First attempt at changing to B&W

Photo taken this morning of a pot plant just outside my back door.

I went on a course for photoshop about 2 years ago. It was a bit of a whistle stop tour of p/s, and to be honest I have hardly used it since! I'm not sure that I can bothered to take the time.

I usually use microsoft picture manager to 'pep up' my photos with contrast and brightness, and to crop and resize. I ilke that program becasue there's not so much to it, and far less choice about what to do!!!

However, Cheryl's little hints and tips on todays email really made sense - having already done the course. So here's my first B&W convert (apart from the odd one or tow that I have used desaturate for oops!)

Reflecting on reflections!

This week's assignment is reflections. Here are some of my photos taken today. Thsi first one is a reflection in a mirror in my bedroom. The mirror is one of those with a 'mirror' frame.









Reflection in the wing of my mirror on my dressing table.


What is so interesting is that to get the reflection in focus means that the actual mirror is way out of focus. Thus, the plane of the reflection is very different to that of the surface that it is in! Weird!













These two bottles stand on my dressing table. Not only are they reflecting in the surface of the dressing table, but I am reflected in the little blue bottle - twice in fact.
















It was a superb morning for reflections in car windows this morning, I saw loads of great reflections on my dog walk - but I didn't have the nerve to take a picture of someone elses car!LOL So here's my house reflected in my car!

I did taek some others of me taking the picture which are quite good too.




All these photos are taken fully manual. I am getting used to it, and enjoying thinking more about the taking of the photo.

Manual oooh errr!

My first foray into manual on my camera! OMG, so much to think about!!! Not only aperture and speed, but making sure the little meter is in the middle! Then, I forgot about ISO and white balance! Hey ho!Here's some photos I have just taken:

DH cleaning his bike. f9, 1/60th, 200 ISO, white balance cloudy, manual focus!!

I have cropped this a little, too many bicycles in the background.

really pleased with this one, manual focus!!!

f4.5, 1/250th, 70mm focal length, iso 200, wb cloudy. I am really pleased that I got the focus just on the right bit of the plant!

Another one I am pleased with! manual focus again. f4.5, 1/400th.

This one highlights a pitfall of manual! I was so intent on getting the focus and everything else right, I forgot about composition! LOL I was focusing on Merlin's eye, and that of course was in the middle of the viewfinder. All I had to do was move the view down a bit!

These next few are for my A-Z album of everyday things, D is for dinner! This one has been cropped from landscape to portrait. f4.5, 1/60th, ISO 1250, wb sunny. I quite like this one, DD seems to be pretty much in focus. Maybe not as sharp as I'd like, but I guess that's the high ISO.

DH cooked dinner today while I cleaned the bathroom and tidied upstairs! What a great dinner, roast lamb and tons of veg! Our favourite!

I love the way this one highlights the steam!

MMMMM tasty!

Trying harder!

Trying a bit harder this morning! Here's me reflected in my bedroom mirror, definately an everyday thing! This time I have cleaned my lens and made a note of the settings, and sketched the hsitogram.

All these pics are taken on 800 ISO, although I am not sure I like the graininess of a higher ISO!

This photo is taken on f4.5 1/40th sec





I am pleased with this picture of my washing basket!! LOL It's full of clean ironed washing waiting to be put away!! I really like the angle of the shot, much more interesting. That's DDs bedroom door in the background with her dangly curtain thingy!

f4.5 speed 1/30














These 2 pics are of my pots of make up on my dressing table. I think I will come back to these, because I love the texture of the pots, and the reflections both in the top and in the make up!

This one f4.5 speed 1/80








This one f4.5 speed 1/100

I thought I would like the first one best, because it is a more interesting angle, but actually I prefer this one, because of the wonderful reflections! I love the way the rich wood has come out in the photo.





Still not to sure what the histogram is telling me, but I will keep it on show and as I take more photos, I guess I will learn from experience!

Shutter speeds were quite low with this lot of photos, and that maybe a reason for my blurry shots before. I also think that when I shoot on f4.5 and 70mm, I sometimes get the wrong bit kn focus!! All a bit hit and miss still at the moment! LOL

I don't like these shots!

Taken today at Wakehurst Place. What a beuatiful day it has been! Trouble was, I went with a friend and we walked around chatting, so I wasn't able to concentrate on my photography really. I do love trees at this time of year and the beautiful patterns the bare branches make against the blue sky!














My digital radio, that I have constantly tuned to Radio2!




















A true everyday thing, my tin of WW soup for dinner!

I am not sure why I don't like these pics. I am a bit disappointed with all my photos lately. The second 2 were taken on a high ISO setting, and so seem a little grainy. But my photos generally seem a little bit out of focus. Perhaps my lens needs cleaning or maybe there's a bit of camera shake. Certainly on my close ups, I keep getting the wrong bit in focus! For example, (I deleted it now!) I took another pic of the tin of soup which had the lid in focus but the writing out of focus and it didn't work for me.

Week One -Exposure

Here are some photos I took this morning on our dog walk (an everyday thing!) We walked along the river at Shoreham, so most of my photos don't fit with the everyday thing theme!

I tried out different exposures and looked at the histogram. But I am not sure how to read the histogram. I understand that there is not a perfect histogram, but there is an optimum of 2 peaks towards the edges of the graph. But most of mine just had one peak in the middle! Think I need to read up on it more. Off to find my manual.

The car had a lovely reflection of the house in it! I think it makes the photo look a bit messy.

Theme

I have chosen my theme: EVERYDAY THINGS.

I am keen to scrapbook my everyday life this year, so this course will hopefully get me taking some good photos for this project! I think it's wide enough to cover all the modules, and easy enough to find subjects to photogrpah (I don't have to go anywhere!)

It's a lovely bright morning out there, so off I go!

Cheryl's masterclass

I have signed up for Cheryl's Masterclass http://www.feelgoodphotos.co.uk/. So I am going to use this blog as a place to record my thoughts, post inspirational photos, and post my own photos.

This week is EXPOSURE. So this weekend I intend to take my camera with me wherever I go and take photos changing the exposure. I do normally use Aperture priority on my camera, and change apperture for the depth of field that I want. So now I must experiment some more! And check the histogram - not something I do at the moment, mainly cos I don't know what it means!!

sps and sos

Two self portraits today! This one Maurice took for me, becasue I want it for my A-Z of everyday things album, A is for anorak!! The second photo is my wellington footprint in the sand.

Here's my show off picture! Taken this morning on the beach - which is still full of wood washed up from the ship that sunk off Portland Bill recently. It was a really gorgeous morning, and I managed to get a few 'blurry backgrounds'.

Ring

Sorry for the poor quality photo! I wanted to take a photo of my poor old engagement ring! It got pulled out of shape a couple of months ago when Merlin pulled on the lead! I MUST get it to the jewellers to be mended, and it probably wants resizing now.

It was DH's grandmother's ring. I don't think it is particluarly valuable, it has 2 small sapphires and a diamond set into a sort of swirl setting (very trendy now!! LOL)

Due to poor light and the fact I don't ownm a macro lens, I decided to take the photo of it perched on top of this chinese box, which also has a ring on it! Please excuse the dust LOL!

Indulge

This wonderful kit from Scrapagogo arrived in the post today (along with a CJ and a kit from Scrapping Angels!) This is a real indulgence - it is soooo exciting to open the yellow box and stroke the contents! Trouble is, that's all I seem to do with it! So sadly, I have decided to stop my subscription and start to use the kits.

CD

Like lots of you others, I have CDs all over the house! Here is the little pile by my bed, kept on a little coffee table with the radio/cd player. I love to play calming music while I read my book in bed. (Helps tocover up the slurping noises I make while drinking my hot chocolateLOL!!!)

SOS

A bit late, but here is my SOS for this week. I went down to exeter for the weekend to stay with friends from Tanda Stamps forum, and these beautiful threads were on a stall at the craft show we went to.

Thread

I havea pile of old tapestries and cross stitches in the bottom drawer of my dressing table! Here's the very first one I did. I have never had it on display.

I used to do a fair bit of cross stitch and tapestry. I still have a beautiful cushion half done, which I still mean to finish off one day. It is an Elizabeth Bradley one and it has auriculas on it. It is absolutely gorgeous! The colours in the cushion are so subtle, but that has been the main problem - you can't see the difference in the poor light of winter, which is when I want to do stitching! I have finished the flowers, it's just the black background to do now. Perhaps I'll get it out again now!

Bling

I keep my everyday necklaces and earrings in the this little dish on my dressing table. I bought the dish on holiday in Spain or Portugal (can't remember where exactly!)

I don't really 'do' bling! I don't have any jewellery that is worth anything. The only time we ever spent money on jewellery was in Bangkok, 25 years ago! Our rep kept taking us to all these gem factories! We bought a few bits, which I still have, and hardly ever worn. Not sure it's worth anything now though

Fold

Towels folded in my airing cupboard.

SOS

We had a lovely walk this morning along the beach at Worthing. I rarely use my lens on widest angle - 18mm, must do it nore often!

White

oops! Already fallen at the first post! I have only just taken this shot this morning. Perhaps I will have to amke a resolution to do at least 3 hsms photos each week rather than all of them.