Let the sun shine....or set

I always used to love drawing pictures of the Sun as a kid, you know, with the big rays coming out and filling the page? And colouring them in in vibrant reds, oranges and yellows. Although you don't tend to get the Sun actually looking like that, I still love the rays you see when you photograph the Sun in the sky and I never miss an opportunity to capture it. Here are some of the images I have taken (on the odd chance the Sun has come out to play in England this year!)

This was taken at Hampstead Heath on a very, very cold winters morning! I love how the light is reflecting off the dew and making it glisten. The Sun was so low and big in the sky and, maybe it's just me, but you can literally see the Sun is on fire. 

The rest of the photos were taken in my back garden. I love the variety I'm able to achieve without even having to leave the house, excellent! And thrown in a few sunsets for good measure too. Hope you like!

                                                       

                                                               

More Millie!

To those of you who follow the blog regularly I'd just like to say that you better get used to all the baby photos of my niece you are going to see over the next few years at least! Having said that, I have heard of this new craze where parents take a picture of their child every day to document their lives. I won't be that bad with Millie, but only because I am not lucky enough to see her every day! But this is going to be my own take on that project.

Here she is at 4 weeks.

This is Millie at 6 weeks old. So cute! And looks like she's already getting used to her aunty putting a camera in her face, definitely getting the hang of posing for me. A natural maybe? She has got long legs for a littl'un, could be a model in the making!

And Millie at 9 weeks at her 'Meet the Baby Party'. She had met most people already but we don't need much of an excuse to have a party in our family and I think she liked it too!

What a beaut!

No smoke without fire

I have a notebook at home that any idea, however weird or wonderful, goes in to. And 'smoke' has been written in my notebook for some time. So, with the weather as delightful as it is and preventing me from going out to take photos, I thought now was as good a time as any to do some smoke experiments.....

                                                                           

Not bad for a first attempt I don't think! I looked up a tutorial and got straight in to it. The tutorial said patience was key and I can vouch for that! However, I am pretty pleased with them. Of course, there is always room for improvement but smoke makes so many beautiful patterns and when you add colour to the images it brings those amazing shapes to life.

To achieve all of these photos I had the ISO set to 100 and used my flash gun, a home made reflector and snood. I found it really hard to focus because you have to use a manual focus and it's not easy in the dark! But I did it and had fun so I'll definitely be practising it more in the future.

Looks like I'll have a lot more of these to showcase seeing as this rain doesn't look like budging any time soon.

One weekend in sunny June....

One weekend in sunny June......... Actually, it was probably in May, I don't think we've had a sunny weekend in June this year have we?! Well, have no fear, I managed to get a photo with rain in it as well, just in case anyone got withdrawal symptoms of the moist stuff.

I don't think I need to explain why I took these photos. But I will anyway; the colours. When the Sun is shining and I'm lying on the decking in my back garden this is what I get to look up to. It's almost like being on holiday when you get to look at these vibrant, rich and varied colours. Until you hear a bus go past anyway!

This photo was inspired thanks to a recent trip to a card shop. Some had random figurines in equally random places. A juxtaposition, if you will.  So it made me think about what random objects I have at home and how can I take them out of their 'normal' habitat. Just a bit of fun really. Having said that, I might make myself a project out of it now, take this little storm trooper out with me and see what random places I can photograph him in........ Although to be fair, this isn't a very random place to put him. In my garden, yes, but on a rock is not that far removed from where he would live if he really was in Star Wars.

And the rain reins supreme once again! But I always like to see an opportunity in any given situation and I just love looking at raindrops on windows. Water can really distort the way you see something but in this photo, it's where the rain drop of is that's clearer. The image doesn't demonstrate just how much it was lashing it down at this point either. If I'd been in a car the wipers would have been on full whack!

So there you have it; ONE weekend, ONE camera, ONE location, FOUR very different photos. Enjoy!

Family portraits

Another first for me, I am trying my hand out at family portraits. Let's face it, it would be silly not to when I meet up with my family so often and there is a new baby around for those picture perfect moments! As I said in a previous post, I didn't want to use my flash with such a young baby but instead use the available light. So, I was really pleased with image below. I hope you like too! This is my brother and our niece. What a natural huh??!

And of course, shots a plenty of the new family together!

I wanted a grainy texture to the images so that they looked more like film, I love using film but unfortunately, at the moment, I don't have the necessary time or equipment to do it nearly as much as I would like to so I adjust the ISO on my DLSR to give me a similar effect. It's the closest I can get to the real deal!

