Saturday, 9 July 2011, Day 228/365.
This photo is of my sister and myself at her 40th after I’d made a jug of Cosmopolitan to share.
I think we all celebrated just a little bit too hard that night.
by Jen
by Jen
Friday, 8 July 2011, Day 227/365.
Since I’ve been back at work I’ve worked every second Friday until mid-afternoon. It’s a bit of a shock to the system because I’ve had Fridays off for so long. Therefore Thursday nights just aren’t the same any more.
It’s not like I stay up really late if I’m not working the next day but it’s not something I relish and it’s made me realise that my work-life balance means a heck of a lot to me. It means that there’s lots of jobs I won’t be able to take, or be offered, because I don’t want to work full-time any more.
I’m only doing the odd Friday because I’ve not worked for a few months and because I’m casual so it’s a bit of extra money in the bank for days I have to take off sick or whatever.
Having said that, it’s school holidays at the moment and I’m not working either of the two Fridays during this period.
I’m very lucky that I’ve got this flexibility. May it continue!
by Jen
Thursday, 7 July 2011, Day 226/365.
I’ve been blogging for seven, yes seven, years now. Back when I started I had dreams of becoming a popular blogger like Heather from Dooce but I doubt that will ever happen for many reasons.
However, I’ve kept plodding along because I love it and while I really like the few comments I do receive this is ultimately a public journal of my life and those who’ve been reading this blog for a while now have probably seen a bit of a shift in my focus.
Lately I’ve actually been blogging every day to showcase my photo of the day. Sometimes there’s a story around that photo and sometimes there’s not but photography interspersed with my daily life has definitely risen to the fore.
With that in mind I’ve been on the lookout for other photography/journal type blogs and I have a few in my repertoire but would like to know of more. Please leave a comment if you know of blogs like this.
In the spirit of sharing here are some blogs where photography is a focus.
Tiff of My Three Ring Circus takes beautiful photos as she documents her life as a mum of seven children, and in particular her daughter Ivy’s medical needs.
Bush Babe of Oz is pretty handy with a camera too. She documents her life in the country, and other places she goes to. I probably hardly take any photos compared to her.
Karen of Miscellaneous mum usually posts photos with her blog posts and like me is an iPhone photo taker. I chimed in on her post about trying to justify her need/want for a digital SLR camera.
Karen of Chookaloonks takes beautiful portrait and close-up flower shots amonst other things. I always love looking and reading her blog.
I don’t know where Bree of The Pioneer Woman finds time to tend to her plethora of blogs, and homeschool, and everything else, but then she does get up at 4.30am. I don’t know whether to feel just plain inadequate or have something to aspire to. She uses photos for all of her blogs and they’re lovely.
I haven’t had a chance to look through this list but there’s a discussion thread on the Shutter Sisters Flickr group that talks about photography blogs. I hope there’s some journal type photography blogs in there. The Shutter Sisters blog definitely falls into the journal photo blog category and is a community blog rather than being run by one person.
Help me add to this list please.
by Jen
by Jen
Tuesday, 5 July 2011, Day 224/365.
One thing I can’t do at the moment is take close-up photos with the iPhone especially in low-light situations like the above.
Apparently all I need to do to take macro photos with the iPhone, or any phone, is get a jeweller’s loupe or magnifying glass. I must give it a go.
Flickr have an iPhone macro group with some stunning photos and some other more extreme methods of taking macro photos with the iPhone.
by Jen
by Jen
I wrote recently about having a good photographic eye but there’s a lot more to taking a photo that you’re happy with than having a good eye for composition, subject matter etc.
Some days for my photo a day project I’ll take one or two photos specifically to post for the day. Other days I’ll take heaps of photos and find it hard to choose which one is ‘it’ for the day.
This particular day I took 18 photos. To many people that’s probably not very many but when you’ve got a six month old puppy that’s not your own on a lead and daren’t let him go, it was a pretty good effort. Quite often I take photos when out walking my dog and it’s hard to take a shot when she’d rather be sniffing something over there thank you very much.
Below are eight photos from the 18 that I took with my eventual photo of the day choice.
This one, while it’s following the rule of thirds – ie one third is the sky, and the other two thirds are the ground – there’s not that much else going for it.
The photo below didn’t work out because there’s no real focus on anything.
I do really like this one because of the subject matter and that look that he’s giving me but I didn’t go with this one for my photo of the day choice in the end.
And I didn’t choose this one because I only really got the top of his head, so again, there’s no real focus on anything.
I shot this photo through a wire fence so it was hard to compose the photo how I would have liked and the lens on the Hipstamatic probably wasn’t the best choice.
This one was okay, but it looks like the landscape’s on a lean so it didn’t make the cut. Soursobs are out in force this time of year and I do like the yellow.
This would have been worth considering if Monty was a bit clearer. For a 14 or so year old dog she’s looking very jaunty and she had a great time on this walk running back and forth off the lead. Dog bliss!
Below is the photo I chose. It was a toss-up between this one and the one where the pup is looking over his shoulder at me. I eventually went with this one because it seemed just that bit more interesting. There’s just enough of him in one corner to look at and I’m down at his level more so you can see that the grasses are that much taller than him. I liked the amount of blue sky too.
I’m sure it’s fairly subjective and another person might have picked another photo.
Sunday, 3 July 2011, Day 222/365.