Animated Gifs : North Herts Portrait Photographer

I just had a play with making animated Gifs in Photoshop.
I had to look through my photos for some that would work as a sequence.
Here are a few I played with.

I couldn't resist using these shots from Christmas Day. Hubby was a wee bit merry from the unlimited alcohol.

I had been wondering how easy it was to do an animated Gif. After reading one of my favourite bloggers recent post I had a play.

Amanda's original blog is here.

It took me a while, to work out I had to resize all my images for viewing on the web. The Gif reduces the quality of the original images, but I still like the affect. 

The one below is of my niece Taya, from a shoot in the summer. The images are all the originals straight out of camera shots, except one. An edited one snuck in there. See if you can spot it.

I can't wait to shoot a collection of Teddy. He is so hard to shoot without movement, but this will be a great way of showing how truly mad he is.
It's a shame you can't post them on Facebook. It would be a great way of sharing a quick little slide show for clients to share their shoots.

Engagement shoot : North Herts Portrait Photographer

I bought my daughter a lovely engraved silver frame as a Christmas present. It was engraved with her and her fiancés names and the date they got engaged. But I realised we hadn't taken any photos to celebrate the occasion. Her fiancé is at University in Newcastle and rarely goes home.
He was home for a few days, and the snow was just thawing, so I dragged them across the road to the nature reserve. Everyone was moaning, especially my husband who I said had to hold the reflectors and throw some confetti. He moaned so much that we sent him home.

So I only had a few minutes to grab some images.

I played around with some textures in Photoshop.

It was only later I realised, that I had made the mistake of shooting in Landscape mode and the picture frame is for a Portrait shot. So I had to crop one of Tasmins favourite photos to fit the frame. She choose the one below.

This one below, was the only one I could use of my husband throwing confetti at them. Craig would always screw up his face, or a huge batch of confetti would cover their faces. Hubby just could't get the grasp of what I needed, so we sent him home.

Today, I had a play in Photoshop. The result was a bit naff, but cute in it's own way.

India 2012

It has taken me forever to get around to writing about our recent travels in India. I think because I knew it could be an epic post. I had been putting it off.
It was so long ago that I shared this post of the Smash book I put together to take on the trip


From the off our trip was amazing. Our seats on the plane weren't the best, so a tour rep waiting for us at Heathrow, said leave it to me and we did. When we got to our seats, we were ecstatic to see we had the extra leg room,emergency exit seats. I popped some sleeping tablets and slept the whole journey, only to be woken by the sounds of breakfast. I was lucky I slept, as the tour turned out to be full on.

Erica was to be our amazing tour guide for the entire trip, there aren't enough superlatives I could use to express how great she was. We had enough time to have a quick shower and then we were straight out to experience the delights a smoggy, polluted Delhi had to offer a coach of 20 tourists.

During our tour the Hindu festival of Diwali was taking place. So there were a lot of Indians taking time out to visit their national treasures. This was always my favourite part of each monument we went to. Watching the faces of Indians taking in the beauty around them.

Everyone was eager to have their photos taken with us or by us. We were as exciting to them, as we thought they looked to us.

 Everyone wanted to see what they looked like in the back of the camera...............

Months later and I still hadn't finished this post, so I have now decided I'm just going to show you some of my favourite images from the holiday and then share videos of the photo-book, and SMASH scrapbook of our tour. Otherwise this post will never get done.

Here's the Smash book scrapbook I finally finished today of our tour. To begin with, the focus isn't great. I forgot to reset the focus from a previous video. Sorry.

And here is the My Publisher photo-book I put together.

There is a fantastic giveaway going on over on Photobook Girls website here, for a chance to win $100 of a My Publisher product. It's a great site for finding out all you need to know about making Photobooks.

Dubai Christmas 2012 : North Herts Photographer

I recently spent three days watching a live workshop on the next step coming in photography, video. Sue and Hayley were showing us how to make short, snappy videos.. Our homework is to put together a two minute video, after a month of shooting. I chose my model to be Teddy. Now it is way above my head, and I think it will be a miracle that I ever get to cut a months worth of video into two minutes. So just watch this space.

But whilst I had my DSLR camera out, I popped it on a tripod and videoed some recent scrapbook projects. I have finally finished a scrapbook of my recent trip to Dubai to see my son. At a recent crop in Enfield, we had a bring and buy stash sale. I picked up some freebies and quickly put together a layout for a photograph I took when my daughter got engaged. Everything but the white 12 x 12 card stock was free.

