All posts filed under: Photography

Weekly Photos October 14

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  1. The table of cacti got decorated this year! 2. A glow in the dark skelly head. 3.  Bodhi and I finishing up the web. We spent part of the weekend adding to the Halloween decos!  Bought the obligatory ‘spider web’ which we will be finding until next year as usual.  It does look rather good though, which is why we buy the stuff every year and drape the porch and surrounding foliage with it. I remember when we first moved to the States 10 years ago and thinking that people went way over the top for Halloween…ahem….  

Favorite instagrammers

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Do you Instagram?  Who do you follow?  Family?  Friends?  Big corporates?  Small businesses? Celebs? I have used Instagram for about a year and a bit now and to start with there was the option to share or not, so I used it more as a filters app and not a social media app.  Now, of course it is all sharing and all social media which is fine, I just use other filter apps and think about what I want to share with anyone who cares to take a look. About that anyone can take a look thing.  How do you feel about that?  Are you careful to watermark so your photos can’t be reused?  I am not, but then I am no top photographer, so I am not too worried.  I follow @davidloftus and he interestingly doesn’t watermark his photos and he is a top photographer.  I think watermarks are only useful when they are slapped right across the middle and that completely ruins the whole point of putting a photo up in the first …

New York Photos from my June visit

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I had a very interesting, informative and  photo-ful trip to New York and Brooklyn last month. Some highlights were the Punk exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum, Coney Island even with the Mermaid Parade chaos, Tinsel Trading (my new favourite shop) and seeing friends and friends. My trip into the big city on Friday.  The Met for Punk Chaos and Central Park  for a sunny walk with a lovely friend. I came across Tinsel Trading as I was heading from a magazine shop to Muji and I am so happy I did, the place was amazing, I wanted to move in there!  Trims and buttons, vintage and ribbons as far as the eye could see all displayed in old cabinets and drawers.  Gorgeous.  I came out with some beads, silk ribbon and metal thread.  I thought I was rather restrained, I hope you are proud of me! Coney Island colour and fun! My last day in Brooklyn.  I had to visit the Momofuku Milk bar and Union Market.  I picked up some international magazines and caught …

Challenges and an actual challenge.

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Monthly, daily, weekly challenges. Do you love then or do you hate them. Or do you love the idea of them and hate that you never stick with them? I have been doing the photo a day challenge with prompts provided by Chantelle at Fat Mum Slim for almost a year now and it is now totally part of my day no matter how busy I am. Some photos are snaps which barely meet the prompt and some are worked on with filters and all sorts of nonsense from a variety of apps. I started the daily photo thing with Hipstamatic who also do a prompt based challenge on Instagram. I love the Hipstamatic app, but I don’t want to have to use it for every photo. I saw a challenge on A Beautiful Mess today – The 30 day self portrait challenge. My initial reaction was holy squashed avocados, even I don’t want to see a month of photos of me! Why would any modest person want to do this, blah blah, blah.  Then …

Buddhas, beads and lighthouses

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As we are heading along the Cape, the town of Eastham can’t be passed without a visit to Buddha and Beads. A little antique store which has all kinds of treasure including lots of beads which ironically are not my favourite part of the store. There are wonders in every corner. There is now an outside bonus area which wasn’t here last time we visited. Green glass floats. Many many Buddhas, new and vintage. We headed out to the lighthouse and the beach next. The steps to Nauset light beach have been eroded away so they are building new ones. Right now. So, no access to the beach. We also came to see the lighthouse, so off we went. There are four lighthouses here in all. One working and the identical Three Sisters lighthouses residing in the woods just behind. Nauset lighthouse. Moved from Chatham to replace the Three Sisters lights. The top was painted red and the light signal is a white light followed by a red light. This lighthouse is featured in the …

Phone photo apps

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Have you updated your ‘over’ app lately? I just updated mine and I have lots of cool new and free artwork to add to my pictures. While we are on the subject of apps, do you know of any app which allows you to draw on your own photos? I know Laminar Express lets you do this but the ‘pen’ line is super thick and I would like a thinner option. What cool photo apps do you use? Any new ones I need to know about?

The Weekend and a Honeysuckle filled Breeze.

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Memorial Day holiday weekend has been and gone and we had a nice time.  Did you?  I hope so. Today it is humid and steamy and the whole outside smells of Honeysuckle flowers, I just want to stand at my back door and breath in the warm scents as they drift on by. I spent some time stamping out flowers with my fancy new cutty outy thing which makes lovely flower shapes.  I ended up with a nice pile and I am very happy with my colour choice.  In fact I would like my living room these colours. These flowers are heading for my business cards which I need to fancy up for the upcoming Alt Summit in New York City. I snapped some photos of these gorgeous thistles as we walked by the local Metro Link station.  I took a load of photos but the wind foiled my plan and most ended up out of focus.  Thankfully I got a few to play about with and here are a couple. On Sunday we visited …

What did you get up to this weekend?

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I went out early (ish) on Saturday to trawl yard sales.  There was one at a local church and I had high hopes for treasure.  I wasn’t disappointed! I got four scarves in all, but these two are the prettiest. I think the blue one is silk, the flowers on it are so delicate, they might even be hand painted. The pink one might be a head scarf and it was ‘Made in France’  for a St Louis department store of the olden days called ‘Stix, Baer and Fuller’. The department store was open from 1892 until 1984. This scarf  looks very 1960’s, but I am not sure as I can’t find any images of it. Do you know any St Louis ‘Stix, Baer and Fuller’ history?  Do share.  You know where the comments are, get to it! I missed this pan when I did my initial sale walk through.  I spotted it when I had already gathered what I thought was my final choices.  I have been looking for a tube/bundt/angel cake tin for …

Ten on the 10th

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I am so happy it isn’t raining today for ten on the 10th photos. I was beginning to think it was going to be rainy on the 10th of every month!  So in the monthly tradition of taking ten photos on the 10th day, here are ten photos.  All taken on the iPhone 4. I literally stopped and turned around to get a photo of this dew soaked leaf.   A flower spotted on the way into the Y this morning.   Bags all ready for the Mother’s Day Plant sale at school.  The kids all get a plant to give to their Mama and the opportunity to buy plants and hanging baskets.   We pass this Lilac bush every day and it smells divine! Look at all those teeny tiny flowers.  Beautiful. I was taking a photo for my daily prompt and accidently got my feet and quite liked it!  The effects are provided by Hipstamatic.  New Saltwater sandals!  Love ’em, super comfy.   ‘Stars’  was the ‘photo of the day’.  These are some …

iPhone filters on a Dandelion (roar) Clock.

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I found some cool Dandelion clocks while out and about last week, so I snapped a couple of pictures.  In fact I snapped loads and only got a few decent ones, they are tricky little monkeys to get to stay still.   I popped on some different filters to see how they looked. I thought I would share my results.  All of the filters and effects were added in Camera+ on the iPhone 4. These are the starting photos, no filter, no crops. I put this on into Camera+ and cropped it down and added clarity Crop, clarity, depth of field.   Crop and Polarise Crop, Clarity and Ansel. As part of a course I am doing by the lovely Jessica Van Den called ‘Set up Shop‘ I have to ‘play’ as part of one of the lessons,  and I intend to!  I might pull out my pens and a pretty notebook and have a little draw. I recently was introduced to the work of Kate Bingaman-Burt this week by Gathered digital magazine and have …