Photo extravaganza!

Well better late than never I'm back with a few pics, some are last weekend and some are the one just gone... it was a total scorcher yesterday, so much so that we just hung out in the garden and the girls played in their paddling pool to cool down. (the water started out sparkly and clean but turned 'Martha' brown in about a millisecond!)

On Saturday after a quick dip a recce of the Forest was in order - I jumped out the car to grab a few pics of a donkey family and of course they rushed straight over with the consolation that I could grab this cute pic of Martha meeting one of the donkeys!

And to finish a few randon shots from lst weekend... Paddling...

Beautiful locations...

More padlding... (yes I was knee deep in water to take this one!)

Chilling in the evening sunshine...

Grey Squidger...

Coot baby... (who have THE BIGGEST feet in the world!)

Gorgeous Lola...

Young...

And old...

And to top it all off... a gorgeous blue sky!

Old Friends and good friends...

The new True Friend Challenge went live this morning - it's all about our pets friends, and of course Martha's best friend can only be Lola (and vice versa!)

My page is using mostly American Crafts - lots of it from last months Studio Calico kit.

Talking of friends I've got a few pictures to share from the last few days - the first of which is the two girlies having a cuddle!

The weather held over the weekend and it was great to get out and about (the rain has arrived with a vengance now though!) in the New Forest

Martha made friends with one of the cows in the Forest...

But not these ones... don't fancy those horns close up!

Much safer was this lovely textured bark I came across while having a wander...

Found this camera this evening, lurking at the back of a drawer. It's an old APS film camera and I suspect it has a half used roll inside it, but it's impossible to tell as the battery is dead. So I punted a quid or so on ebay for a new one and if it works I'll be trotting down the developers to investigate some lost prints I think I last used it in about 1997/8 so it'll be interesting to see...

I also found an empty film that might be worth a go if it all goes smoothly! I seem to remember the prints were pretty good from it so fingers crossed!

Let it snow...

Woke up this morning to a surprising layer of the white stuff... lot's to scrape off the car and enough to pile high on the trees and a few quick pictures in the drive before rushing off to work.

Not a lot left once I got home and Martha paused to pose after tiring herself out with a good run around in the little bit that remained.

Today saw a new challenge go live at Scrap Schemes, it was based on a lovely black and white image and this was my take on it.

I loved the colour (or lack of) scheme and simply added some touches of red and grey to set it off. Most of the bit's i've used are from the last Studio Calico kit.

Shrove Tuesday... er.... Monday.

Shrove Tuesday brings the obligatory pancake and lemon shot... except I had mine yesterday but it's the thought that counts! And very yummy they were too!

Came home to a little delivery today -a big ol' pile of rechargable batteries to keep the Speedlite firing... i'm notoriously rubbish at charging batteries so in this case more is most definately more!

I've got a page to share again today - did this one ages ago and it's been sitting in a draft post waiting it's turn for weeks! So today is the day! It features one of my favourite Lola pics from last year, not to mention some yummy We R Memory Keepers papers and frills.

In Search Of.... ISO

There's a fun new challenge over at Scrap Schemes  - here's my page, featuring my photo from a couple of weekends ago with Martha enjoying Dancing on Ice. As much as I enjoy inking/flocking through old sequin waste, and as much as I say it's hideous in it's raw form.... I think secretly I loves it!

Tonight was Hydrotherapy night for Lola, we ventured off into deepest darkest West (well ok mid) Dorset afraid that it would still be knee deep in snow, but weirdly my little village is the snowiest place for miles around! Lola features in my pic of the day - it's surprisigly bad light and I was using my old 400D rather than the 40D that can handle higher ISO's much better - so it's a bit noisy - my tip if you have to use a higher ISO (which I much prefer to blur thankyou very much!) is to enbrace the noise and go for a nice grungy mono-coversion!

In the pool room it's really quite hot - and coming from the brass monkey weather outside resulted in a nicely fogged lens/viewfinder and sensor! It took and age to de-mist... Note to self - stuff camera down cleavage in cold weather!

Not to be left out I grabbed a couple of pics of Marth once I go home.. love those big squishy nostrils!

Double Trouble...

With a 365 it's inevitable that during the winter months you are going to need to take lots of pictures indoors... and to that end it's only a matter of time before the breakfast shot... so here for you viewing pleasure are my morning Shreddies... or more accurately in these hard-credit crunch times... Malt Wheats from Morissons...they're half the price don't you know!

As much as a 50mm is a must have, an ultra-wide lens is great fun to have in your camera bag. Mine is the Sigma 10-20mm and I took my 'Martha' pic using it today. It's the same lens that I used for my Jan 1st pic - so you get sensible landscapes and fun super wide candids all with one lens. Today my pic features both of my girls - I think Lola's felt a bit left out of pictures so muscled in with her sister today. Check out all that gorgeous slobber!