 I also spotted a Christmas inspired album that was for sale by Denise. I hope she likes what I did with her cast off.

PS.. I noticed when I watched the video back, that some of my small word stickers had come loose. So I went back and used some Glossy accents on them. They're not going anywhere now !

A snow day : North Herts Portrait Photographer

We have had some beautiful fluffy, dry snow fall over the last week. In the UK that means the Country can come to a standstill. But this time the local councils seemed to listen to the forecast, and gritted the roads. But the majority of schools decided to have a snow day, as with " Health & Safety " rules now, they were frightened of children slipping over !!!!
That was a bonus to me, as I knew some children who wanted to go out in the beautiful snowy backdrop and I could photograph them.
We went to an area directly behind there home. I can't describe how beautiful the woods looked. There was a fantastic slope with kids sledging down on anything they could get their hands on.

I took some props along with me, to incorporate in the shoot. I knew a fur collar I have, would work as a beautiful frame to Lucy's face.

and old picture frame, worked just perfect as a simple natural frame.

Noodles came along to. But just one major drawback. For some reason he is petrified of cameras. So I had to employ some stealth to get a snap of him.

We had a walk through the woods and up on to a hill bordering Weston. It's the hill of choice for all the locals. It was mobbed as is usual when the snow hits. There were even teenagers attempting to sledge down in a massive paddling pool !! I have one confession, I have never owned a sledge. It's one of my things I have high on my "grandchildren gifts " list, if and when I ever get any. I have only been on a sledge once, briefly, as a young child. I vividly remember falling head first into the snow. Now I won't even attempt a quick toboggan because of my spine.

It is thrilling to get to work with such fantastic light at this time of year. Very little editing was needed as I could get exposure in camera just right. The snow acts as a natural reflector and as long as you get your white balance set correctly,.......BINGO- magic happens.

Here are a few more shots of Alfie from the shoot,

Happy New Year

I am currently on holiday visiting my son in Dubai. We had visited the City in 2006 and swore we wouldn't be back. But now that our son now lives here, we thought we'd give it another chance.

We cannot believe the changes in that time. In fact it hardly feels like you are in an Arabic country. Before we would walk around deserted shopping malls, that just had Arab men dressed all in white in them. Now the malls are massive and full of every Western shop you could imagine. The majority of the building work has been completed. The sky is not so full of cranes as it was in 2006.

The weather in December, is a lot more forgiving for a British resident. It was 106 every day when we visited in the month of April last time. This time I even need a cardigan.

I must admit this time I feel overweight and old. None of my summery clothes fit me. I have no inclination to attend any of the New Year celebration parties that are going on all over the City and I am hating every photo of myself, captured by others on the trip.

And I am finding it hard to pay the extortionate restaurant prices. I don't consider £80 for the two of us, a great deal. But the restaurants are all fully booked, so obviously all the tax free residents and rich Arabs think it's normal to pay those prices.

So far we have enjoyed the most, catching a metro train down to the old part of Dubai. We then caught an abra ferry boat across the creek to the gold and spice souks. It felt we were truelly in an Arab country, instead of the new polished shiny Dubai that is now everywhere over the creek. We took all the back streets, in the souk enjoying the feeling of being thoroughly lost. That was until I realised my much cherished Chanel sunglasses were no longer with us. I cannot begin to explain the panic we felt trying to retrace our steps. With Indians everywhere trying to get us to go in their shops. Every little alleyway looked the same. I had only been in two shops, but it took quite a few panic ridden minutes to find them again. But my sunglasses were nowhere to be found. We traced our steps over and over again. Returning to each shop three times. We had checked our cameras to pin point the last time I had them on. We even rang the shops today, in case they turned up. Stealing is quite rare here as the penalties are so high, so we hoped they might be found.
So I ended up having to return to the largest shopping Mall in the world to try and find some new ones. A day never goes past when I don't wear my sunglasses. I even wear them driving in fog. I must have tried on over 200 pairs, but I finally near 10pm settled on another pair of Chanels. Of course they were the most expensive pair in the shop. An expense I could have done without and a real downer on what had been a perfect day.
I ended up having a sleepless night, thinking about my sunglasses and retracing all my steps.


Anyway, as hubby said no one died. ( although to me I feel a little of me was lost with my sunglasses) so here's to a better start for 2013.

