School holidays, New lens, New challenge

School holidays are here again. Three weeks of trying to amuse children who are used to being entertained all day. I’ve set myself a new Photo a Day Holiday Challenge. I still love looking back on the January 30 day challenge. It’s such a great record of their holiday. I plan to do it next holidays too, though it will all be blogged at once as we’re heading off on a big OS trip! Singapore, London, South of France, Paris, then home via Disneyland in LA. Excitement is mounting.

I have been thwarted a little in my task so far this holidays. My computer died on Thursday. Last I saw it was on Friday and it was in multiple pieces.  Of course all the software I need to process my RAW images is on there. For a few days I was feeling defeated. Then I remembered the Lightroom Beta 2.0 trial CD I picked up at the PMA.  So I’m pretty much set to convert. Of course I can’t touch up properly, like the awful lipstick job on Miranda. For now it will do, and hopefully when my computer is up and running I will remember this image that I really love that needs a it of attention before printing.

So for now please excuse the grubby faced fairy! I was so excited when my new 135mm f2 L  USM arrived on the doorstep there was no time for cleaning….

Back to the challenge. Today is quite obviously Monday. I didn’t actually miss Sunday. I will have that one up later. Stay tuned for the gorgeous Captain Declan Feathersword! Saturday unfortunately suffered from my unwillingness to get out of bed before midday on the first day of holidays. Instead of rising we just called the kids to the King Size and had a family morning in bed. Nintendos & tele, books and tea. And heating.

And for those who expressed interest in the Workshops I have been talking about forever, I apologise.  They are still in the works, but I keep running out of time to fit them in. They are coming. A beginner SLR workshop, and a Photographing Children workshop. Please stay tuned.

And to anyone who has emailed me before Thursday and not received a reply. I apologise. Your emails are lost in the black hole that is my defunct computer. Hopefully I will have it back by early next week, but in the meantime please send again anything that is urgent.

I have been tagged…..

Actually I’ve been tagged a few times before, but I’m starting to feel almighty guilty about the fact that I’ve never actually done anything about it! Yes, a rap over the knuckles for me. To those I tag down below, it’s ok, I understand if you don’t join in (though I’d love it if you do)

This time I have been tagged by a fab friend of mine Cass, from Caspix Photography. She is one cool chick!

Here are the rules!
1. Link to the person that tagged you and post the rules on your blog.
2. Share 5 songs you are embarrassed to admit to others you like and tell why.
3. Tag 5 random people at the end of your post and include links to their blogs.
4. Let each person know that they have been tagged by leaving a comment on their blog.

Let me just tell you right now that I am a dag. No debating it. These will most likely not be hits to anyone but me. But hey, I’ve never been a bandwagon kind of girl…..

1. The Wood Song by the Indigo Girls - yes, Lesbian American Folk Rock at it’s finest! My sister, my Dad & I went to see the Indigo Girls when they were in Sydney just a few months back. We didn’t quite fit in with the crowd ;)  We LOVED it. It was amazing, awesome, indescribably fantastic stuff.

2. The Shoop Shoop Song by Cher (It’s in His Kiss) - oh stop laughing, I’m serious! This dates back to a girly trip to the snow I had with my best friend at the time Lara, my sister Holly and her best friend Rachel. We sang that song all the way to Jindabyne & back. We didn’t care who saw us and who heard us. Lara took her own life a couple of years back& while we weren’t still best buddies at the time, this song brings back lots of good time memories.

3. Take me home, Country Roads by John Denver - Almost heaven, West Virginia, blue ridged mountains, Shanendoah river…… Oh, I love this one. Our family is music obsessed. Of the playing our own music variety. I play piano, clarinet, saxophone and tinker on the guitar (poorly). When the guitars come out late at night out on the front verandah this is one of my favourites to belt out. Probably tunelessly at that time of night.

4. The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face by Roberta Flack - I used to hate this song. I was asked to include it on a slidshow for a wedding couple a few years back & listened to it over and over till I wanted to puke synching it all together. Somehow it grew on me. Like fungus.

