Christmas is over.....

...and we all seem to have/have had colds.  I currently have a very sore throat but it doesn't seem to stop me eating chocolate or drinking wine !

The snow has all but gone now, we have had a big thaw and everywhere is slushy and wet.  So I am glad I got out when I did to take the snowy, frosty photos.

My 365 project is almost complete now too - only 1 more day to go. It has taken a lot of discipline to make sure I take a photo each day, and some of the photos are a bit....erm.... random!  But at least I have (nearly) completed the project.  I do hope I remember to take tomorrow's photo !

Today, for the project, I photographed a tulip from a bunch I have in the house at the moment.  I have said before that flower photography is my favourite type of photography to do, and I did enjoy myself for half an hour or so today while shooting it. 

This is one of my favourites.  I started off using a black card for the background, but there wasn't really enough light to shoot hand-held using natural light, even though I was shooting in the morning.  So, rather than get the tripod out or bump the ISO up really high, I used a lighter coloured background card, which I had forgotten I had, to bounce some of the window light back.  It also fitted in beautifully with trying to shoot flowers against a similar coloured background, as I have mentioned before. 

Hope you all had a lovely, relaxing and peaceful Christmas time - see you in the New Year

Sx

Well.......

.....it's been lovely and cold, but I don't think the majority of the country would agree with the "lovely" in that sentence.  Much of the country has suffered lots of disruption because of the snow and ice - it's not got above freezing here for days - but I am lucky that I've not had to travel too far, so apart from having to put an extra jumper on, it's not been too bad for us.

I have been out in the snow, taking pictures like I said I would.  I have already posted some, and I have a few more to put on here.

This one I took this morning.  Again it is a view across the fields next to our house, but the barn is off to the left out of shot.  I love how the frost has coated the trees.

This shows how gorgeously blue the sky was this morning.  The sun is bringing out the white of the frost, but hasn't had the strength to melt any of it.

Another frosty leaf.

This icicle is one of many hanging from the bars of my garden gate. 

This cobweb is hanging on the corner of my son's shed.  The frost makes it look like lace - you wouldn't think a delicate cobweb would be able to hold so much frost without breaking.....

So I have been out and taken some shots I am fairly pleased with.  I did have some lovely fingerless gloves which kept my hands nice and toasty while I was out shooting, but I have managed to lose one.  Hopefully Santa may bring me a new pair.

Keep warm

Sx

And.....

.....one from the weekend.

We went for a weekend away to Malvern, to visit Worcester where we used to live.  On the Sunday, we walked up the Worcestershire Beacon and this was the view on the way there.  The early morning mist was trapped in the valley, with only the higher ground showing.  The view is from Malvern looking towards Pershore.

Sx

It's still very cold.....

....but that is actually how I like it ! 

Yesterday, for my 365 project photo, I went out into the garden with my macro lens on my camera, to look for more detailed photos of the frost and ice.

These two pictures are very similar, but I like the clump of ice crystals on the right of the second photo.

In this photo I particularly like how the frost picks out the vein detail in the leaf.

At this time of year, and with all the frost, the photos have an almost mono feel about them.

The thaw is, apparently, on its way - no doubt we'll have more snow soon.  Probably before the ice on the driveway has melted !

Sx

More Snow.....

..... fell overnight

This is the field next to our house.  We often see owls and kestrels in that little barn over the hedge, and there are bats roosting somewhere nearby.  I have shot this view for my Project 365 several times this year, and am thinking that next year's project may be a weekly shot of this view, to show how it changes though the year, both naturally and as a result of farming.  Hmmm, maybe I need to think of something that will make it a bit more interesting tho.....

Sx

Snow

Hi

We woke up this morning to a dusting of snow :-)

It wasn't entirely unexpected - the forecast said it would "probably" snow in the east, and the temperature has been falling steadily.  My kids were excited when I told them we had snow, but less excited when I said that school would, most definitely, NOT be closed !

