It’s rather later in the week than usual for the blog post, but having returned from a weekend in London there’s now time to sit down and make sure that the weekly updates continue.
For some of the week 365-related inspiration was rather lacking, I even descended to the car keys featuring on Monday, but both Portia and London provided more fertile photographic ground later in the week, indeed Portia became popular once again:
In London, a visit to The Little Black Gallery to pick up some long-stored books was followed by a walk through Hyde Park to our hotel:
It’s a shame we didn’t have longer to wander around London, although that downside was tempered by finding a very nice pub to eat, drink and be merry in before going on to the Royal Albert Hall for the evening.
A busy week, and a tiring week (exacerbated by a burglar alarm failure at 0130 on Saturday morning). A day’s holiday tomorrow, one we’re very much looking forward to.
Well, I’m not sure “running behind” is an appropriate phrase: there’s not been any running, although this week has seen me returning to the gym in an attempt to balance increased carb intake with resistance work. We shall see how that pans out and impacts blood sugar levels.
However, the “running behind” more relates to it now being Saturday, one or two days behind my nominal posting days.
I’ve been continuing my reading of Syl Arena’s “Lighting for Digital Photography”, and decided to press Mrs G into having her portrait taken last Saturday evening after we’d returned from York. Moderate success, but I think what it most taught me was not to try to put new techniques into practice whilst tired and on an empty stomach. More thought is also required with regards to the aim of the photography, rather than “take your portrait whilst trying out these new techniques”, otherwise problems that could be thought through in advance cause annoyance and demotivation.
Portia had a big adventure in our bedroom on Thursday morning, which lead to my first diptych upload to Flickr:
Unfortunately when she clambered too far off the ground the camera had to go down to ensure she didn’t have a sudden, dramatic landing.
It’s the one year anniversary of us moving house today. Time to celebrate.
It seems to have been the week that autumn’s gentle advance out of summer accelerated, and suddenly it feels far closer to winter. The first frost meant a rather abrupt awakening when wandering outside first thing in a morning to feed the birds, and the sun’s arc visibly lower from my office window.
It’s the week of Halloween and Bonfire Night (aka Guy Fawkes’ Night): the former doesn’t usually excite me greatly, and has previously focused on attempting to minimise the knocks on the door. However, our move towards the end of a cul-de-sac resulted in zero knockings, and the “event” of Halloween provided an opportunity to put another tick in the 365 box. This year, though, I might spice things up by checking out some unique costumes and props from AbracadabraNYC.com, just to make the holiday a bit more fun and magical!
Inspired by the November 2014 issue of Digital SLR Photography, this was the result:
(with thanks to Mrs G for being the willing model).
Was pretty happy with the way that turned out. Perhaps a white “ghost” rather than a black “ghoul” would have been more contrasty against the background, but still think it works well and was a satisfactory result for a Halloween image. Went down relatively well on Flickr too, making Explore.
The second chilly, outdoor event was last night, Bonfire Night. Mrs G is a big fan of fireworks, me less so, but we had some sparklers, burnt some wood and leaves in our incinerator, and lit our only “proper” firework:
Unfortunately, only having one firework meant that I didn’t get a second go at this, and in hindsight I would have been better taking several exposures, each with an increased exposure time. As it was, I took a single exposure of 13 seconds, which I think overdid it somewhat, but Lightroom enabled me to get something reasonable out of it.
That was the 45th photograph out of 365. Quite daunting that there’s still 320 more to go, but going to the effort of trying to take something out of any day that’s got a specific significance seems to be working relatively well. December’s loaded with them too, so just need to be prepared.
It’s not quite the weekend, but happy photographing!
