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!

Family Farm Holidays Cornwall

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Run Forrest Run #motivationalmonday #themondayclub

I had a text message this week from my best friend. She isnt a best friend that i see all the time but i have known her since we started school a billion years ago. She now lives in Port. Lincoln in Southern Australia and moved there a while ago with her family.

Her test message read:

Hi sarah, am thinking of running the London 10K while we are back, would you be interested too? Takes a lot of the Olympic route! See you soon. Mel

Thats one way to announce that you are going to be in the northern hemisphere for a while! 😉

Much as i would LOVE to run a race with my school days friend…if its the only chance im going to get to see her while she is back from Aus. Then my plans would be less in the training shoes and lycra shorts and more towards pub lunch and large bottle of wine. Since she moved to Australia i have seen her one other time when she returned when my now 4 year old was a very small baby.

But pushing that aspect aside it made me think a little about races…you know….running races…

hundreds or thousands of people all lined up to pound a certain distance together at varying speeds and times.

Im just not sure its me.

I do run…

well…probably more like a cross between a run and a jog..

a rog…

or a jun…

😉

Im not going to set any records, except against myself, which i get great delight in when the cheery little voice on the nike app happily tells me ‘thats the fastest yet!” or “great run, go hit the showers!’  ( reassuring to know that they care about personal hygiene too!)

Anyway…I go…I shuffle around some miles or clicks..whichever measurement floats your boat and you know whats the best part for me?

The Solitude….

Being by myself.

I like the headspace. I listen to some music…and try to skip the kids stories that are on my iphone playlist…has to be said that charlie and lola don’t offer much motivation to keep on going!

I also go out at a very early time of the morning when it is quiet and there is hardly anyone around. I love that feeling of space.

Clear roads

Empty pavements.

The faint sound of birdsong.

and a great openness for my mind to trail off to…

might be ‘whats for dinner…’

might be ‘what should we do next’

might be ‘ how incredible is this world we live in..’

But its uninterrupted by distraction except that offered by the silence of a waking city.

Thats what im worried about loosing if i was to run with hundred of others…my sense in running is less a need for exercise (although thats obviously good) but its about finding a tiny moment of peace in my day which can very rarely be described as peaceful.

I think i would wonder whether I would in fact find any motivation in a race, swarming along like a mass of bees…or if i would just stop and pretend to be nursing an injury so that i could hide out at the back amongst the stragglers and see if i can search out some solitude running!

Maybe its the pure lack of competitive spirit i have. I have been passed by other runners while i am out and my pace has remained unchanged and my focus stays on what i am doing. Truly in a world of my own!

I have to say though that there are a few runners that i pass regularly and we often acknowledge each other with a little nod of a wave and its nice, a nano-second of community.

Hmmm…i cant decide.

I have made plans in the past to run in little 5k/10k type races but ive always drifted off the idea. Ive thought about running in a race with headphones and seeing if that would help me to zone out everyone else but i just can’t help but feel that, that would be a little rude to my other fellow runners. Like trying to ‘exclude’ them from this group experience seems like missing the point a bit.

Maybe this invite from my friend is the shove i needed to go for it and at least try.

We tell our kids about trying something at least once before you decide right?

Maybe time to do a bit of practicing what we preach..?

This week i had to include a clip from one of my ALL time favourite movies…

 

Right this week its my birthday and to offset all this talk of exercise I am having an extra special giveaway courtesy of HOTEL CHOCOLAT

.

You can win a beautiful birthday gift box for you or for your loved one. Just follow rafflecopter and then be sure to check back for winners! Also announced on my Facebook page as well. Dont forget you can still enter to win a LUSH box of goodies and support a fantastic charity by clicking on this link

 

 

 

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Motivational MondaythemondayclubSpring Carnival



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A trip to the circus…#CountryKids #springcarnival

During the half term there is a small circus that visits a local park to us. The kids always ask us to go. We have to limit it to one visit as when you have 5 riders to pay for it can turn into a very expensive affair!!

The older kids can now be given their cash and sent off to find rides that they want to go on. So we found some toddler appropriate rides but the older kids couldnt resist getting in on the act as well. I always wonder how these little travelling circus groups keep going. It was late in the day and starting to rain a little but it was very very quiet and a couple of the rides were more than adequately attended by one worker as they were so quiet.

As it is such a close park to us we walked back and on the way back we had shall we say a ‘discussion’ with our 7 year old about how she couldn’t walk back home a different way to us because she fancied a bit of independence. We love that she is fiesty but there are limits when you have to cross some very busy roads!

As she was being quite grumpy I kept telling her that I was going to take a picture of her every time she moaned and whined at us…and determined not to be captured on film having a bit of a wobbly she did a manic smile every single time i pointed the camera at her!

