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.

Halloween

All the kids went Trick or Treating (or Trickle Treating in Noah's case!). No photos of Erin as she went on her own with friends - she's much too old now to go round with her family! Check out the giant pumpkin, grown by Grandad and carved by me.

Posting again!

Posting again with some templates of recent activities. We went to Waddesdon Manor yesterday.

Playing in the leaves at the end of the day.

Noah went dressed as Dracula to claim his free prize! Sweets!

Inside the Manor.

I have just finished Cheryl Johnson's Painting with Light workshop. The last module Move in Close turned out to be my favourite. Capturing sharp water droplets is incredibly hard!


A selection from the other modules.

That's it for now. See you at Christmas!

And there's more ......

These are the templates I have done so far from our holiday in Charlestown, St Austell Bay in Cornwall last week. Only a couple more to do!

We first went to the Eden Project a couple of months after it first opened in 2001 (also the year Eden was born but it's not where her name came from!) Then ,particularly the outside, was very bare (I will try and look out some old photos) but now it's amazing.


St Michael's Mount must have its own climate. Waiting to go over in the boat it was very dull, overcast and very windy but as soon as we got through the ticket office it was warm and sunny.

Alot of people waded back over the causeway but we had to sit and wait for it clear!

Another National Trust property was Lanhydrock in Bodmin.

The dishes at the bottom were used to make clotted cream.

And this is the other Waddeson Manor template.

That's it until the next template ......

Templates and a mini planet

First up is a mini planet - like many things easy when you know how. The first 3 templates are from CJ's last couple of workshops - People Imagery and Advanced Artistry (Photoshop techniques and the reason for the mini planet).

This was using font as a photo mask.

Making a triptych and a panorama of Waddesdon Manor (another template to follow!!)

People Imagery - I did this workshop a couple of years ago and really struggled but I enjoyed it this time around and am really pleased with some of the shots.

The next couple of templates are from the shoots done with the Speen Photography group. It's great to get the opportunity to shoot different subjects and get feedback on your work from like minded and talented people. I'm always in two minds about my shots and it's a real boost to the confidence with their constructive criticism.

Christine and I had the opportunity to shoot this Pony Club meeting and the resident photographers were incredibly generous with their time and expertise.

The last couple of templates are some of our geocaching jaunts leading up to our 100th find. (We're now on 112!)

That's it for this post but be warned I've alot more templates to show from our holiday. I will get around to doing my own layout - it's just so much easier using one already laid out!

Summer Time

Just updating with some recent pics - can you tell I've learnt how to do templates in PSE!

The boy has now lost 2 of his front teeth. He doesn't want to give them to the Tooth Fairy - "she gets everyone elses I want to keep mine" I joked he could make a necklace out of them and he seemed quite keen!!

Cherry picking - yum!

We have just reached our 100th cache and I am just finishing the third of CJ's Feelgood Workshops so will post some of my fave shots from them when I get round to getting the templates done! It much easier posting them than the individual shots. See you soon.