April weather and some Magnolia polaroids

April is showing itself from its best side. Some sunny days with temperatures up to 20 degrees last week made all the trees burst into bloom. All kinds of trees laden with white and pink blossoms, such a joy to see. A solid downpour of various degrees all Saturday took down a great deal of the delicate blossom leaves, and for the last two days, temperatures dropped and we've had two mornings of snow, and more frost is threatening to kill off the apple blossoms. And today there's a strong wind that will make the remaining blossoms fly through the air. April, April, let's just hope you won't take this weather too far into May.

Polaroid SX-70 Alpha 1

I took these photos earlier in April. There's a beautiful big old magnolia tree down my street, and every year, I'm looking forward to see it bloom, hoping that the weather will hold long enough. This year, it did, and I took my whole arsenal of cameras to take photos of it, my Canon DSLR,  Nikon SLR, and three different Polaroid cameras.

Polaroid SX-70 Alpha 1

I haven't used the Polaroids since autumn and they all had only two or three photos left in them. Like food, film has a use by date, and letting them sit in the cameras for so long can give some funny effects. And each camera has its own characteristics too.

Polaroid SLR 680

I'm still waiting for the film in my Nikon AF to get full and have it developed. Being used to being able to snap 500 photos a day if I wanted to with my DSLR, I thought that having only 36 photos in a film might prove a real challenge when I started using the Nikon earlier this year. But it seems to take forever to fill that film. And 36 photos is still a whole lot more than the 8 in a Polaroid film.

Polaroid Image Pro

I'm looking forward to using my Polaroid cameras more often again once the weather turns warmer and less wet again. And I'm already racking my brain about which analogue camera to take with me on my holiday in June.

Happy Easter

Are you enjoying  your Easter break? Did you remember to put your clocks forward today? I must admit I'm not a fan of switching to summertime. You get up early, and it's already late. And I've started going to work a bit earlier two weeks ago, so that means that next week, I will have to leave the house in the dark again.

I am having a quiet and relaxing Easter break at home, doing a bit of this and that, and sometimes not much at all. The weather is a bit of a mixed bag. Pouring down with rain all Friday, a sunny and warm spring day yesterday, and for today and tomorrow, it's going to a be a bit of everything - sun, clouds, rain.

Yesterday finally felt like a proper spring day, so I grabbed my cameras and went out to snap some spring flowers. I've been seeing lots of photos of beautiful magnolia trees in full bloom in the UK on Instagram, but here, they're still only just beginning to blossom. I love this magnolia tree at the bottom of my street, and I'm looking forward to seeing it bloom every year. I just hope that we get a few nice and dry days to enjoy it as much as possible.

Lots of flowers appearing in the gardens too, big and small.

Spring blossoms

Spring has arrived, and for good, it seems. Temperatures are rising quickly, although bit too much for my personal taste. I went up to the woods this morning, for a walk up and for some inspiration and Being Present; to see and listen. I took my camera, and decided to only use my 50mm lens. With my allround 17-70mm lens, it's easy to "get it all in".Get the wide angled view before you. Or just zoom in. Not that that's a bad thing. But sometimes, it's good to stretch yourself a bit. Having to compose your image more carefully, having to move closer to or away from your subject to get the picture you want. Standing on your tiptoes to get that shot. It helps you to observe, see, paying attention.

It is still looking very bare in the forest, except for all the beautiful tiny flowers covering the ground and making the best of the light before the trees grow their leaves, if you care to look. But the most striking at the moment are the gorgeous blossoms. So delicate and fragile looking. So cheerful. Delighting both the passerby and the bees. Have a beautiful Sunday!

Hello spring

I'm still spending most (too much) of my free time with tidying up my photos. It's time consuming and rather tedious, but once I'm finished, I'm sure it will be worth it. And I just want to get it done now. So not as much studio time as I would like at the moment. But I have been drawing for a bit yesterday, and hopefully I can drag myself away from the computer and do some painting too this week - and share them here later this week. 

