Christmas is this month!

I know there are the people that hate Christmas - the shops, the crowds but I am one of those people who buys their gifts 6 months in advance and avoids the busy times at the shops over Christmas in favour of free activities for the kids and Christmas lights!  I love love love Christmas!


We went to see the Christmas lights near us last night and they were amazing.  I got talking to one of the people who put some up and she said to me "It's so hard to take good pictures of the lights"  To which I replied  "It depends what you're after."  This got me thinking about what you could do with the lights without all your gear and just a DSLR camera and basic lens even if you didn't have your tripod handy.  If you are planning to go see the lights though do take your tripod but remember to take some pics without as well for some fantastic fun abstracts.  If you find some lights and didn't bring the tripod don't let that stop you from playing with long shutter speeds!


Here are some images taken last night:

Black and white coversion, slight crop, watermark added thats all.  Taken without Tripod.

Slight crop nothing else apart from watermark - taken wothout Tripod

Slight crop.  Watermarked.  Taken with Tripod.

Fun with Frames

If you are looking for a nice way to present your images on the internet (particularly facebook/web) I have found a couple of fast and free photoshop actions.

Here's an image of mine with the "outside, large centre" frame applied:

• Totally rad actions have an awesome free facebook action which you can use for better image appearance when images resolution has to be reduced for upload.  You need to like their facebook page to access it.
• Then apply a text frame action to the image, click on the text layer (in layers palette) and add in your custom text.   This is a whole collection of actions in here.
• Click on the underlined link text to get the actions, you will need to use the facebook action first as this shrinks the file down to a good size for the frame.  

Below I have used the exact same pic with the "inside large centre" frame action:

Light trails & abstracts

I have a lot on my mind this week and haven't been getting a lot of sleep but that makes me quite productive in the post editing department!

Had a great Sunday afternoon/evening chilling out at Burleigh beach watching people fire twirling & my kids dancing to the beat of the drums.  The smell of was incense in the air and it was nice not to have to grab a jumper or rain coat!  Days like this make me love living on the Gold Coast.  The kids had a blast as well, and of course I had my camera and a few ops for some interesting fire twirling light trails.  All that and it was only a few k's from home.

Fire twirler at Burleigh beach

This pic above was taken hand held, and on bulb setting with one eye watching the twirler so I could see when I wanted to close the shutter!  Was a bit of fun experimentation for me.  This one was one of my faves.  The guy twirling here was extremely fast.

I like to get out without my tripod now and then to see what I can do - after all a lot of places are not allowing tripods these days so we can't always have it with us.  Also when there are crowds it can be a problem.

Guinea pigs and a teapot...

How could I resist another photo shoot with my new little pets - they still haven't been officially named yet but they are just so cute…playing with a few different little props to see what I can come up with.  I am officially in love with the coffee sacks I found - they add a lot of texture!  Have also been playing with some blurring around the edge effects and quite happy with results.