Last winter we had a lot of snow, which hung around for weeks and weeks and everyone got a bit fed up with it all.  My husband was working in Belgium at the time and was away from home Monday thru' Friday, and his weekly commute was a bit rotten.  We had the County Council website set as a "favourite" on my laptop so we could easily check if the schools were going to be open or closed.  But through all of it, I didn't go out with my camera much.  I think that this winter, if we get a lot of snow, I shall make the effort to take more photos, and I'll post some on here. 

Oh, and I "LOVE" the cold :-)

Sx

Busy, busy, busy

Hi

Not had much time to get anything done recently really.  Just busy generally.  Think it must be "that" time of year, not that I've done much preparation for Christmas yet.  My older son was 16 the other week, and that signals the start of a long line of family and friend birthdays which carries on to February.  And of course Christmas is in there too.  And there's school exams to get the kids ready for, the cold weather and darker evenings to deal with, general coughs and colds and sniffles to sort out... 

So today, while I was at Tesco, I treated myself to a cheap bunch of flowers, to try and lift the mood a bit.  Lovely, white chrysanthemums.  Plain and simple in their beauty.  Now, as a child, I never particularly cared for chrysanths, even though my Nanna used to grow and show them, but now I adore their simple daisy-like form. 

When photographing flowers, I used always to put them against a contrasting background, but I was flipping through a flower photography book some time ago, and the photographer used backgrounds almost identical in colour to the flower, and I adored the effect.  This is something which I now try and do, the effect is so relaxing to the eye.

In this one I tried lighting the white background to enhance the whiteness, but the effect was too "glary", so I reverted to natural light for the whole image.  I rather like it, I hope you do too.

Sx

Project 365

At the very end of last year I decided that in 2010 I would do a Project 365.  All this means is that I would take a photo EVERY day, without fail.  So far I have managed to do this, but as the end of the year is getting closer, I am having a little panic that I will forget to do one day, or be somewhere without a camera, or lose my memory card or...........

The pictures are varied, no theme joining them apart from that they are part of The Project, some are interesting, some not so much, but they record something I did or saw or thought on that particular day of 2010.

If you want to have a peep, click on my flickr page link

www.flickr.com/photos/sue-in-nz/

Sx

Flickr....

... is a fab place for showing your photos, isn't it?  I started to use flickr when we went to live in New Zealand in 2006 for a couple of years.  It was the best place I could find to store my photos so that family and friends could view them easily, without having to email them.

We are back in England now (for the time being), and I still use flickr to share photos. 

www.flickr.com/photos/sue-in-nz/

Sx

My favourite kind of photography.....

.....has got to be flower photography. 

I love the different colours - remember "nature never clashes" - the shapes, the perfection in all the detail.  And if they are cut flowers, once you've photographed them, you get to fill your house with them !

This is one I took today.  I bought the roses yesterday, and it was a mixed bouquet with this colour and paler pink roses.  This is pretty much straight out of the camera, apart from cropping.  I shot on fully manual so that I could adjust the exposure to get a more true representation of the deep pink.

Sx

Welcome to my new blog

Hi

I already have a blog for my college work - my corner of norfolk - and I thought I really ought to have one for my photography business too.  So here it is.

I am a mum who has always enjoyed photography.  I have always been the one in the group who has the camera !  My dad instilled a love of photography in me, and my brother even set up a darkroom in my bedroom when I was younger.  The trade-off was that I was allowed to watch him developing his films and printing his films, and of course, I got involved too. 

When I had my sons, I was always taking photos of them, and people saw the photos and asked me to take photos of their kids and grandkids too.  Soon, and entirely by word of mouth, my business grew and purely photography was up and running.

I will post photos on here as well as on the website (some will be on here that aren't on the website !) along with details/offers/ideas - anything really ! 

I'm looking forward to even more blogging from now on !

http://www.purelyphotography.co.uk/

Sx