 

In the meantime, spring has arrived here. The past few days have been mild (apart from freezing mornings and evenings) and sunny, without a cloud in the sky. So today I grabbed my camera to get some shots of a patch of snowdrops near by. Those snowdrops always make me happy, and after spending so much time going through, sorting, and deleting photos from 5 years ago, it was a nice change to do some editing, and finally installing and playing around with Lightroom presets. Still much to learn, but I'm enjoying getting back into photo editing again.

Spring's knocking on my window

My cherry tree branches in a vase gave me endless delighted, but even more so the apple tree branches, as they didn't show any signs of buds at all at first, and I had already given up all hope ,when I it suddenly burst into a mass of perfect white blossoms.

But the most beautiful blossoms really are the ones on the ancient perfect-for-delicious-apple-sauce apple tree outside the bedroom window, which is knocking on my window and announcing spring with a soft pink glow.

Not that it feels much like spring at the moment. Wet and rain, and winter-coat freezing cold, - April weather at it's best.

On my palette: Blooming spring

Now I don't know what the weather was like in your neck of the woods over this past Easter weekend, but here, it was pouring down with rain all Saturday, and snowing all day on Sunday. And I must admit, I  thoroughly enjoyed it. The perfect excuse to stay at home all day, cuddle up on the sofa with a hot cup of tea and a good book, and spending as much time as I wanted in my studio. Heaven. Who needs spring outside, when you have it on your palette!? ;)

I picked up some beautiful Japanese patterned papers I had ordered at the post office  onSaturday morning, and then couldn't resist to head straight into my studio and do something with them. This is half of a double page in my art journal. I only used the paper on this side, and added some tags and stencil flowers, and borders with and without modelling paste. Bright green and pink is such a happy combination I find.

But the page wasn't "spring" enough for me, and I also wanted to create a page to remember the cherry blossoms that are giving me so much joy. I would never have thought about putting a cut off branch of a fruit tree into a vase until I saw those branches in a bucket in the street, but they are simply wonderful!

I wanted to include the tag (which turned out a bit too dark) in the page, but wasn't quite sure how. I didn't want to paste it on like the others on the first page. I thought of attaching the strings somehow, somewhere on the page but at the end, I just wraped the strings around the whole journal's spine, making a knot on the outside.

On my palette: greens, yellows, reds, and blues, and of course white.

Most of all, light green and white. The perfect spring colours.

Linking this to Palette & Paint. Make sure to hop over and visit! Our host Tracey Potter always makes such a wonderful job in presenting our work, and seeing every one's palette is always inspiring.

Purple & Green

My favourite colour is purple, with it's lighter shades, lilac/lavender. I love the richness and drama of purple, and the lightheartedness and airiness and joy of lilac. Purple is a mixed colour, not a primary colour, made by mixing the two primary colours red (magenta) and blue (cyan).

Last summer, I bought an old sofa from about the 1920/30s in a "Brocki" (secondhand / thrift shop). While the upholstery is in perfect condition (it had been standing in an office and was never really used), the fabric, tough in perfect condition, was simply awful. I found an upholsterer, and ever since, I've been trying to find the right fabric. I had red in mind, matching the reds and oranges in the living room, and a greyish linen fabric with plush stripes in reds and orangs seemed perfect. But somehow, I just couldn't commit to it. About two months ago, I started considering green. I haven't quite decided on a speficic fabric yet, but I know now that green is the right colour. After I came back home from yet another visit to the upholsterer's shop and having looked at green fabric, I walked around the flat and realised that it was full of greens. Green everywhere. Especially in the kitchen. Most of the kitchen supplies that come in colours, I have in green. The thought of green felt good, reassuring, soothing, right. And I realised that purple wasn't my only favourite colour, but that it shared it's place with green. Purple was an conscious choice, green an unconscious. And I simply love the combination of the two. There was one time when I almost decided to go for the red fabric, simply because of not knowing what else do choose. I'm so glad I didn't. I wouldn't have been happy with it. But I know that with green, I'll always be happy, even in ten year's time.

Green: German: Grün. Swedish: grön. French: vert.

From OE grene or groeni, closely related to the OE verb growan "to grow, to turn green". First recored use in English in AD 700. Most common colour in nature, because of chlorophyll.