Merry Christmas

This Christmas and New Year I will partying in Dubai, visting my son.

We are having our Christmas dinner at home early this weekend. My favourite thing to do is the organisation for a big meal and it's cooking. I also love setting the table and always end up doing it days before.

This year I have a new tablecloth from Jaipur, India. It is covered with hand blocked elephants, in the same pink and green the room is decorated in. I thought it was perfect, when I saw it on our recent travels in India.

This year we have invited our daughters fiancé and his family to join us. It will be lovely to cook for a family who appreciate home cooking. Craigs mother is a fantastic cook, so no doubt she will realise all the effort that goes into putting a massive Christmas meal together.

Merry Christmas to all my blog readers, and I hope we all have a fabulous 2013.....

Is scrapbooking dead ?

I've heard the buzz recently on blogs, that scrapbooking is dead.  here


For me it certainly has been dormant for a while. To begin with I had thought it was because of the pain from a spine problem I had for a couple of years. It meant I couldn't sit without pain, so scrapbooking had to stop. But when I think about it, I used to scrap standing up most of the time when I was at home. I also stopped just at the time I finally had the bespoke scrapbook/ study of my dreams.

Then I thought, maybe it was because I had come to realise that no one in my family gave a shit about the pretty 12 x 12 pictures I was regularly putting into albums, that nobody ever looked at.
 But I'm starting to think I have just evolved. It started with the very thing that got me into scrapbooking- photographs. I started to be envious of the amazing captures on the blogs I was visiting more and more. I wanted to be able to take better photographs. So I took a workshop with Karen Russell back in 2010 and then again in 2012.That was it, my life changed.
I spent months doing assignments, reading about photography, experimenting and learning. This then lead me to take a different approach to my scrapbooking. I bought a Project Life kit from Becky Higgins and that changed the way I recorded memories for 2011. It was all about the daily photos and journalling.

It took up so much time and effort, that I didn't really have the extra time for making layouts. It seems to be true of other scrappers I know, that Project Life was the death of their classic 12 x 12 layouts. How weird that the very person asked to talk about the Death of scrapbooking might be the very peron that helped cause it. Now it would seem all the "famous" celebrity scrappers seem to be involved with Project Life somehow. So more and more people are using this as a way to document their lives.

I also found the simplicity of making beautiful, yearly photobooks, didn't help. I used all my favourite and best photos from each year in one massive book. They sit out on the coffee table, where my most recent scrap album used to sit. I had always had a sneaky suspicion that my children would just throw away my scrp albums when I am gone. There are too many for them to find a home for.  But I knew they would be more likely to hang on to the photobooks for future generations.

The Worldwide recession seemed to hit , just at the time my back problems did. So slowly, the scrapbook stores that i loved here became more expensive, and then shut one by one. I am lucky, in that I have a store here in my small market town. But it tends to not get my creative juices flowing. I have never been an Internet shopper, I always had to see and buy in person. So slowly that way of getting me excited creatively, died. The cost of petrol went through the roof and the old days of travelling hours to a scrap store stopped.

I think the rot started to set in when Creative Keepsakes magazine stated to have problems. My much anticipated magazine, didn't always turn up and one by one they got rid of all the great scrappers writing for their magazine. Which of course ended up in them all going on line and starting things up like Project Life !

Scrapbooking is something I still love and I would dearly love to get back into it as much as I used to. I still attend crops regularly, so that I keep my brain tuned to be creative. I have a small pile of scrapbook projects on the go at the moment. My India mini book is nearing completion and I have a fab mini book kit from Ann Freemans Enfield Christmas crop I've just attended.

Are you still scrapbooking ? How do you keep yourself motivated, when all around you no one gives a damn !

A test run :North Herts Portrait Photographer

 Ignore if possible.

This is just a test run blog. I am still trying to get to grips with blogging from a Mac.

My favourite blog writing platform is only usable on a Windows computer. Live Writer used to be so easy to use. I could change the size of my edited photos effortlessly. Now I'm trying to find out the size I need on my blog.

So this is a quick test from a recent shoot, of the same image at different sizes.

As you can see it's not easy taking photos of children !!!

Especially when it"s a dull damp day and the photographer isn't well!

Well it looks like my blog is 500 pixels wide. Half the amount I normally save my web images at. Hopefully one day I will have the time to work out, how to widen my blog posts. I did it years ago as part of a Shimelle blogging class. I may have to investigate again the ins and outs of my HTML blog !!