This weekend we drove up to the Duncan Forestry Centre for the annual Maple Syrup Festival. The pictures I took there don't have anything to do with the festival. All these rusty looking old trains... I just had to play a little. All pictures were taken with my Fuji X100 because I wanted to travel light and put this little camera to the test. The two portraits were taken with an older Canon 10D and my lensbaby.
We are half way into January and I should make a list of some sort which I could call new year's resolutions, goals for this year, a business plan or some other title. But this year, even though I love making lists, I only have one major goal.
My resolution for this year is to be inspired and creative.
Ha, easy enough, you might say, with all the inspiration out there from magazines, internet, available apps and books. But I not only want to be inspired, but I want to turn the inspiration into creativity.
I already started the year with project 333, which is a year in pictures. 333 are the days I want to document, one picture a day of moments that are easily forgotten otherwise. Knowing me, there will be days I won't be able to shoot. The project is posted on my personal facebook page and I will post a few images on my blog as the months go by.
This project was inspired by two other amamzing photographers I met at Barb Uil's workshop last year: Rebecca Chalmers and Lindsay Burnham Nichols. And we all have been inspired by Barb Uil's book ‘For The Love’ … which is a must get if you have children and love pondering in photography.
”A simplistic guide and adventure into opening up your world and allowing time to breathe, time to love, and time to embrace what you have. An invitation to explore your creativity, whilst also recording the moments that your heart tells you that you must.
“For The Love” is a gentle reminder to mums, dads and grandparents that we need to slow down, record, and remember these precious days.
“For the Love” is a guide to keeping a detailed time- line of your children and their life for them to cherish forever. And to create gifts to share with others. It’s all about creating just for the love of it.”
getting 24 little gifts: two hours shopping
packaging little parcels: three hours
assembling the arrangment: one hour
cups of coffee consumed during the setup: one big latte
sparkle in her eyes when she opens a little gift each morning: just priceless
It has been ages since I blocked, ok since September 21st, but it feels a lot longer than that. We have three winners from my contest below and I am looking forward to take their family picture in fall or spring. Two of them will also receive the wall calendar. Thank you all again for participating.
I have been editing lots of images. I am still catching up on all the sessions and weddings I had in August and September. I also injured my arm, so computer and photography work is slow going right now. Makes you aware how much you use the right arm/hand. Very annoying. A new project: macro month with my little Fuji X100. All images are posted on my personal facebook page. I will post a few on my blog here. A good exercise to be creative. Stay tuned for more portrait session images to come soon.
This long weekend was our last trip camping. We went to Ruckle Park on Saltspring once more and I packed very lightly in terms of camera gear. And usually when I pack lightly, there is something that needs to be captured with "proper" lenses. We saw an owl during the day in the campsite. Beautiful big barn owl. And here I am with my little lens trying to capture the beauty of it all.
Here are a few impressions from Saltspring Island. All images were taken with my Canon 10D and lenses of the Lensbaby Optic Swap System.
And here is that beautiful owl, captured with the tiny lensbaby. :)
I do not enjoy rain at the best of times, especially when we are so close to wrapping up our summer. However, what I do enjoy is the glistening of drops everywhere. So yesterday evening, after all the rain stopped and the sun came out for a few minutes I saw many little drops in my hanging basket. Time to play!
As summer has finally arrived, we converted our small balcony into a little retreat with a sort of living room feeling. We had fun decorating, now we only need the sun to stick around until the end of August and that wind needs to die down a bit more.
Last year's Christmas present to myself was an entire lensbaby lineup of different lenses. Just the names of the lenses make your mouth water: Plastic Optic, Pinhole, Double Glass Optic, Fish Eye, Single Glass Optic. Art has been reborn with the coming of the Lensbaby and the continuous improvement of their products. My garden has some nice tulips right now, so I had to play around. The perfect tulip pictures (I am still not quite there yet) will make big canvases in my house. My walls are screaming for something, so that is my mission this spring: produce photography art for my walls. I hope my friend Lisa is reading this because she wanted to redecorate my sad bare walls some time ago.
Check out the website of Lensbaby. I pretty much have the entire line up of lenses including the macro attachments which come in handy for closeups of flowers. The only one missing is the composer, and oh, I am so tempted to add that to my wishlist as well.
This was fern I spotted in Beacon Hill Park. I love the softness of it.
We are back from our trip to Australia. 28 days, I don't know how many times zones and miles we travelled in that short period of time. Australia is a huge country/continent, and there is only so much you can do and see in a month. We travelled by train, bus, car and took three continental flights as well. With 4708 pictures, I don't even know where to start. It will make one big Australia book. For a little impression, here is a small collage.
Finally, I am able to post a few images. Not really color corrected and resized as I usually do, but I wanted to share at least a few images while we are still on the road. This little guy was in a tree by a playground, about 10 feet up. Koalas are hardly moving at all during the day to conserve energy.
Fotoart Photography
Sent from my iPad
So here we are, end of February and Mother Nature decided to give us just a bit more of winter. This weekend we went hiking, sunshine, blue sky, nice and crisp. And today, we are all waking up to a huge amount of snow. And that snow is dang heavy, I just shovelled out there. Before I cleared the path though, I walked around and took some pictures. Just too pretty not to.