5. Big Girls Don’t Cry by Fergie - Don’t know, I just really like this. I know I shouldn’t. No special story.

So now I have to do some tagging……

1.  Clair Bremner

2.  Sweet Blue

3.  Kris Leigh

4.  Butterflyrocket

5.  Everything Rodgers

So there, I’m embarassed enough, let’s here from somebody else.

Boys will be boys

What the boy wants……..

The boy gets………

Boys are odd.

Enough said.

Happy Anniversary to Us!

Wow! Ten years today. Amazing really, how time flies. It really does feel like yesterday. And guess what, I’d do it again in a heartbeat! I must like him

Happy Anniversary Shane, I love you.

Thanks for putting up with me when I’m not always the easiest to get along with. Thanks for being a wonderful father to our children. Thanks for the enormous time and dedication you put in to this family. Thanks for just being you. Here’s to many, many more years.

And worth even more congratulations, tomorrow is my parents’ 40th Wedding anniversary. Certainly worth celebrating. We have a lovely day planned for them, but since Mum reads the blog I won’t ruin the surprise.

Congratulations to my little speaker :)

Miranda has made it to the finals of the school Public Speaking competition! Well done Miranda. She had to give a talk to her class first, and when she made it through that level she had to present the talk to the whole of Stage 1 (Kindy, Year 1 & Year 2). She is now a stage finalist and has to present her talk at night in front of all the parents. Oh my, and she doesn’t seem at all daunted by the prospect. In fact, she’s busily asking people if they can come & watch!

What was she talking about????

HER!

One of her favourite subjects

She is a bit of a talker this one. Non stop. In fact, when I was pregnant with Miranda I had a few very vivid dreams that she came out talking. She very nearly did. By the time she was 18 months hold she could hold her own in a conversation, and she hasn’t stopped since.

I will often be woken from my thoughts by Miranda “You’re not listening Mum, Mum, Mum, listen”. Love her dearly, and sure, she has lots of important things to say, but sometimes a mother just needs a break.

Can I share a gorgeous little video I have? It is so, so cute, and although short just about sums her up at the time. This little snippet is from when she was 15 months old. Yes, 15 months :O

So anyway, good luck Miranda, we are very proud of you!

Knitting

I’ve been knitting lately. Ever since the great Wool Soaker knitting frenzy of 2005 I’ve been kind of slow. I started knitting a jumper for Declan. Got half way down the second sleeve and realised it was nearly summer. So I gave up and it’s sitting in the cupboard, a good 2 sizes too small. To be honest now I look at it, it’s not that nice anyway.

My newest craze, knitting hats. They’re as quick to knit as the soakers were. That’s important when it comes to knitting for me! Here is Elissa proudly modeling my first effort. Don’t mind that it’s a bit small for her and had to be stretched & squeezed on there.  I think she looks cute:

And here is Miranda modeling my second creation, which turned out to be miles bigger than the head of any baby I know. Not that Miranda is complaining, she quite fancies it for herself!

Till next time………

A published image….

One of my images shot at Easter last year was used by scrapper Dionne Molina in a stunning layout published in For Keeps magazine this month. Beautiful work Dionne.

Here is the image:

And you can take a look at the layout HERE

The kids and I had loads of fun making those eggs last year! It was a very uncharacteristic Martha Stewart moment.

As promised - how to create your own Storyboard template

Finally as promised, here are the instructions for creating your own Storyboard template. Once you know how to do it you’ll be able to make any design you please and use it time and again to make lots of great Storyboards.

Of course you can crop pictures, drag them on to a blank jpg, crop another, drag it on, fuss about lining things up and get angry at Photoshop because it just doesn’t look right. That is the hard way! Let’s make it easier………..