Associations: life, growth, spring, hope, freshness, naturalness, confidence, health, youth, envy, sickness.

Apparently, many Asian languages don't make a distinction between green and blue, and indeed the distinction between the two doesn't always seem to be so universally clear. I have often noticed that people would refer to a certain colour or shade as "blue", whil to me, it was obviously green.

Violet: German: Violett, from French, after the flower "violette" (Veilchen, violet). Swedish: violett. French: violet.

Colour between blue and red. Next to Purpur/purple on the colour wheel. Lila/lilac is a lighter shade of purple. Colours nearer to blue. In China, the colour violet symbolises the harmony of the universe, as it is right between red (ying) and blue (yang).

Purple: German: Purpur. Swedish: purpur. French: pourpre.

Any colour/range of hues of colour between blue and red. Colours nearer to red. Between magenta and violet on the colour wheel. The colour is associated with royaly and nobility (from classical antiquity).

From OE purpul > from Lat. purpura > Greek porphura, the name of the Tyrian purple dye manufactured in classical antiquity. First recorded use in English in AD 975.

Associated with: emancipation, creativity, spirituality, mystical, mysterious, secret, dignity, desire, longing, aphrodisiac, (as liturgial colour) penitence.

I always thought that the German Violett corresponds to the English purple, but apparently, I've been wrong. Also, what I've believed to be Violett in German, is actually Purpur, and the colour I always referred to as Violett is actually Dunkelviolett. And the Purpur, that is usually used to refer to the capes of monarchs isn't actually Purpur but Red. Very confusing...

And the colours/colour codes I found for violet and purple really do look quite similar - and somehow are missing those shades I usually would refer to as purple. And I even found somewhere that Violett and Lila are synonymous. Which to me really are very different - the former being dark (purple), the latter light (lilac). And then there's of course lavender, which in English is a whole range of shades, but doesn't seem to have a correspondent in German, but really is something similar to lavender, whic is probably why I never really know how to properly translate lila into English. Very, very confusing.

I took some pictures of these clematis in the garden last year, after I just bought my first DSRL, and I was so frustrated that the rich bluish purple always ended up having a red tinge on my display. This week, I went out again to take some pictures of them and I expected to have the same problems with colours. But having learnt a bit more about manual settings and white balance, I was surprised and happy to see, that this time, I got exactly the right colour. This really must be one of my biggest achievements so far in my process of learning DSLR photography :).

For my "green mug & purple nails" shot, however, I didn't pay enough attention of my white balance settings. It didn't turn out as had it in mind at all, and the purple/lilac of the nail varnish didn't turn right at all. This time, the opposite of my last year's clematis shots happened: the red tinge turned into a blueish one. But white balance is something I'm still struggling to master, especially in indoor situations.

Well, I'll keep on working on that. And I'm thinking about making a colour series: one colour a week. I'll definitely start with green :)

Enchanted forest

I love a walk through the woods. I don't really like direct sunlight (and should avoid it anyway) and I don't like when it's getting too warm, so walking through the woods really is perfect. You get the shade, the protection from the sun and still all the beautiful sunlight. There's so much to see and hear and discover.

I always like to think that the woods are enchanted, that really, there are all kinds of fairies, gnomes, and other fairy tale creatures populating the forests, and when you walk through them, hundreds of eyes are following you without you ever knowing it, let alone catching a glimpse of any of them.

That might sound a little bit scary now, but I think that they're really quite friendly, at least as long as you let them be. After all, it's their forest, and you're only a guest, passing through.

I could walk through those woods for hours, making up stories about those fairies, and their adventures. The only problem is that the woods around here really are often far too crowded with noisy people...

But there's nothing as relaxing and refreshing as spending some time on your own in the woods, letting your mind wander and your imagination run wild. Watched and protected by hundreds of little eyes...

Photography accessories

There's a whole range of equipment and accessories available for enthusiastic photographers, some of them more useful and necessary than others. Camera strap covers, for example, maybe not the most necessary items, but they're certainly useful and definitely very pretty and stylish.

