Callaloo Soup

Jumping into 2013

This month has been very fulfilling so far. I actually worry that I might already have taken too much on, but all of it makes my heart sing so I am just going with that feeling!

After much reflection I signed up for the 2013 edition of Ali Edwards' One Little Word Class at Big Picture Classes. I felt like I really needed something concrete to guide me in keeping my word present this year. Today I finally started putting my album together.

I decided to go for a very colourful album. I need more colour in my life! Of course it will all be against a neutral backdrop. Let's not get too crazy now.

About ten days ago I was incredibly lucky to win a place in Xanthe Berkeley's A Journey class - all about creating time capsules with video. I am so excited about this, as I have only dabbled a bit in video. I love her videos, they are such an excellent way to record a bit of daily life. Here's one she did this month

 

RANDOM HAPPENINGS - Jan 2013 from xanthe berkeley on Vimeo.

I am so inspired! In the class we will be working on four projects over the next 12 weeks. I have already thought up many more though. I am hoping to finally do something with the video clips we have of Kieran from his birth as one of my projects.

To start the class Xanthe has us fill out a pledge, a way to share our committment to the projects.

Watch this space for videos coming soon!

Finally, I wanted to give you a heads up about 30 Days of Lists. Have you heard about this project? Since March 2011, Amy and Kam have been leading this listing challenge: they provide prompts for daily lists for 30 consecutive days. Fun! The next edition will be in March and registration opens very soon. In the meantime you can sign up for the newsletter, to get all the information in your inbox.

Yes, I think that's quite a bit for this month!

Favourites from my October Photo a Day Project

All year I've been seeing people take part in the Photo a Day challenge hosted by Fat Mum Slim. I've really wanted to try it, but you know how I am with dailies. Plus I don't have Instagram (I know!) But I took another look again when October started, and saw that I could also tweet my photos and upload them to Facebook, so I took the plunge.

I am happy to say that I am keeping up! Here are my favourites from the month so far

 

October 2nd - Lunchtime Play

October 5th - A Boy and His Shadow

October 10th - Sheer Joy

October 18th - Smiles at Sunrise

October 15th - Guess Who's Coming to Dinner?

October 22nd - Our playground

I'm already gearing up to do it again in November, and maybe I'll even join the 21st century and have Instagram by then.

Now I just hope that posting about it here won't jinx me! If you want to see all my photos, they are in this album on the Callaloo Soup Facebook page. You'll be able to see the photos without liking the page, but feel free to Like the page if the spirit moves you!

Have you ever done the Fat Mum Slim or any daily photo challenge?

Tuesday To Do | How to Take Brighter Project Photos in-Camera

Hello! I know that last week I promised you another washi tape tutorial, but sadly our weather has been grey and dim of late and unfortunately my step by step photos aren't as clear as I would like. As I was gnashing my teeth and tearing my hair, I remembered that I had a little photography trick stashed away to share with you.

We have big full length windows and white walls in this house, so usually I am able to get wonderful bright photos of my craft projects or Etsy items. However sometimes depending on the time of day, I do get some ugly shadows in my usual photo shoot spot. Like this

 

I didn't want to have to spend a lot of time editing these shots, but I really wanted to get these photos taken so I could spruce up the shop a bit. Then a little voice whispered "bounce the light". I've read before about using something white to bounce light back onto objects, have you? Well it is simpler than I thought.

I quickly looked around and grabbed the first thing I saw, a large white canvas, and propped it up to the right of the magazine (note, it occured to me to take a photo of the set up later on, that's why it's a different magazine).

Then I took the shot again

I couldn't believe the difference! Not only are the shadows less noticable, but the colours are brighter, and the background is whiter (that sounds like a laundry detergent commercial!)

So repeat after me "Bounce the light". I think a good surface to use for this would be some white foam board. It's cheap, light and can be stored easily. You can easily apply this technique to taking photos of your craft projects or scrapbook pages too!

Real Life Photography | A Review from Me

I just finished up reading the new e-book Real.Life.Photography by Rebecca Cooper published through Ella Publishing.

I'll just go straight ahead and say that I loved it! It's no big surprise since Rebecca was a frequent contributer to Simple Scrapbooks, as well as one of my team mates at Write.Click.Scrapbook, so we share very similar philosophies regarding scrapping and photography.

What I loved most about the book was Rebecca's practical approach to helping you capture photos of everyday life. Sure, she includes technical information as well, such as her camera settings for the photos in the book, but mostly she explained ways to capture real life as it happens. I am sure that we all have those moments we wished we were able to better capture, this book will definitely help you do that!

You'll get simple tips such as making sure your camera is not only handy, but also ready to fire, to more details like how to best use available light, and how to go about capturing relationships. Rebecca finishes up the book by covering how to use editing software to enhance your photos or correct slight imperfections. She covers simple editing techniques for correcting lighting and colour, and shows examples of photos enhanced with actions from Addy Lane.

The great thing about Real.Life.Photography is that you can start using the techniques right away. I wasn't even finished reading yet when I took these shots of Kieran.

I enhanced both shots using the Simple Fixes: Actions for Photoshop and Photoshop Elements which I bought bundled with Real.Life.Photography. These are the same actions that rebecca talks about in the book. Here's a look at those two photos straight out the camera.

I ran the Simply Boost action on both photos to make the colours more vibrant, as well as running the Simply Lighten action on the left photo as it was a little dark.

As we're heading off on vacation soon I am looking forward to using more of the tips in this book to capture lots of family photos!

If you want to get this book and the action set  (which is available for both Photoshop AND Elements), Ella has a special ending today for 20% off your purchase when you buy both items and use the code PHOTOFIX. I highly recommend them!

