Not Mine...

Before I go on... I hasten to mention this is NOT my camera and lens!! But I can still imagine the pain of the poor photographer who tripped and fell on his.... Ouch!

Autumn is well and truly here...

Autumn to me is bittersweet. I find the nights drawing in rather depressing and when the clocks change is even worse, however all of that is somewhat forgotton with the gorgeous autumnal colours of the forest. These leaves were floating in the shallows of the river where Martha had her evening paddle.

And here's the girl herself! I usually shoot near water with my second body (a 400D which has a long strap so it can be safely slung around my body - much safer bending over to get sticks etc) with my 'walkabout zoom' a Tamron 28-75mm f2.8. it's a great all purpose lens but on this occasion I wanted to be able to fill the frame with Martha further out in the water, so I bravely stuck on my posh Canon 70-200mm (it's the f4 not the f2.8... my credit card couldn't take the strain of that!!) and it worked a treat!

I totally love that lens, the colours are richer, it focuses fast, it's built like a brick and it's super sharp! What more could you want??

Macro Monday!

I spent a few minutes out in the garden today looking for likely candidates to try out my new 100mm Macro lens, i got a little closer than I generally like to, to a spider and took and oportunistic snap of a hover fly who landed on a handy leaf. I love the last flower pic, if only i'd rearranged that front petal!

They were all taken at f11 so not a lot of ambient light, so i used my speedlight off the camera to get the right exposure. What do you reckon to my first attempt?

Happy Birthday to Meeee!

I had a fantastic Birthday yesterday, after taking a half day off to start a few days off work, I had a lovely relaxing stroll in the forest and watched the girls free range for ages!!

I'm very lucky to know a lot of very clever people, so received lots of gorgeous handmade cards! This first one is a Nick Mercer original (from the guys and gals at work)  - it's all hand cut (from Core'dinations and BasicGrey), and I love it!

This one is from lovely Emma, who's definately a star cardmaker in the making!

This one's from Jenny P - she nabbed the pic of Martha from my blog and embellished it with our standard answer about age! She's the same age as me, although she always mentions that she's a couple of weeks younger!

A gorgeous butterfly card from Mum, with an added row of teeny chicken feet!

Sandie made this funky tree card - loe the velvet paper and the birdy!

And finally this flowery masterpiece from Anita, isn't this a gorgeous card!!

Teeny cakes were the order of the day and for me they have to be chocolate with more chocolate, topped with Cadbury's Buttons - Yummy!

I was very, very lucky to receive some wonderful gifts, including a gorgeous chocolate cord American Crafts d-ring album from Anita - thanks hunny! Many more of my pressies had a noticable theme.... no prizes for guessing it from these pics!

Flowers are always lovely too.... thanks to Becks for some gorgeous citrus hued roses and freesias. They smell gorgeous and are currently a welcome brightener for my scrapping area. I feel inspired to scrap in yellow all of a sudden!

Another AMAZINGLY geneous pressie was this fantastic 100mm Macro Lens... you'll have to watch this space for evidence of me getting to grips with it!

So all in all a fantastic day! Thanks so much for all the kind Birthday wishes via email, text, and via Facebook etc. Love you all! xxx

Camera Caution!

After ending work for a week or so for a well earned break, I popped up to take Martha for a paddle in the lovley afternoon sun yesterday, and aside from a fairly spectacular flying fall into the mud, all went well! Martha was so excited to get in the water that she managed to pull me off balance and combined with muddy ground and my own apparant lack of cordination I managed to end up face first on the floor!

Of course I had my SLR with me but it survived the fall! (My 400D not the 40D - i'm too scared to take that near water - and probably with good reason thanks to my track record of ruining equipment in water!)

Thank goodness for the soft ground and for my long (Amy Butler fabric) camera strap - i bought a long strap a while back from this Etsy seller - the thinking behind it being that I can wear the camera on my hip slung around my body - essential when with the dogs, as if i lose my grip on it or if I need two hands quickly for any reason, I can literally let go and it will be safe! It's also less likely to swing about if you bend over for whatever reason - dogs, kids, etc. it's also good if you have two cameras, one round your body and one round your neck!

I'm sure if it had just been around my neck (or in my hand) my camera would have become a very expensive frisbee and the result wouldn't have been as good!