be courageous and brave.

I discovered a blog a little while ago and was inspired by a linky that i discovered. In a nutshell and there is a link here so you can go read about it yourself. But basically it is about connecting a song or some music with an image. This rings so many bells with me. Music is something that is so much part of my life, i listen to music all the time and i am one of those people who can watch a series of images or a video without music and not feel a thing but add a soundtrack or some poignantly worded lyrics and i will be moved to the next week and blubbing into a tissue.

I had stumbled across this blog just when her suggested song for inspiration was a song by Rod Stewart called Forever Young.

Kind of a advice type of song to his son it would seem and it made me think of the crossroads that my son is at right now..leafing through iphoto (does anyone use that still?) where i used to store my images i discovered this image

This is my little boy just before he started school. He is just 4 in this picture, it was the summer before his first year in reception. So little we knew back then, the years of school runs, parents evenings, nativity plays were all alien to us. I miss those days of innocence sometimes. When we were his world and the influence of the outside was so minimal. When the thought of an afternoon watching trains was the best treat EVER and when he still spoke with a southern accent and not a northern one!! 😉

Things have changed so much. His hair is no longer those tight curls. He won’t let it grow long enough to find out. 😉 But there is still so much of what is real about him in this image that is evident in the young man he is becoming. He is still pretty open about whats going on with him, he is a heart on his sleeve kind of guy and i hope that doesn’t change that much. Im not naive though and i know it will to some element.

We were speaking to him about the secondary school choices recently as we have been since before the end of his last term in year 5, his face suddenly crumpled and he looked so young and unsure. I guess he was just overwhelmed with the responsibility of it all.

He is still so young and whilst we can’t protect him from the future, we can help to arm him with ways to deal with the things that are to come and be behind him every step.

The words in the song are a little cheesey but the ones that resound with me..are these in particular. 🙂

“May you grow to be proud,
dignified and true.
And do unto others
As you’d have done to you.
Be courageous and be brave


-Forever Young (Rod Stewart)

Motivational Mondaythe ordinary moments

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Lens love challenge #mamarazzi #photography101#CountryKids

I am very very lucky to have a few lenses which i really really love but i don’t use that often. I have my work horses that pretty much do just that, they are functional, do the job and i have three lenses which are never far from my camera bag. They are the 50mm 1.4 ( this is the mid-range) 24-105 f4.0 ( my go to studio lens and its pretty good for days out as it has a bit of a zoom) and the daddy 70-200mm F2.8 ( this is a killer lens in both quality and size) Out of the three it is the one i use least for personal use but when im shooting for a client..it is pretty much the front runner. every.single.time.

I know there will be people out there thinking ‘well why dont you use it for personal use if its that good?’

One reason…

well five..actually 😉

It is a very heavy and valuable lens and when we are on days out and have all the kids, their stuff, the packed lunch, the dog, uncle tom cobbly and all along with me..adding the stress of a large lens bouncing around on my hip and threatening to give a small toddler a head injury..its just not going to happen. You have to be sensible about lenses when you are talking capturing your own family memories. A large, monster of a lens that might be fabulous but gives you chronic back pain is going to be left at home in favour of your iphone.

Go..on..you know im right. 😉

Getting something that works for you is the key.

Anyway there is a point somewhere.

So one of my lenses that i am lucky enough to have on a borrow from my dad is the 15mm Fisheye.

It is beautiful even down to its perfectly styled non-plastic camera cap. Really..its metal. I dropped it on the floor at the Olympic games (the cap not the lens!!) and the lady in front thought id drop a flask or a mug of coffee!  Its small but mighty and i love it. One of the things that i regularly do with the lenses that i dont use that often is challenge myself to only shoot with that lens for a day, a week or a couple of days…some time..so that i get used to using the lens and also a new way of looking at my composition and imagery.

This is SO worth doing. It really stretches you and takes you out of your comfort zone, you might even find that you fall in love with a new type of lens and way of shooting your subject. I know its more money and camera equipment is super expensive as it is BUT it will give you experience of getting an idea of just how different these lenses are and what they can do to an image. I get asked all the time..’So what is actually the difference between these lenses then?’ I went a bit more in depth about that here 

Here is your chance to find out!