 

Get Close. Get Very, Very Close

I love getting very close up to take photos, especially photos of objects and nature. It totally changes the feel of the resulting image. I took the following two photos below by getting as close as I could with my Canon 50mm lens .

Pretty cool, but not good enough for me. I wanted to get even closer! The next time I went out to the garden I grabbed the macro filters that I have for my Canon 50mm lens . These nifty filters screw on to the lens and reduce the minimal focusing distance, allowing me to get very very close. (They are also available for Nikon Cameras )

 

You can practically taste that strawberry!

 

The flowers seem to take on a life of their own at this perspective. The best part of getting this close is how common things become extra special.

How beautiful are thyme and verbena when seen like this?

Raspberry and tomato flowers are lovely and delicate.

Coriander looks like lace

And a dying tulip resembles a twirling ballerina.

Next time you're out in the garden, grab your camera and get very very close. You might be amazed by what you see.

Challenging Myself With Film Photography

I only took up photography seriously during the digital boom of the last several years. Before that I had a nifty little film point & shoot. It was great for snapshots, which was all I was interested in at the time. Now that I have been shooting digitally for a few years I feel I should "test" myself with film a bit.

As you see in the photo above, I've been collecting cameras over the last couple years. I found that Polaroid at the flea market for less than $5 and it actually works! The Holga toy camera was passed on to me by my sister, and that old film camera was one that Lucas and I found a few summers ago, and that no one claimed.

We also have Lucas' Nikon N65 film camera which came to light when we moved last year. (Funny story, when we met he was the big photog and I was the total tourist amateur. Now those roles seem to have been reversed.)

Santa Claus also brought me this nifty thing

Which I have used exactly once so far.

I think that with all these cameras at my disposal I should be more creative with my photography! I especially want to include some film photos in my Project Life album.

Do you do any film photography? Can you pass along some tips?

 

These Hands Tell Our Stories

With photos, pen, ink, papers, stamps and doodads my hands weave the patchwork of our lives into stories we can read, recall and remember over and over again.

I've been experimenting with different photo subjects and perspectives lately, and this is one of the results. I'll share the completed layout I was working on in the photo soon.

Tuesday To Do: Camera Bag Hack

I first saw this idea back in November last year, and really wanted to get it done before my trip. Alas, another of the things that had to wait. But after lugging around my camera and lenses in a really unsuitable way on the trip, I knew this would have to be one of the first projects I attacked this year. Then I ran across it again while browsing online and that was all I needed to get busy!

So here is my fancy new low cost camera bag.

Here's how I made it using the innards and a padded divider from an older bag, some cute fabric and a handbag bought on sale.

The main part of my bag is the inside of my old Tracy Joy camera bag (which no longer exists it seems). The main problem I had with this bag is that it was narrow, so when full with all my equipment it was difficult or impossible to close. I ripped out the inside portion which has a number of sewn in pockets, as well as the foam padding that was stitched into the sides.

I measured and cut a piece of fabric to fit over the outside of the innards, and stitched the foam padding to it. And by measured I mean that I wrapped the fabric around the innards and cut to suit!

I then turned it inside out, and fit the original bag innards into it

Then I folded in the top edge and stitched the two pieces together.

Finally, I covered the padded divider with some of the same fabric.

Basically what I created is a camera bag insert. I popped it into my new handbag and voila!

It holds my camera body with attached lens, two extra lenses, filters, cables, and other accessories. Plus space for my wallet, keys and cell phone. And when I get bored with this handbag I can just pop the entire thing into another one!

Is this something you think you might try? If so I'd love to see it! The two sites that I linked to show a couple other ways that you can do this, so be sure to check them out.

I am so happy. No more boxy camera bag!

 

 

 

 

September Challenge: Get in the Picture

I mentioned last week that I had a plan for getting more photos of myself with Kieran, and in fact just more photos of myself in general. A lifetime ago (Kieran's lifetime that is) I used to take an obscene number of photos of myself. It's rare for me to do that anymore unless I need a headsot for an online bio. Plus when I posted about our summer vacation, my friend Anne asked if I had any record of me with Kieran during that time. Sadly I do not. And so this idea was born.

In September I will be challenging myself and making the effort to "get in the picture". I commit to setting up the camera to take more self-portraits. I commit to taking arm stretched out photos of Kieran and I. I commit to setting up the tripod to do photo shoots with Kieran and include myself. I commit to handing the camera over to someonle else to get more photos of us two together. And I commit to not complain if said photos aren't perfect.

Would you like to join me? Just leave me a comment and I will add a list of all your blogs to my sidebar (if you don't have a blog I can add a link to your flickr account or other photo gallery). There are no real rules aside from making the commitment to "get in the picture" in September. This is not some kind of photo a day deal. As we all know I suck at those!

Feel free to snag the image above if you want to blog about this. I've also made a smaller badge that you can add to your sidebar if you plan to play along.

 

Here's the code you can use to add the badge

<a href="http://francineclouden.typepad.com/callaloo_soup/2010/08/september-challenge-get-in-the-picture-.html"><img src="http://i34.photobucket.com/albums/d136/raggafran/banners/sidebarbadgecopy.png" border="0"></a>

 

Ready? Set? Click!

My Life Through the Lens

I was lucky enough to win a spot in Katrina Kennedy's photography class: Life Through the Lens at Get it Scrapped. I think I can say that my photography has improved drastically over the last couple of years, but I love taking classes because you can always learn something new! Every photographer always has special tips and tricks that you might not have known before. So far I have learned a few new things about my camera, as well as some much needed info on focus and light metering.

Here are a few of the photos I've taken so far.

I'm hoping that next week, once my Mum is here I will be able to focus even more (yah, pun totally intended!) and practice all the new techniques I've learned. With the good weather finally here, I am itching to get out and about and go photo crazy!