In the end she was genuinely giggling!

Spring Carnival

Family Farm Holidays Cornwall
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Moving towards the light #mamarazzi #photography101

Light is what photography is all about, you get that by now right? Light pretty much governs everything about your image so its fairly significant!

A lovely way of lighting is by putting your light to the side of the subject, it adds a real depth to an image, a lovely three dimensional quality. You know when you look at an image and there is just something about it that draws you in, often that is because this sort of lighting is being used. Its the sort of image that has a really strong distinction between the highlights and shadow across the face.

A general rule is to put your subject at a 45 degree angle to the source of light, which for most of us in going to be a window if we are inside and trying to get our kids to sit still. Or it can be outside usually when the sun has a directional quality about it, like during the golden hour (hour after sunrise and hour before sunset)

This is harder to control when you are taking a picture of a kid, the reason for this? Same as usual. They move. If they turn their head that little too much you are going to end up with all in shadow.  One way of working out if it is slightly too much is if you look in the eyes of your child and can’t see catchlights in both. They chances are they have moved too much, so just try and get them to turn a little, easier said than done right! 😉

It is a beautiful style of lighting and is a favourite of portraiture photographers. It adds so much to the picture, its also pretty good for slimming if you are thinking of wanting to loose a few pounds as well 😉

 

Okay so here is a little project you can try out… this is a really clever and everso simple thing you can do here…this works in any lighting scenario to be honest…in the little diagram at the top of this image you can see that next to the person icon is a line saying reflector.

This does pretty much what is says and reflects light. It absolutely does not need to be a massive big reflector that you might have seen professionals using. No. It can be anything white pretty much…white is a very good reflector of light. Just even by using a sheet of paper you can see changes.

I did a demonstration with this today with my daughter who was a total trooper after having her pre-school booster imms this morning. She was working for smarties it has to be said. Ive done no editing to these images so you can see it as is. This is really easy to do…no dont think its all fancy photographer stuff. You can do it!! Try it out.

So here it is…sit your subject next to window or a light and aim for about 45 degree to the light…So this first shot is just the window light, you can see where the light drops off her face. yes?

Enter reflector to the left, this is a white bit of card that i got from b and q. You can see how the side of her face has just brightened up a bit. She did turn a little bit away in this one.

another reflector, you can see what it is by scrolling down. The reflector is on her lap so reflecting the light back into her face. The shadows have almost balanced out on her face now.

Yes mum im really very happy about this…

Er..no..not ON your face!

Yes..its all funny till mummy asked me to do it again!

 and the finished shot….my little girlie…

So what do you think? ready to give it go? Do let me know how you get on.

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Being beside the seaside #motivationalmonday #themondayclub

The beach.

I love the beach and i hate the beach. This juxtaposition may be a recent thing for me, as in the last ten years really. Having children changes your view of the beach i think. Not the actual beach but just the enormous task that becomes going to the beach. It can almost be a camping trip the amount of stuff you have to take. There should be some kind of lift arrangement to get stuff from your car onto the sand, maybe one of  those delivery supermarket things, you could just order your stuff to be delivered to a pre-deteremined spot. Or maybe a new career for those beach-ride donkeys? There must be a better way.

Then there is the small thing of the sand…the sand…e v e r y w h e r e…..for the next couple of weeks. I swear i have put clothes through the wash and still shaken sand out of them when they come out of the washing machine. When we had a sand pit in our garden my OH used to say that at any given time of the day no matter how much you tried there would always be sand in the house. But how the kids love digging in the sand. I get it, there is something therapeutic about it.

When we go ahead and go for a walk, we can aim to stay away from the water and up here the tides can be a long long way out so you would think that it was doable. But it always turns into a partial swim regardless of the weather. There is something about the sea that draws my kids in..even when you shout ‘we have NO dry clothes with us!’ at the top of your voice. The words seem to drift off with the sand in the wind, carried away from unhearing ears and they plough into the water.!!! 🙂

But you absolutely HAVE to love the joy that it brings to the kids faces, the sound of the sea, that salty air, the connection with the awesome force that is a mass of water…

even if it does result in a very wet and soggy walk home.

🙂

Please dont forget to link up to motivational monday this week! This weeks giveaway is a choice! WOOH! of one of four beautiful Mini Boden summer dresses for girls. You can enter via the rafflecopter below! The winner of the Nike Running shirt is Faye Huntington. Congrats please get in touch to claim your prize! Please dont forget that you can still enter to win a Fab LUSH giftbox by going and showing some love to the beonepercent charity. Just follow this link to last weeks post!

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Motivational Monday themondayclubSpring Carnival

 

 

 

 

 

 


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