1. Decide what size you want for the final product, and how many images you want to include. It helps to do a quick sketch on paper before you start if you’re as useless at visualizing things as I am. For more complex storyboards it helps to work out the exact dimensions of each image, though this can be done later on. For this exercise I am going to create a 10″ x 20″ storyboard (my favourite format) containing two images, one landscape and one portrait. Here’s my sketch (good isn’t it?).

2. Create a new blank canvas at the required finished print size using File - New. In this example I choose size 10″ x 20″, and a dpi of 300. I always choose white background for the template, as it’s easy enough to change the colour later for an individual storyboard.

3. Now you have your blank canvas we need to put some Guides on there to help us with the layout. Firstly turn on your rulers by pressing Ctrl-R. If your storyboard dimensions are in inches, make sure you right-click the ruler and choose inches to make your calculations a bit easier.

4. View - New Guide will bring up a dialog box asking you to choose horizontal or vertical, and specify a position. Let’s start with the left side of the left image. Select vertical and 1″. You’ll see that this places a little blue line across your blank canvas on the left hand side. The exact inches measurement at this point doesn’t matter as you can drag the guide once it is on the page. Once that one is done put another at the other end of the canvas, so at 19″. You’ll need another two guides in the middle to separate your images, perhaps at around the 8″ mark (with a small gap in between them). I did mine at 8″ and 8.2″.

5. Next you will need to set some horizontal guides. Follow the same steps as for the vertical guides, placing one near the top, and one near the bottom. The intersecting guides will leave you with rectangles where your images are going to be.

6. You can now drag the guides around a bit until the layout looks pleasing. I’d even suggest saving this as a basic template so you can skip steps 1-5 next time you want to do something similar but with slightly different sized images. Saves placing the guides again as it’s a tedious process.

7. Now select the Rectangular Marquee Tool and using your guides select the spot where you want the first image to go. Right click - Layer via Copy. Now using the magic wand click somewhere in the middle of this spot to select it again. Edit - Fill, choosing black as your fill colour. You now have a solid black block where the first image will go.

8. Select the background layer.

9. Repeat step 8 for the second image spot.

10. Finally, I am going to include a text marker on the bottom right corner. Make sure you choose the background later again to do this. Choose text in the size and font you want, type “text here” and align it to the image above so it looks right.

11. You now have a template with four layers. Background, text, Image 1 and Image 2 that looks like this:

12. Save as an unflattened PSD file.

13. Now dig out my earlier instructions on how to use it! Please don’t try to crop images to the right size, drag images on to it, or any variation thereof! You should be able to paste images into the black placeholders to they magically appear behind the white space without the need for any cropping. And here is the result….

14. Note that in my finished product I’ve flipped the whole thing horizontally to change the position of the images.

Now enjoy, and let me know how you go!

Ballet Shoes

I love Black & White images. Beautiful light, texture, simple moments creating moving images. So much character, so much depth.

What story does this picture tell?

Look into the heart of the image. See the beauty that is a young girl learning to dance. Confidence emerging as she masters the most basic steps. Determination in her point. We don’t need to see her face to imagine her there.

I see thick woolen stockings. Two sizes too big. It’s cold today. Winter is coming. Probably time to start bringing wood up for the fire. Then our young dancer can dance by firelight. Ah, another glimmer of an image I can see forming in my mind………..

Water Baby

My kids have all been water babies. Putting a pool in at home here was the best thing we ever did, they all live in there in summer. The girls are starting swimming squad next week, and are very excited about it! They have their training flippers all ready and have been wearing them around the house for days.

I think Declan is simply amazing! He has been having lessons for a little over a year now. Since he was about 2 I guess. We tried to take him earlier but he really hated it so we pulled him out. Anyway, by the time he was 2y10m he was getting about without any bubble or other assistance. Now at 3y 4m he’s been learning freestyle and is amazingly confident in the water. Sure, his style isn’t all there yet, but I’m sure that will come.  He even has a most amazing Dolphin impression that looks like primitive butterfly.

Here is a quick video we did of him on Mum’s camera at his lesson last week: