Hen Party Fun

It was the very exciting occasioin of a friend's Hen Party this weekend. It was full of all sorts of treats including staying in a yurt, lake district scenery, afternoon tea, hot tubs, and a 'birds of prey experience' to finish it all off with. It was a fun occasion for Niki the camera, with lots of interesting pretty details to take pictures of, and memorable moments to capture. I find I enjoy photographing objects and details as they don't complain if you rearrange them, or get bored if it take s a few pictures to get the camera settings right!

 We all got to decorate a pair of wellies on the first night, and wore them for much of the weekend thereafter.

 Katie has excellent coloured hair which was blowing around in the wind while we waited for our boat ride.

 There were many fine views of the mountains, but I thought this particular scene looked nice as a patch of sun illuminated the nearby hillside.

 Delicious cakes! The highlight of afternoon tea!

 By our yurts was a marvelous outdoor hot tub, heated by it's own stove! It was beautifully decorated with fairy lights and purple flowers, and looked very inviting once it became dark outside.

 I like how the sparks from this fire have made little trails picked up by the camera.

 These are two of the many photographs of birds of prey I took. I think the one above is my favourite. The bird trainer was trying to get him to look at my camera, and he would always turn his head away just when I pressed the shutter button! As it happens I rather like how this picture has come out anyway, and I think it looks especially good with the blurry rain drops falling in the background,

Ulverston Angel

Katie Duxbury's delightful Angel made an appearance last week, this time at Birkrigg Common overlooking Ulverston. Katie wanted some final pictures before she sends it away to a competition.

http://www.duxburydesigns.co.uk/

 I don't normally like using flash to take pictures because I don't like the artificial look it gives. I much prefer natural light! However the exciting thing about this costume is that it's designed to look amazing with light shining on it. For these pictures I used flash for all of them, but experimented with different exposure times, which is why the background has interesting colours in it. With a long exposure, the pale glow of street lights in the distance has turned into a firey red glow.

 I like how on these pictures it appears that you can see the background through the angel. After the flash went off at the start of the exposure, I got Katie (who was wearing the costume) to move out of the frame, and so for the rest of the exposure the camera picked up the colour of the background. When the camera computes all the information and puts it together, it makes the angel look see-through, which makes it look all the more mystrerious!

Finally for this picture we did some more experimenting. After the initial flash, Katie moved to stand in different places, and I used a torch to illuminate the angel in bursts at different places.

A few days in Scotland

 My husband and I enjoy a spot of mountain biking. I knew this fun bit of trail was coming up so I zoomed off with the camera to get some pictures of him coming down this bit.

 I'm still enjoying being able to take nice focused close up shots of things. Here are some new shoots just waiting to burst out! I think the Spring in Scotland might be just a few weeks behind, there's a few less leaves and flowers than back home.

 As we were cleaning up our bikes, the fog started rolling in and filling the valley we were staying in. Before the mist reached us I could see that the sun was just starting to set, and so I suggested we went for a little drive to see if we could see the sun set. We arrived at this nice little viewpoint just in time!

The next afternoon we went out to do a climb on the nearby sea cliffs. I caught this view just after we had packed up and began the walk back to the car. I really liked how the the clouds created light and dark patches on the water.

Car Light Trails

 My mission yesterday evening was to see if I could take some pictures of cars whizzing by       leaving light trails behind them. This first picture is the one which I think came out the best. The lights look so high up as an ambulance happened to come by which created a nice effect for me (no flashing blue lights though).

Some of the pictures have come out clearer than others. In the absence of a tripod, which is apparently quite useful in these situations (though I'd feel very conspicuous using one!), I was balancing my camera on a wall instead. I thought this would be a good place for the pictures as I like the light house monument on the top of Hoad Hill in the background, and also the quaint row of differently coloured houses just on the other side of the road, which is fairly typical for Ulverston.

This last picture is where I tried to get a few more light effects, but I didn't find my attempts to be too successful. There weren't enough cars going around the roundabout in the time of my camera exposure. Perhaps a busier section of road would make for a more exciting photograph.

Spring blossoms

I had some time to kill after dropping the husband off at work but meeting my friends for a walk, so I took camera and sought pretty blossoms.

 I tried taking the pictures with different backgrounds. The one above has more of the tree in the background, and the one below has a pond in the background which was reflecting the light in an interesting way.

The picture above is one of my favourites from today. I deliberately tried to get a blurry yellow from the daffodils  in the background.

These pictures were taken at Grange-over-sands. One thing I really liked was how they have planted tulips along the top of all the walls, it looked so colourful! 

Close up flowers

At the weekend I purchased a photography magazine to see if it had any interesting content and to see if I could learn a bit more about the functions of my camera (I must be turning into a bit of a geek!). I must have chosen a good magazine as it seemed to explain things in a language I could understand, but I think without dumbing it down too much. One article that I found to be particularly fun was a tutorial on how to take close up snaps of flowers without extra expensive equipment. Here are my attempts!

I love how these Gerberas look close up. I like how you can see detail you might not normally notice.

The article suggested you could buy a piece of coloured card from an art shop, but I thought I'd improvise instead. The dark blue background above is the back of the bodyboard I bought last year in Cornwall, the orange background is my camping roll mat, and the white background is the wall of the house.

I'd like to go and take some pictures of Daffodils while it's still Spring, but it's going to have to be less windy than it has been or they won't stand still long enough to take a picture!

Angelic details, and an interesting discovery

Below I took some fun pictures of another one of Katie Duxbury's costumes. This is an 'Angel' costume, which is made from lots of different textures and materials, including reflective fabrics so it can be photographed in the dark. This link shows pictures of when she took pictures of it last year in the countryside near Lancaster

http://duxburycostume.blogspot.co.uk/2014/11/angelic-appearances.html

 I like taking pictures really close up which show off all the little details that Katie has included.

And now to my 'interesting discovery'. Well, it was interesting to me anyway. My phone was sitting on the table in front of me, and as I had nothing better to do I took a picture of it. When I focused on the phone, the lights reflecting on the screen looked all blurry. But then I realised that I could adjust the focus so that it picked up the reflection, rather than the phone itself. Perhaps this could make for an interesting effect in a more interesting subject matter some other time.