies around at the moment I went with Noah who was suprisingly co-operative (I think it was because he wanted to show off his mohican!

I've got a feeling the next module is about street photography - not sure how I'll get on with that one!

At Last!

I've been using a template to present my images for a while instead of printing individual photos and should have made my own ages ago. Well at last I've made one I'm quite pleased with. A bit basic but I like the circle frame in the centre. The shots are from our last visit to Cliveden a couple of weeks ago.

Just signed up to CJ's Portraiture course which starts next week so watch this space!

More Photoshop

Another site I love is Gavin Hoey. There are so many tutorials of how to do things in Photoshop which are straightforward and easy to follow. His 15 minute photo challenges are great inspiration too.


Heres something I made earlier (including the background and watermark)






Off to play some more :)

Playing with Photoshop

I've just finished another of CJ's fab courses - Advanced Artistry 2. This time it dealt with colour correction, stop motion movies, light effects and textures and presenting your photos.

Using a filter


Lego Stop Motion Movie

Coins Stop Motion Movie

These were great fun to do and put together but you do need alot of patience when taking the pictures!

Adding a texture

Lighting with a torch



Blending four torch lit images




Presenting images in templates

It's been great fun and again loads of new things to learn :)

Supermoon

It's been a bit quiet on the photography front so far this year but I did manage to get a quick shot of the Supermoon on Saturday 19th March. This was taken at 7.30pm when it was quite low in the sky and had a slight yellow cast to it.

The moon is usually about 238,000 miles away from earth but on Saturday it was only 221,567 miles away!

The 12 Days of Christmas

I have been lucky enough to get a place on CJ's free 12 Days of Christmas workshop. The first task is a Self Portrait. Not my favourite task but out came the tripod and this is the result. CJ picked it as one of her favourites (you need to scroll down to the bottom of the post!) How chuffed am I!

Here are some other shots from the first week.