Lavender and a World Class Education

Totally unrelated to my lavender macro, I have been watching Sue and Felix on Creative Live today.

I have resisted using flash as much as possible until now because I don’t like how it looks. Seeing natural light recreated with artificial studio light has EXCITED ME! I can’t wait to get some time to try it out.

As a Mum with 3 young boys I only have free time really at night and to be able to shoot then would be a blessing. I am looking forward to exploring it further. Creative Live has opened up a world of education opportunity for me. I have no possibility of getting out, but I can have it going while I watch the boys play or play with my baby. I said to my family earlier tonight that I didn’t like technology, but really it not only is the foundation of my passion for photography, it allows me, a suburban Mum in Adelaide, Australia to take part in a world class education that I could not otherwise access or afford.

THANK YOU.

Advertisement

An Experiment: for the little guys

I said yesterday I took my boys to the the playground. I mentioned that they gave me a flower.  What I didn’t mention was that my 3 year old decided to pick ALL of the flowers growing in the park.

My 1 year old also decided to bring me flowers. Just like his big brother.

Anyway, I decided that since the flowers had been taken we had better put them to good use.

We divided them into 4 glasses of water coloured with food colouring and waited to see if they would take up the colour. I added a few white roses from the garden as I knew they would take the colour and wasn’t sure how well jonquils would go.

We waited.

Several hours later we noticed a slight change and got all excited.

The roses were taking up the colour faster than the jonquils.

We left them over night and this morning we had a rainbow!

The boys were very excited their experiment had worked! Hopefully we have instilled in them a desire to be curious and inventive for life!!
…well its a start.

Mum used it as an opportunity to take photos of course.

Fascinating.

Happy to be removing the stinky jonquils from the living room.

My first ever portrait session!

I thought I would share with you a few photos from my first ever portrait session with someone other than my kids! It was part of my photography class. This is a friend of mine who was kind enough to donate her time and sit in front of bright lights and 15people with cameras for 2 hours in return for a few photos and eternal gratitude!! Thanks J.

I love the expression on this one, but its not as sharp as I’d like up very close and I am not 100% sure about the angle. I left her arm in to explain how it was possible. I thought it might bother me otherwise? I will continue to think about it.

Another one I love for the expression that wasn’t sharp! Damn it.

I am happy with my first effort. Luckily she has said she doesn’t mind me practising on her again sometime. I am enjoying my journey.

 

 

Homework Lesson 1, Part 1 – aperture

Homework for lesson 1 is two fold. The first part is to take the same(ish) photo with the lowest f-stop value available and then again with a high value. It is supposed to contrast the difference in the area that is in focus. Taking a photo of a fence was suggested. I was out photographing Boo ghost and decided to use the cedar berries all over my yard. Pretty basic.

Lower f-stop value = more blur

Higher f-stop value = less blur

The second part of the homework seems more challenging to me. We are to take another set of two contrasting shots using the shutter speed as the variation. The teacher suggested we try to get a background blur with a focused subject by panning the camera with the subject. The idea is to capture the ‘motion’. I don’t have any equipment other than the camera and I am assuming that panning at the correct rate without getting blur from my hand shaking is going to be hard (near impossible??) so I am putting it off. Any suggestions to help would be GREATLY APPRECIATED!!

First Lesson Done!

I did my first photography lesson tonight. Most of it was stuff I already knew, but I got some clarity on a few terms I didn’t know and things I had been doing without knowing what they were!

So now I have HOMEWORK. I am supposed to take a shot with a low and high aperture setting to contrast the difference and the same with shutter speed.

I will post my homework shots too. That way everyone can be my teacher! Hopefully I can get some ideas and feedback. That should help me to improve more. I have already been impressed with the ideas and feedback people gave me with my latest self portrait. I love that it gives me fresh perspective and new ways to think about things. Educating myself is about broadening my thinking and I am finding the online blogging community is an invaluable resource. So Thanks!

An educated mother

I have decided to do an 8 week course on how to use an SLR camera.

I am hoping that it will give me some further insight into posibilities as far as what I can and can’t achieve with my camera and the specifics of how to do it. My course information says I should bring some examples of my photos. I have no idea of what to include? Perhaps I should start binding a book! haha, I blog way too much. So I have the task of choosing some of my better photos. If anyone has any suggestions of photos I should include and why I would love to hear them. Or in fact information about putting together a portfolio and what to put in them generally would also be helpful. I also have to have an idea of what I want to achieve in this course. Would saying that I want to improve be a bit obvious?

Hmmm, on that note I am going to go to bed where I will hopefully resolve this issue subconsciously while asleep. Good evening.