My page to share today features Martha settiling down to watch TV... using my leg as a perfect head-rest. The cute little felt-embellishments are Chatterbox. I love the cute scallopy border especially.

Christmassy...

Looking back on my Christmas pics I seem to have lots of fun prep pics, but a few less once the Champagne was opened! Oops! Anyway here are a few to share - first up I had to polish of the last few advent chocs...

Then of course about a million sausages had to be rolled...

The stuffing made the obligatory appearance...

And met up with a scrummy yum free range turkey...

And the sprouts were peeled and prepped...

When dinner was nearly over Sandie's homemade pud went centre stage...

And Martha posed serenely by the tree...

Or maybe serene isn't the right word!!

Hope your Christmas was as much fun as mine!

Flash ah ah.....

There's a new challenge over at the Forever Friends challenge blog and the challenge this time is to use a Christmas song... here's my offering..

At the moment I'm bearly seing the light of day, it's dark when I leave for work and dark when I get home so my photography is severely limited at the moment. So the only alternative is long exposures with a tripod or getting busy with some flash - this is one of my favourite Christmas ornaments - who can resist a bit of glitz at Christmas? I finally use the Liveview on my 40D for the first time and it really does make nailing focus a cinch for close-up shots. I was decidedly sceptical, but I'm a convert!

For a while now I've been wanting to get some off camera lighting and rather than invest in studio (continuous or flash) lighting I've taken the plunge with a set of wireless flash triggers for my speedlite. It means you can get a bit more creative with the angle and amount of flash. This shot (which is by no means perfect!! was lit with the speedlite on the right hand side of the shot and it straight away adds a bit of drama and interest.

Once I'd got the Speedlite off the camera you loose the thru-the-lens metering so you have to control the flash manually - a whole now world to learn which is quite exciting!

This is a page from the weekend (November SC) and features one my recent favourite pics of Martha - I took it when I was aiming to get some Christmas card pictures (hats and antlers!!) but Martha much preferred posing without!

50mm is plenty...

Most digiSLR users will admit it's nice to have a big ol' bag of lenses to play around with, but sometimes if you take more than a couple out on a jaunt you'll end up with either a headache or backache... a headache from the fuss of changing them over or picking the best one for the job, or backache from lugging them around all day... Sometimes it pays to do yourself (and your chiropractor!) a favour and limit yourself to just one... So on Sunday I set out with just my Canon 50mm f1.8 (and my external flash for a bit of fill...) on my camera.

This lens is a total gem... it's pin sharp (especially when you stop it down a little bit), it's light and small in size so you can leave your huge camera bag at home! It's massive maximum aperture (f1.8) is perfect for dull winter days (yes... it's officially over!) when you'd give your right arm for a bit of decent light! Plus it's only about £70! (or you could get the f1.4 for 3 times the price!) Bear in mind thought that the f1.8 does feel a bit plasticy (if you've got some quality glass you'll be forgiven for wondering if it's a toy) and the AF is as noisy as hell! But if you can forgive that you'll be rewarded with a new best friend!

This lens is of course a prime lens (ie - a fixed focal length, you'll need to use the manual zoom.. aka your feet!) and what I love most about it is that you really have to think about compostition and framing rather than rely on a handy zoom!

All that being said it works just as well for frenzied action shots like these... where framing is sometimes more down to luck that judgement!!

Phast Photoshop....

I like to ideally get my photos right in camera, but sometimes situations with high levels of contrast (like a dark dog on a sunny day in a reflective or light environment like a pond) it can be tricky to get correct exposure of the light and the dark areas...

The focus of this picture (if you excuse the pun!) is Martha and to get good exposure of her, and to retain her facial detail etc, it meant over-exposing the background. I'm more than willing to use photoshop to enhance my pictures, but sometimes I don't have the time or inclination to use levels, curves etc. etc. to get a great result... however the good news is that Photoshop Elements has a few clever little tricks up it's sleeves.

I'm going to show you how to use the Shadows and Highlights tool to get a uber-fast quick fix. The defaults in the tool however are shockingly bad! They give a wholy unnatural look so you'll have to use those scary sliders!

(You can click on all these pics to get a closer look at the steps you need to take!)

So first i've done a small crop just to make the composition a bit more pleasing to my eye.

Next go to 'Enhance' on the toolbar followed by 'Adjust Lighting' and then 'Shadows and Highlights'

As I said the default that the tool suggests is ghastly! I don't want any lightening of the darker regions... I've already exposed correctly for these thanks very much Mr Adobe! It's the highlights we want to tame a tad!

So instead move the 'Lighten Shadows' slider back over to the left to 0%, then move the 'Darken Highlights' slider to the right.. you'll need to use your judgement on this one... but don't go crazy or you'll get an unnatural look. I've gone to 33% on this one.

And that's it... a subtle but effective tweak in a couple of minutes! This tool won't extract detail from totally blown out areas, but it can pull some warmth and detail from some overexposed bits!

Hope this might be useful to someone!