Getting Sporty: Old School stylie. #motivationalmonday #MWActive

Taking part this week in the Mark Warner Get families active campaign, you can read about it by following the link. But basically it is about being active..i know..but surprise there. 😉

This week it is all about getting sporty. Made me think of sports day when we were at school, the sack race, egg and spoon, wheelbarrow races. My favourite, the three legged race!! We are coming into the term when many schools are running there sports days but in school nowadays it has changed beyond all recongition. The schools choose the more inclusive ‘afternoon of non-competitive activity’ which involves the kids in the school being divided up into teams of about eight kids, from all different year groups and they then rotate around a variety of different activities.

There are the running races but they are team relay races so that no one child is put forward to win or lose. Im not really sure what my opinion on it is to be honest. I think its great for kids who are maybe not naturally sporty and can feel like they are part of a team…Also one of the sweetest things for me is that as the groups are made up of all the year groups, you get to see the whole of the school community working together. The savvy year 6’s helping and encouraging the nervous reception kids and making sure they are doing their part for their team…but on the other hand it gives no opportunity for any kids to shine on their own. Which surely if any of them will go into any sort of sport – that will have to happen. I dont’ know.

Although thankfully the parents race is now a thing of the past, in our school at least! No more stocking clad women hurtling down a playing field, elbows and fists at the ready, determined to make little johnny proud. Im not sorry at all that we have come into parenting after that had died a death at the hands of the craziness that is health and safety.

But…old style school sports games are still great for having a giggle, getting outside and burning off some energy. We did our own in the local park with some friends and the wheelbarrow race had them collapsing in fits of laughter at the lunacy of trying to make someone run fast on their hands.

Sometimes old school is just the best.

This weeks giveaway is a fabulous Ladies NIKE dri-fit ladies running shirt. Wonderful for helping you get the best out of your work out! If you fancy it,enter the competition on the rafflecopter below.

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Last weeks winner of the box of LUSH goodies was KD Robertson. Please get in touch to claim your prize!   Motivational Monday Spring Carnival themondayclub photo ActiveFamily150x150_zps28e829a4.jpg

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Cook on a campfire #countrykids #50things #nationaltrust #springcarnival

Its not every day you just have to step outside your back door to do some outdoor fun right outside your back door. My OH was really keen to try out his new outdoor toy and so before bed the kids de-camped in their jammies and dressing gowns to see the new ‘Kelly Kettle’ in action.

The Kelly Kettle is a system whereby you can boil water in a safe and easy to use system which basically has a little fire in a bowl underneath and actually heats the water, it works pretty quickly once the fire gets going and it can also be used on a conventional stove.

It was a little bit of playing with fire thrown in, which lets face it all kids love, they all had a go at the fire-starter thing which they all think is a great little thing to play with!!…

But the most important part all together was the hot chocolate that was promised a the end.

It was all over and done with in about 20 minutes and then it was time to head inside and tuck the kids in the beds but they had that lovely smell about them as we were saying goodnight of woodsmoke. Which just gives you such a feeling of the outdoors it was really lovely. They felt like they had, had a mini adventure in the outdoors and they smelt like it too!

 

setting up the hot chocolate tray – a very important job!

 

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#satcappers up a tree!

Its that time of the week. Head over to the wonderlady that is Mamasaurus and check out some more. Meanwhile back at the tree….

 

 

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what is RAW all about? #mamarazzi #photography101

This week i thought i would muse on something a little more about quality settings within your camera and details about image file format….

yeah i so know that half of you have just fallen asleep…ha!

Anyways i have been asked about RAW before so i thought i would mention it.

Most of your DLSR’s will be able to give you two choices of what mode you want to shoot your images in, what file format. The standard mode is JPEG, which a really useful file format. Its relatively small, simple to store, uploads into all editing programs, can be uploaded to the internet and sent in email.

So why would you consider something else, if you have this super duper fits all format?

Well a raw file is basically giving you more information in your file and therefore gives you more options of what you can do with your image in post processing. For example you can restore some detail in a blown out image or bring in some light to a dark image, change your white balance or make some more sophisticated photoshop edits.

So why do any of us shoot JPEG then if RAW gives us so much more. Well RAW files are mahoooooosive. They take up some serious space, your storage space is just going to get eaten up with raw files. Ask my OH how many times he tells me to delete some files as the hard drives (and i have three) are getting full. Also you might have to buy more software to be able to process raw files. Software companies such as adobe do not always have the standard format for certain raw files form certain cameras, particularly if you have older software and you are buying a newer camera.

So i guess the thing is to weigh up whats more important to you, space or image data and control. You can even experiment a little as a lot of cameras will allow you to shoot in raw and jpeg. So you can do a bit of both. That will suck your memory cards though. Remember if you have a 4gb memory card then you won’t be able to store as many raw on that card as you will jpeg.

So..how to change the image quality. This is on a canon camera. Should be easy to navigate to on other makes. Im making no comment about what camera is best. The photographer takes the picture remember!

You need your menu, go into quality and you see the icon that looks like a little wedge of a cheese. 🙂

There you can see the options you can go for.

If you are shooting in raw, make sure you have the software to read and use those files. So might be worth shooting jpeg and raw initially. In photoshop your raw file will be loaded into adobe raw, which is fabulous tool for some great editing options without going into full photohsop.

So a little example, this is just to demonstrate what you can do in adobe raw..so im not going to go into photoshop ..another time 😉

so this is my original image….

 

 

then taking it into adobe raw, if you have photoshop the image should open in adobe raw….looking a little something like this, you can see the image, the histogram on the left which shows you colour range through from darks to lights and then your options for editing down the side. You can see where there is red masking..that is where the pixels are blown out. It was direct sun (behind her).

 

on this one i have slid the ‘recovery’ slider which has drawn back some of those blown put pixels, you can see the red masked areas have gotten a little smaller? yes?

The square box is also where i will crop the image to.

 

Then i have slid up a little bit of vibrancy to make the colours pop a bit and used the ‘curves’  to bring a little bit of light into her face.

Ive also sharpened the image up a little.

 

This is the initial result. Now if you did that to a jpeg file, if its a lovely bright image like this where your camera and lens are not maxed out then it would be fine but if your camera is working pretty hard to get the light right and your ISO is high then editing your image may well leave it looking pretty grainy.

 

So what do you think? Have a play with it, see what you can do. Thats the brilliant brilliant thing about digital photography…you can just keep on trying without having to pay to develop a truck load of film.

Let me know how you get on.

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