Happy Moon

The other night, I was just closing my curtains, when something caught my eye.

It was a nice clear night, and it was as if the moon was smiling at me saying, hey take a photo of me!

So I grabbed my camera and tripod.

These were the first real photos I had taken at night, so I played with the exposure. And here's what I got...

It was interesting to see how the different exposures showed the dark part of the moon differently, and the glow around too. 

Clearly the moon was happy that night. What a big cheesy grin! :)

Frustrated Traveller

Today I had to go to the doctors which is about a 20 minute drive from home.

In the surrounding areas where I live are some amazing sights. Even on such a simple journey to the doctors, so many different things catch my eye. 

But!

It's not possible to stop on most of the roads along the journey, which is soooo frustrating. 

Because of this, I hadn't taken my camera with me today, and it's just typical that an opportunity should arise to take a photo then. 

There were traffic lights for some temporary roadworks along the main road. To my left was a derelict building. I think it's listed, so cannot be demolished. But sadly it hasn't been maintained either, which is a real shame.

I might not have had my camera, but I did have my mobile phone, so took a photo with that instead.

On the way back, we were stopped at lights again, this time trees to see.

There's something about these trees, how very straight and upright they are. It won't be that long and they'll all look totally different with all their leaves. 

I think I'll have to make a list of things I want to take photos of out and about and see if there's somewhere nearby that I can stop safely. 

The sad thing is, that a lot of people take all the things around them for granted. Take for granted the different colours through the seasons or how the trees and surrounding areas look different without the leaves.

We really do live in an amazing world. And there's plenty to see even on our very own doorstep, if we only we open our eyes.

Trundle Time With Hubby & Dog

Due to my health issues I can't go for a walk in the normal sense of the word. So today hubby, dog and I went for a trundle. (Me in wheelchair). 

There's a tree-lined path leading off my road. So we decided to take a short trundle down there.

It was quite a challenging photo shoot as the weather / light was a bit dull. It gave me the opportunity to play with my exposure settings to brighten the pics. 

I only saw the rose hips because of my height in the wheelchair. If I had been walking I would have easily missed them. 

It must have rained just before we went out, because there were still raindrops on the plants.

Alongside the path is a grassy area or park. I took a couple of shots of the steps leading up to it. I like these pictures because it makes you wonder where they lead.

Graffiti has always been a much debated subject when it comes to art. 

There was ivy everywhere! Up the trees, on walls and buildings too.

Jac our dog loved being out! He's never happier than when he's wandering in the grass and trees etc.

I love playing with the settings on photos. Changing the highlights gave this path shot a very different look...

For more pictures take a look at my Flickr

The Birds!

Alongside my road are a lot of very tall trees. But living here, I've seen something I've never seen anywhere else. 

Birds!

And hundreds of them!

They all usually land on/in the trees near me. Seeing that many birds in the sky and trees all at once is amazing!

They do like a game of tag. You can often see them all chasing one another, making interesting patterns in the sky.

This photo I played around with a bit on Paint.net

At the moment they're easy to see, but soon the leaves will be masking them. I'll still know they're there. That many birds can't stay very quiet!

There is the odd one or two introverts in the group though. You can usually find them having some alone-time on a chimney or aerial.

I can sit for ages watching them come and go. Who knows what they'll be getting up to next!

Thanks for reading.

Clearing Out The Clutter

It's been a couple of weeks or so since my new hobby of photography started, so I decided to stop and have a look at where I'm now at. 

Firstly I opened my photograph folder on my computer. There were over 300 photos in it! 

I decided, hard as it was, that I needed to get rid of some! 

I'd been keeping them all in case I wanted to play with them in my photo editing programme, or to put as part of a project. But when I looked at them closely, a lot weren't really good enough to be used for anything. For every 15 I had taken, maybe one was ok. 

I was pretty ruthless and finally got them down to 130 photos. I still probably have more than I need or will ever use, but for now they can stay. 

I'm still finding my feet, working out what my camera can actually do and how to take good photos, but am learning from the photos I take and hopefully will improve each time. 

I've joined a great forum - Digital Darkroom, they're really helpful and have given me a very warm welcome. I know I can learn a lot from them. 

My list of photos I want to take is constantly getting longer, it's good to have lots to challenge me. :)

I have also made a list (I love lists!) of places for hubby to take me for great photographing opportunities. 

I now have Flickr too... My Flickr

I hope to add a new blog post soon with some more photos. :)

Black, White & Colour

Since starting my new hobby of photography, I've been trying to get as much information and inspiration as I can. I've looked at what other people have done, to see what works and what doesn't. 

Something I came across which I really liked was a photo which was all black and white, except for one small thing, which had been left in colour. It looked pretty cool and I decided I wanted to try it for myself. 

I had no idea how to do that. 

I searched the web and found a couple of photo editing programmes and downloaded them. Some of them are easier to use than others. Some have preset styles which can change the whole picture at the push of a button, which is good, but I want to be able to alter pictures for myself too.

Currently I'm trying paint.net. 

So I had a photo I wanted to play with, and I had my editor programme. I wasn't sure what to do with the programme, so did a Google search. Most tips used Photoshop, but I did manage to find what I was looking for. 

Turns out, the principle is pretty easy. It's a bit like a game of chess, easy to learn, but a lifetime to master. The hard bit for this project was getting the lines exactly where I needed them. 

This is the first of my two pictures...

I joined http://captureyour365.com to get inspiration for photos. They email you a word a day, which you then interpret how you want. The day's word was circle, which inspired me to photograph a CD. (I decided to make it into an actual project, which will be in a later blog post). 

Also I had seen an idea of 'painting' with your camera, by moving the camera as you take the picture. 

So this photo came about from all of those ideas/techniques. 

This is what the original photo looked like...

For my second photo, I used a shot I'd taken from my window. The photo itself didn't really show the clouds as well as I'd hoped, the sky had looked quite amazing. But it was a good test to try with the black & white / colour technique.

Not bad for my first attempts. I know i'll be looking for more photo opportunities to use this technique. 

I'm finding that even when photos don't work, I learn from them and it gives me an idea of how to change it next time. 

Rejoicing In The Rain

Today has been a day of sudden rain showers. 

Most people view rain as bad weather, but it depends on your viewpoint. For me it was an opportunity to try out my camera and see what I could do in the early stages.

In this shot I was trying to get the focus on the rain on the window. It took a few attempts to work out where to stand so that I wasn't in the window reflection and to get the actual drops showing, not the background. 

I then went into my photo editor and did a black & white picture.

For this one I used a blurry filter, trying to highlight the central raindrop. 

I found a setting to change the colour. I've not done this before, so thought i'd give it a go. 

Finally, I used an overlay frame to get the transparent sort of frame. 

It's amazing how one simple photo of some raindrops can look so different. I know I still have a long way to go and there's probably a whole lot of other things I could do with this photo alone, but it's a start and I've really enjoyed it. :)