I know not everyone has access to more than one lens BUT there are companies that hire out these lenses for a few days and they are not that scary prices either. I would totally recommend shopping around and grabbing something that maybe you are toying with the idea of owning or maybe even you just want to see what they would be like for the hell of it.

Its playtime 🙂

Some companies worth thinking about are: lensesforhire lenspimp lensfettish

Thats just a few, there are loads out there!

So.. here is what i got up to. It was an awful day today and it rained…a lot..so we went for a quick bike ride and fed the ducks. The thing about the rain is it makes the greens take on an luminosity that is so attractive..which is probably the only good thing about rain…well you know apart from that we need water to live ‘n all 😉

This post is linking up with the Country Kids too…so welcome all linky followers!

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the back to frontedness of aperture…getting to know your F-stop #photography101 #mamarazzi

When i first started getting interested in photography one of the things that really really confused me was the way that photographers talked about aperture. Small number means wider, faster aperture.  Larger number means slower and narrower aperture. It just seemed back to front to me. I could never really make sense of it and basically the only way i did make sense was to accept it and learn it. Like a language.

So briefly.

In photography, the aperture refers to the opening in the lens where light is admitted. The aperture value is also commonly referred to as the f/stop. This is why you will see “f/5.6”. “F” simply refers to the focal length of the lens. Think of the lens as you would the human eye.

The larger the aperture, the more light will pass through, allowing the nice background blur in your images, or bokeh. This will allow the main subject to “pop” as it stands out against the background.

The blurred background is aesthetically appealing when doing portrait photography or close-up nature photography (i.e., flowers).

Remember, when using the Aperture Priority on your camera, the lower the Aperture value (i.e., f/1.8, f/4.5; f/5.6), the larger the opening at the fron of your lens. Much like an eye. Well..a lot like an eye!

When shooting a landscape where you want everything to be in focus, you would want to use a smaller aperture, or higher f-stop. Or when you are shooting somewhere with a LOT of light. Like when you are trying to take pictures of the sun (sunrise, sunset). There is a well known rule in photography called the “sunny 16”. When you are taking a shot and want to include the sun in it, without blowing it out, then your aperture should be around about f16.0 or slower.

Now if you suddenly think ‘great i can take a great shot of my kids playing in the sun on the beach’ and you crank in you f stop to 16 you will end up with lovely shot of the sun and dark kids…Remember the amount of light coming into the camera is governed by the size of the hole and the hole at f16.0 is small so unless your kids are as bright as the sun…

and yes i know that some parents think their kids are 😉

anyway unless they are then they will be dark. BUT that is another issue i can talk about some other time.

Lost yet?
OKay well here is some examples i shot of the same image on different apertures…
so this first one is on a FAST aperture of 2.8
the amount of things in focus in this image is small right? the doll at the front is and then it blurs off pretty quickly. A fast aperture means a shallow depth of field.
then the same image at f6.3
 so depth of field increasing and so more in focus and yes the toys have all changed positions! thats what happens when you try and work out shots with small people about!!
then at f22.0 which is super slow and only really going to work if your light is reasonable. (again something we can talk about another time) But check it out even this time even Daddy Pig is in focus!! 😉
So has that helped at all?
If you shoot on AV or aperture setting on your camera and play. You can obviously do all this in your manual settings.
Which some folk think that if you aren’t using manual then you aren’t a proper photographer. Well my opinion is that cameras these days are clever little things and why fumble around trying to work of your shutter and ISO if your camera can take the strain for you. Yes in manual you are a LOT more in control but you have to know what to control and how.
In the priority settings on your camera you can focus on and understand one part of the process, one bit at a time. 🙂
Try to think light first though if you are in a really dimly lit room then you are unlikely to be able to achieve and aperture of f22.0 but then why would you want to anyway?  Probably the nicest look for inside is the buttery bokeh of a fast aperture.
Happy shooting and pop back and let me know how you get on!!
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