Snow!!

Have had a fantastic day! Steve and I decided to go to Leeds to the last day of the German Christmas market, still plenty of snow left over from earlier in the week and it was freezing but cold and crisp not grey and frigid so lovely. Parked at the railway station in Huddersfield and got the train to Leeds. The market was fantastic, next year am going to go earlier and buy myself a wooden manager they are so lovely. Got some hot chestnuts, which tasted of wee a bit, not sure why so only ate one but made a great handwarmer! Also got a birthday pressie for Tom for January, how organised are we?, some massive marshmallows for the kids and a bar of marzipan for Mum - sweets she wont have to share because marzipan is disgusting! Steve hadn't seen much of Leeds so we went for a slice of pizza and a coffee and then walked down to the Victorian Quarter, it was wonderful and the fact that it was snowing on and off added to the whole festive feel. Got the train home and were amazed, clearly Kirklees gritters had been caught napping - about 2 inches of snow had fallen and the roads were in chaos and frankly flipping dangerous, slid towards the traffic lights coming out of the railway station which luckily turned green as I got to them. It was clear we weren't going to be able to get home our usual route so had to find an alternative, bumper to bumper with it snowing heavily and the last half hour of daylight and it was no joke, didnt see a gritter the whole time either. Anyway made it home safely - Em and Tom were outside having a snow ball fight! I nipped out and grabbed a couple of photos in the last of the light.

Oh Tannenbaum! Christmas Tree Sunday - Hurrah!

Christmas tree day is a long held tradition in our house and one I love, but probably not as much as Em, who would make it her life's work to decorate Christmas tree's if that were possible! We used to have Christmas Tree Friday, but with the advent of Emily working full time and life just being manic this year it moved to Christmas Tree Sunday and was well worth the wait. This year we have a rather sorry specimen of a tree, considering Steve Scrooge always, always spends way more than he intends to on the biggest, tallest, bushiest of trees this year there were slim pickings so we got the tallest but certainly not the perkiest, bless its a bit scrappy looking. Have you ever had to put up to 4 baubles (or "ball balls" as Em text me recently!) on a single branch - we had to or we would have had boxes of spare decorations sat doing nothing, which is too sad to contemplate. Anyway I love it and it was an excuse to get the camera out as haven't taken a photo for weeks now - self portrait 52 has gone down in a blaze of apathy, I am hopeless. But have taken one today. Enjoy.

Self portrait and bokeh, does it get any better?!


Candles and bokeh (bokeh - blurry out of focus dots of colour fyi)


inadvertent self portrait


shame about the big splodgy out of focus red bow, draws your eye away from where I want it but I like the feel of this one so it stays.

Self Portrait week 9 - Easy like Sunday morning

A very rare Sunday morning where we didn't start work at 7.30am. Bliss to have no alarm clock, no guests and just to have the place to ourselves for a change!

More model photos

Antonia asked for a couple more pics from our recent photo shoot - although they were darker than I had hoped some of them were workable, so had a bit of a tidy up and sent her these




I love those shoes!

Self Portrait - week 8

Managed not to do one in Week 7, just ran out of inspiration, doesn't bode well does it! Anyway this isn't exactly fab stuff but it is what it needs to be; me taken by me in week 8!

Leeds Strobist

No its not some form of martial art, or a weird religious sect - although to be honest in some cases it's not far off! Strobism is basically using cheap (relatively, this is photography we are talking about!) portable lighting rather than huge studio set up's to light photographs. One of the best things to come out of Photocamp Bradford for me was the chance to have a go at this and I loved it - Steve of course was thrilled that I came home with yet another long list of "must have" kit!! I now have a soft box, light stand and triggers so can light you up!

Leeds strobist met last night by the river just down from the station, surprisingly salubrious to be honest lots of very smart and more importantly visually interesting buildings. I only took a few photos as the rest of the time I was in training for West Yorkshire's next top model - thank god I am getting over my utter loathing of having my photo taken and can even accept that looking really awful in a photo isn't necessarily a bad thing, not sure that it's good but its not the end of the world is it? Was working with Neal, Dafydd and Joel - strobists tend to be rather techy blokes!


This is Dafydd and I have to say I am really pleased with this photo. At this point I am supposed to tell you that the camera settings were 1/60, F1.8, ISO200 with a 430ex with orange gel set at 1/8 shot through soft box camera right and rim lighting is coming from a 580 with blue gel shot through a snoot. But would you care? No thought not! For me the nicest thing about this photo is the "bokeh" thats the bubbles in the background caused by out of focus lights, its much sought after in photography and I take every opportunity to get some in my pics!


We moved then to the front of the building out of the wind - its heart stopping watching a light stand and soft box crash to the ground when you took your £300 flash gun off only seconds before! There were several large shiny metal columns and I decided I wanted to throw some light onto them, behind Dafydd to create a sort of back light to see what would happen with the reflection.

As I was lining up the shot above I realised that if I could get the building in frame as well it would be even more interesting - I didn't have the lens for the job so Neal lent me one of his (note to self, add to shopping list!).

This was the result of switching to a slightly wider lens - much more interesting. The lights on the building phased through green, blue, pink, purple and I really wanted to get this shot with the lights on pink but like most models Dafydd was a bit tempermental and I didn't want to upset him by making him stand around for ages!


And this is Neal, lighting expert, lens lender and snoot maker!

Shooting models!

Recently spent an afternoon with Mark Skeet doing some model shooting training. Frankly wasn't thrilled with the results, alot of my photos were way too dark which is such a shame and Antonia and Jayne were stunning so no excuse for not getting cracking photos. I had a feeling things were looking too dark and should have reacted to that rather than hoping things would turn out ok!

Antonia


Jayne

On the upside Jayne has gamely agreed to let me have another go, this time using my lighting set up. Am off to the Leeds Strobist meet tomorrow eve in Leeds where I can get a bit more practice using my lights with some of the very generous and talented people that are part of the Leeds Strobist group so hopefully will have something good to post from that - oh and maybe this weeks self portrait as I didn't manage to inspire myself last week!