I think it's really important to have a new family in familiar surroundings when doing these shots, everyone is more comfortable and the images look more natural and less staged. And I also don't have my own studio (yet!) so it's the perfect excuse to keep the family at home!

And here are a few of the rest of the family having cuddles! Very, very proud grandparents to the right and an aunty, who also has her own blog (click 'blog' to go to it) and uncle below.

Little Miss Millie

Well, apologies because I feel like I have neglected my blog for a few weeks! All for a few good causes though and with photography always in the forefront of my mind!

4 weeks ago my family celebrated the safe arrival of my very beautiful, first ever niece, Millie! So thought I would take the opportunity to try my hand at some baby portraits. And now I have the perfect little model to practise on again and again, I reckon I still have a few years before she tells Aunty Holly to do one and find someone else to take photos of! Here a few from 4 days old up to 3 weeks:

I love how teeny tiny babies are! You forget just how small they are if you don't see a baby for a while and the size of their tiny hands and nails are just too adorable not to photograph.

 

I've decided to have quite a low ISO on my baby portraits too, I like the grainy, film texture you get from doing it and I think it works well with these sort of images. As I was going for a kind of retro look, I also used Sepia for the photo above. I also learnt from taking these photos that you really have to make the most of the available light because you don't want to be using a flash on a new born baby so that was a challenge I enjoyed too. 

When my niece grabs my little finger, it makes my heart literally melt! It's not my finger Millie has hold of in this shot but it makes my heart melt all the same! And really like the lighting again in this one above on the left. Pretty happy with my baby shots, I learnt a lot and will continue to practise, that's for sure. Watch this space for family portraiture next. And lots, lots more of Little Miss Millie!

Mamiya C330

I'm thinking about getting myself a new camera in the very near future. I currently use a Panasonic Lumix G1 and have bought and had bought for me, various camera accessories for it. Now, I was thinking about getting some new lenses for it in a few months time and then thought it was maybe time I joined the Canon/Nikon crew! Anyway, Canon/Nikon/Panasonic, it got me thinking about the other camera's I've had the pleasure of using............

Ahhhhh, this little beauty, the Mamiya C330 camera. Absolutely beautiful piece of gear, if you ever get the chance to use one. I loved everything about it; the look, the feel, the film. I was allowed to use it when I was doing my photography course at college.

It's a Twin Lens Reflex Medium Format camera so it uses 6x6 negatives and the images come out a square shape. You use one lens to focus and the other lens is used for the shutter. It was really, really easy to use and produces some really lovely images.

The images are not as crisp around the edges as other cameras but actually, I think that this really adds quality because it draws your eye to the centre of the image where the subject is very clear. It makes the camera really good for still life and if I got my hands on one again, I'd definitely do some portraits with it.




Here are some of the images I took with this camera. As I said before, I used the camera to take still life pictures. Those being of graveyards!

Some from Easter?!

 I was sat at home looking at ALL the chocolate I seemed to have accumulated for Easter. Not bad for a 20something adult, eh?!

Every day it was all sat on the table, staring at me, just willing me to gobble it all up with it's lovely bright packaging. So instead of giving in to temptation, I thought I would take photos of them. Mmmmmmmmmm it makes my mouth water just looking at this one. That cadbury's purple gets me every time!








Then I thought I'd do some experimenting. To be fair, it didn't turn out how I thought or had wanted it to but I really like them all the same! I used long exposure and was moving the camera around whilst exposing. Neat, huh?! The one on the left I actually zoomed in and out as I was exposing, rather than moving the camera itself. I like that it has a kind of 'Creme Egg halo'!

This one is my favourite, I just love how it doesn't look at all like an easter egg or chocolate and the colours look brilliant. In my opinion anyway! Hope you like them. I'm just going to go and raid the chocolate cupboard. Laters!

My sisters baby shower cakes

We recently held a 'Mum-To-Be-Tea' for my expectant big sister and once again I was able to combine two of my favourite things; photography and cake! I love the vibrant colours you get from food photography and it also gave me the chance to experiment with my 45-200mm lens which I recently bought. Mmmmmmm, making my mouth water just looking at these photos again! I made the pram cookies and my other sister, Emily, made the rest of the amazing cakes on offer for us. You can visit her blog and order her cupcakes to help raise money for her charity bike ride around India for Amnesty International you can go to her blog by clicking these links: www.emcupcakescharitycycle.blogspot.com and www.facebook.com/pages/Emcupcakes-Makes-Bakes

Actually, this is marshmallow, not cake  and these were shop bought but they still looked great alongside the homemade stuff!