 

I was so happy when I found the gorgeous strap cover I had ordered from Sewtamz on Etsy in my mail box this week. Isn't it wonderfully bright and cheerful and happy? Doesn't it just make you want to grab your camera and run out into the spring sun and start snapping? It certainly makes me want to do jsut that :). And the best thing, I had it customised with my initials. Yay! :) I absolutely love the bright pink of the monogram and the "bold font" (which I had no idea what it looked like, but it couldn't have been more perfect!).

I have a feeling that this is not going to be my last camera strap (cover). I just love accessories :)

The beauty of the ordinary

I'm taking part in a workshop by Irene Nam, Simple Soulful Photography, which started at the beginning of the week. I had read about it on someone's blog, and after eight weeks of focusing on the technical aspect of photography with Mastering Manual Mode, I thought it would be a great idea to focus on the creative aspect.

The first two lessons were about self care and making space, which are important ressources for a creative life. Both self care and making space seem to be such simple things, things that we know do us good, common sense, really, but more often than not, oh so difficult to follow. Self care, treating yourself to little things that do you good without feeling guilty, I find especially difficult. But the space making isn't much easier, even though I often feel that if my desk is full of clutter, I just can't think anymore and as a result, get nothing done. I'm beginning to wonder what exactly it is that's continuously holding me back from clearing away the mess and clutter in the flat and giving me breathing space. But maybe another lessons in self care is to allow yourself time, and to take little steps.

On Friday, we got the first weekend photo challenge, which was to look for the beauty of the ordinary. I love going for walks, but more often than not, I have to force myself to actually go - and most of the time, I end up not going at all. But this morning, after re-reading the lesson, I grabbed my camera and just went.

I left the house shortly after 8 o'clock, to avoid a) the hot weather (the weather gods seem to have decided to skip spring this year and go straight to summer) and b) the masses of people that fill up the woods and walking pathes on a warm, sunny Sunday - both things I absolutely hate. Plus, there's the advantage of the great light which you get in the early mornings.

So out I went, looking for the beauty of the ordinary, which nature provided in plenty. I love putting my camera down on the ground and just click the shutter, without knowing what it's going to focus on. The results are often surprising and amazing.

My little tour led me through parts of the local cemetary, where there was a field full of those white and yellow daffodils and buttercups, which were absolutely enchanting in the early morning sun.

Another part of the lesson/photo challenge was to look for those things we maybe would want to dismiss as not making a good enough picture, and just take it anyway. Being open to getting caught off guard by an image. I passed a hedge on the way, with some pink flowers and some light shining through. It looked rather too dark but remembering the lesson, I decided to try and take a picture and see what would come out of it. Well, this is what did come out, and my, I'm glad I did stop and give it a try. Isn't this pink and bright green spring bokeh just making you happy? It certainly makes me happy :-)

 On the way back home, there was a patch with some small hyacinths, pink and blue, on a littel patch of green right next to the main road. It wasn't the most charming place, but you'd never guess from the images, would you.

I put the camera on the ground again, but this time used live view to focus. I don't like using live view at all (and I don't know how some DSLR users prefer to use it instead of looking through the view finder), I really just find focusing with it very annoying. But unless you want to ly down flat on you're belly - which I preferred not to do considering the grass being all wet and damp with dew - it's often the only way to maintain any control of your focus. But sometimes, it's well worth taking a bit of trouble :-)

There were some little common daisies as well, next to the hyathinths, looking still a bit sleepy and only just beginning to wake up and unfold. Common daisies (Gänseblümchen - "little duck flowers" in German) are the flowers that (along with buttercups) remind me most of my childhood. Making daisy chains in the sun on the green outside the house, what a wonderful time to spend a school free Wednesday afternoon. I haven't made a daisy chain in ages, decades, really. I think it's high time to make one again!

On the way home I passed the local bakery, which openes for a couple of hours on Sunday mornings. After having walked for two hours, a hearty breakfast was more than deserved, so I treated myself to my favourite Laugengipfeli (a croissant made of some kind of pretzel dough, very popular here) and a special Sunday chocolate croissant.

I feel full of energy after my early morning achievement, ready to tackle the space making and mess clearing. I think I should definitely try to make this into a Sunday morning routine, as part of my self care programme.

