photo of the week

Sarah October 23, 2013

is that Bokeh season #mamarazzi

Before you think i have gone mad. Bokeh is a technical term. yes it is.

Bokeh :

In photography, bokeh (Originally /ˈ b oʊ k ɛ /,^[1] /ˈ b oʊ k eɪ / boh-kay — also sometimes heard as /ˈ b oʊ k ə / boh-kə,^[2] Japanese: [boke]) is the blur,^[3]^[4] or the aesthetic quality of the blur,^[5]^[6]^[7] in out-of-focus areas of an image.

Bokeh is a portrait photographers dream. Yes it is. Bokeh means that I can take a photograph of my gorgeous daughter on a park bench when there is a herd of people doing a welly walk in the background (yes there is) and all you will see is a blur of colour…

So thats what Bokeh is, that blurry buttery background that we all know and love. Now this season coming up… *whispers* the christmasy one is the PERFECT time for using a bit of bokeh. Those lovely christmas lights make great bokeh backdrops for your festive images.

Here is how you go about it.

SO..

essentially your basic bit of equipment is a FAST lens…what does that mean? You can find out here or here a bit about aperture…You need wide, open, (low numbers) FAST aperture settings.

You can make the little balls of light bigger by increasing the distance between your in focus subject and the out of focus lights in the background.

Helps to have your subject in the foreground and set your AF point on them. You can half depress the shutter and re-compose as well to get that extra dimension and composition to your shot.

KA-POW!

Christmas in a neat little JPG package.

All done.

Here are a fabulous selection from the wonder that is pinterest!

this is a partnered post

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Sarah October 13, 2013

Dear son….

This weekend it has been your birthday. You have had 11 whole years on this planet.

happy birthday.

Yes i know its crap that you have to take and exam on your birthday. I know how you have curled your lip numerous times when we have mentioned the fact that you have to first do the test before the presents. Thats not us being mean btw. There just isnt enough time in the morning for you to enjoy it without rushing off. believe us.

it sucks.

really.

There is no way around it. We know the reasons, the whys the what ifs, the crazy, looney school entry system that exists here. If i had my way then no-one would have to sit exams to get into school. But…you do and it has fallen on your 11th birthday.

Thats rubbish.

BUT you can do it. Face the miserable part of the day and then embrace the rest of the day with gusto and blow a huge raspberry at the pirates that put an exam on your special day.

Go on.

We won’t look.

I have been there. You are talking to a pro. My birthday is in June. Every single year of my secondary school life i sat exams if not on, around my birthday. I know how you feel, i know you want to shout and stamp and scream ‘but it is MY BIRTHDAY!”

you can do that. You can shout it.

Doesn’t change it though sadly.

This secondary school circus is just that my boy. A circus. The over-subscribed, results driven, tutored, schooled and preened test takers can whirl parents facing the year 7 changeover into some sort of crazed, frantic fools. Forgive us.

We want the best for you and essentially that doesn’t actually have to include going to the highest league table school (between me and you those league tables are not totally true anyhow!). But we are plagued with a million different options and changing systems in education. The people who run our country who make silly decisions with a flick of their ink pen that have a massive effect on you.

Ignore all that nonsense…thats what it is.

Dont forget that you are in the massively privileged percentage of kids in this world who can CHOOSE to go to school. Who will come out of WHATEVER school you go to with the ability to earn a living. That puts you in SUCH a blessed and lucky group. You don’t need to sit an exam to know that. It is your right and it is one that you should value regardless of all this jumping through hoops, exam, points system craziness that might make you feel like you somehow don’t make the grade.

Its good to not loose sight of that and dont forget that it might seem all very uncertain to you at the moment as you look into a new season but the one certain thing is that we are right there behind you. We have your back.

AND… We know you are going to be great, wherever you go..because you are a GREAT KID.

xx

Motivational Monday

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Sarah October 2, 2013

Finding a new flow #motivationalmonday #whatsthestory #magicmoments

I was flicking through some images this evening and i came across this one which i took on one summery afternoon before the school run in the garden and i realised how different the afternoons are around here, not just because of the weather although that is a massive contributing factor. But i moan far too much about the weather so i wont go on…

But because not having my second youngest around in the afternoon is a little strange and taking me and the little one a bit of time to find a new way of doing the lunch, pre-school time and also how to do the ‘lets not fall asleep on the way to school in the buggy and be a nightmare going to bed in the evening’ thing 😉

and i realised that i miss her a bit. That sounds really bad, like im surprised that i do, which isnt the case at all.

But i am not a mum who laments when my kids move onto new adventures. Yes there is an element of sadness when you put the baby cot away for the last time, or you realise that the ‘baby aisle’ in the supermarket really holds nothing for you anymore save maybe the trusty packet of wipes. There is most assuredly a time for fond memories and that whistfull and slightly rose coloured jaunt down the memory lane of new babies and pre-school years when your consciousness fools you and plays a heart-stirring soundtrack over your parenting past and tells you that it was ‘all so wonderful back then’ 😉

But I embrace the future, new adventures, new challenges, new lessons to learn and so im always cheering them on as they head off into new things.

With this little girl, she was so totally ready for school that she didnt need the cheerleader waving madly behind her telling her she was going to be great.

She just got on. did it. Embraced it.

thats my girl 🙂

Motivational Monday

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Sarah September 9, 2013

Summer Maize #oneweek

Late to the party again…but sliding in hopefully before midnight with a combination post covering every linky i can!

Yes?

Yes…*fans face*

My lovely friend Older mum is running her one week posts this week and i thought what a good way to get some of my summer memories up all in one go. Ive done a few before you can check out some of them here and here. So here we are with one of my little set of images i took on our recent holiday to France. We went from the North West of the UK to the Western coast of France with one car, a trailer, 4 bikes, 2 bike seats, 2 sandcrabs, 5 children and 2 adults (with the occasional loss of sanity). I could lament about the craziness of travelling long distances with kids but i recently read a blog that does it so much better. Read it and you know pretty much exactly how we felt.

So after our ‘trip’

We arrived in the beautiful Vendee region of France and the sun was shining. Which is BIG for me. I need the sun. Like properly need. 🙂

Once we got through the stress of set-up and thats A LOT of stress. Our rule..is any negativity on the first day of holiday is to be discarded and let go…its the set up stress.

Then we started to take in where we were….

one thing i noticed..

Maize.

Yes. Maize.

Lots of it. Everywhere and it was SO incredibly tall. High as an elephant’s eye 😉

Knowing that Maize is obviously grown in this country and thinking i just be overwhelmingly unobservant of UK agriculture to have not noticed this jumbo sized crop before I actually went and took some pictures of it. It really does go for miles and miles and I could stand under it and shoot up in to the leaves.

Incredible.

And since returning we have noticed some british maize and it is nowhere near as tall as French Maize. So it must be the weather, or the soil, or the general Frenchness..I don’t know. But it is a lOT bigger over there and…

e-v-e-r-y-w-h-e-r-e