Wishing you a wonderfully creative and enchanting Sunday!

Happy Birthday To You...

...dear little plastic box, and happy anniversary.

It's one year now, since I got my little beginner's DSLR, and it's been one year of exploring, experimenting and learning. It's been a great journey so far, into this wonderful world of (digital) photography. When I first got my camera, I didn't have a clue about how to use it. I used the "beginner's modes", i.e. landscape, macro, portrait etc. in the first few weeks until I was ready to move on to aperture priority mode after a National Trust photography working holiday in the Lake District last May. The firts thing our tutor made us do back then actually was to shoot in manual mode and trying out all the different settings, especially white balance. I found it all rather confusing and overwhelming, and so confortably settled for aperture priority for the next 8 months, ignoring all the other settings and taking my time to discover all about depth of field, focusing and how everything worked together (it's really not much use having someone explain it all to you, you just have so see it for yourself).

Macro mode, 135mm, 1/250, f/5.6, ISO 100, WB: auto. Taken 29/04/2010 (processed 09/04/2011)

By the end of last year, I decided that it was time to move on and signed up for an 8 weeks e-course on how to shoot in manual mode, starting in February. I must admit that when the course began, I was sort of secretly convinced, that it was nice to know all about manual mode, but that I really would go on using aperture priority mode and maybe just pay more attention to ISO and white balance. However, after the 8 weeks, I must say that I quite enjoy shooting in manual mode. It does mean a lot of settings and adjusments to do before you can actually take your picture, but I quite like the feeling that I'm in control of all the settings and decisions. It needs more time but then, all this fiddling with aperture, shutter speed, white balance, ISO etc. really is what a DSLR is about, isn't it. And although I haven't been doing it very long, I do feel that there have been times, when I'm quite sure that I'd never managed to get a satisfactory picture if I had just used aperture priority mode and nothing else. There are, of course, still pictures that go straight into the bin, but that's the limitations of photography. There are certain conditions, where it just isn't possible to get a good picture, and that's another thing one has to learn by experience and trial and error. But I don't think I'll go back to aperture priority mode as my main mode of picture taking, but stick with manual mode and continue on the learning path.

As it's now a year since I got my camera, it means that I'll now be able to compare my pictures with those from last year. I like to believe that I've made some progress and am getting a bit better at it (though when looking through my old pics, they aren't all that bad). Of course, photography is more than just the settings on your camera. It's as much about seeing, about composition, colours and catching moments that mean something to us, that tell our story and our way of looking at and seeing the world. But knowing something about the technical stuff certainly doesn't hurt, and in fact can help you to achieve better results.

Manual Mode, 50mm, 1/1000, f/1.8, ISO 100, WB: daylight. Taken 09/04/2011

Another thing I've started to learn about in the last 12 months is post processing. I got PSE8 almost three months after I got my camera and really started using it about another two months later, mostly doing a bit of levels and saturation adjustments. I also used the straightening tool a lot because I seemed to be absolutely unable to take a straight picture (something I've managed to get much better at). I also used Picnik a lot for my post processing, because it was so easy to use, but I was also often a bit frustrated about its limitations. I felt that I didn't have much control about the processing and I really wanted to learn to do it myself. I found some e-courses (what a great thing they are!!) and learnt first the basics and then all about working with textures, which I really enjoy. I processed the top image with a lovely Kim Klassen texture, the one in the middle using a close-up of one of the blinds in the living room, and the one below with a number of adjustment layers and cross processing. The possibilities really are endless.

Manual Mode, 50mm, 1/1000, f/1.8, ISO 100, WB: daylight. Taken 09/04/2011

So that has been my first year with my little camera. I'm still at the beginning of my journey, having taken only some small steps so far. There's still so much to learn and to practise. Portraits, for example, is something I'm no good at at all but would like to do more often. And there's still a lot to learn about all the settings, most of all about white balance, which I often find very confusing and probably really the most difficult thing of all. But I'll write a separate post about that, I think. All I can say is that I enjoyed the journey so far and I'm looking forward to many more months and years of following the path, and keeping practising, practising, practising... :-)