Oh, and did I mention it is recycling day today.
This is our cherry tree in front of our house. Just starting to get ready for spring.
We spent this weekend at Mount Washington. I haven't been on the mountain in a very long time, so it was a little bit of an adventure. As soon as we started to head up on Friday night, the snow came down pretty good and we had to chain up. It snowed all night and then all day on Saturday. Taking pictures was impossible. This is what it looked liked all day. Really heavy snow coming down.
In the evening, it finally cleared up. Time to go out and find our car.
And then we had to shovel, well, I did not, because I took the pictures. :)
The next morning was beautiful. There is more snow in the forecast for the beginning of this week. But sunshine for the rest of the week. So if you are heading up for this coming weekend, it should be good.
A totally random post today. My mother visited last year and showed off her beautiful Pandora bracelet. For all of you who do not know what that is, essentially a charm bracelet: according to Pandora's little booklet wording: beautifully hand-finished charms made in sterling silver and 14K gold with genuine gemstones. They can be put together on a silver or gold chain, or a fabric or leather string.
And beautiful they are. I really like them and buying these charms can get highly addictive, and costly. So then a Michael Hill flyer came into our house listing similar charms and beads. Different colors and oh so pretty. Needless to say, I purchased a few more charms. They were about the same price as the Pandora charms.
So last week we window shopped in Oak Bay, on Estevan Road, and went from Buddy's Toys to the next door store which carries pretty much everything that is pretty. And I found more charms. This time, by DaVinci. Never heard of it, but really pretty colors, lots of bling, and so much more affordable. That really made my day. I selected four pretty beads and put them on my Pandora leather necklace. If you look at the pictures below, the top two pictures show my Pandora leather bracelet with Pandora and Michael Hill charms, and the pictures below show my leather necklace with the 4 DaVinci charms. The charm with the little perl is a Michael Hill charm. So mix and match, and save money. If you want to find out more about DaVinci, here is the link. As a price comparison, here is Pandora. Needless to say, DaVinci would not be genuine gold or silver, but still, I think it looks very pretty combined with all the other charms and it is not as expensive.
Favorite gifts are usually gifts that come from the heart. Our daughter painted me a beautiful big canvas for Christmas. I had to share because the best art is the art of our children. All the Picassos and Monets do not come close to that. Well, that is the parent love in me speaking, and any parent knows what I mean. So besides all the family pictures on our walls, her art has always a special place in our home.
Do you remember these? They are called cootie catcher or fortune tellers. For the world of it I can't remember what we called them back in Germany. I just remember we played that all the time. We made up our own with all sorts of fortunes on the inside. We have this book now and it has all sorts of cootie catchers in there, all you need to do is fold it. Pick a number. Pick a color. Flip up the flap and there is your fortune inside. And because they were so colorful, I had to take a picture, naturally. :) This would make a nice Christmas present for some girls out there. It is called "The Cootie Catcher Book" by Klutz, distributed in Canada by Scholastic Canada Ltd.
We went to see the Christmas Trees at the Empress last weekend. I love this yearly event and I always admire all the beautiful displays. I took my lensbaby along to take some pictures. For all of you who don't know what a lensbaby is, here is a link to the manufacturer's website. If I had more time, I would play a lot more with it. That will go on my new year's resolution list I think.
Advent, a German custom, is celebrated in our house. Every Sunday we light a candle to celebrate Advent, the four Sundays before Christmas Eve. A tradition I grew up with and have fond memories of. Late afternoon coffee and cookies by candlelight. So this Sunday morning we did some Christmas baking to have cookies ready for the afternoon. Cookies never seem to last long in our house, so Christmas baking turns into a weekly event as well.
Once in a while I have some time to take nature pictures. I am by no means an expert, but I do enjoy playing around with my macro. So today, after the light rain, I saw these beautiful little spiderwebs on our backporch. Spiderwebs amaze me to no end.
For all of you who are interested in photography and all the techi stuff, today I tested the 50mm/1.2 lens. A beautiful lens, but... is it really worth the money I wonder. I do have the 50mm/1.4. Sounds pretty close to 1.2, doesn't it? However, the price of the 1.2 is about 3x as much as the 1.4 which I own. So I am wondering if I should upgrade or not. Took some test shots this grey rainy afternoon and yes, it is sharper, has more contrast and so on. I guess I need to do some more testing before I decide. For now, here are some shots from this afternoon. Some with the new lens, some with my old.
These images were taken with the 50/1.2
And the left image was taken with the 50/1.4, the right with the 1.2
I received this amazingly beautiful white oriental orchid yesterday. It just took my breath away it is so beautiful. I normally don't receive flowers at the door unless it is a very very special occassion. No secret admirer I know of, so who could it be from? To my delight one of my favorite clients surprised me. Thank you again for this wonderful surprise that made my day, K. and V.
Today was our day of coloring Easter eggs. One of the highlights of Easter. Needless to say, many of the tattoos ended up on our hands and not on the eggs. For the people who follow my blog and know me, I love color. And this is my opportunity to have lots of color.
I am in the midst of getting my workspace done. Colors to pick, furniture to paint, deciding what goes where, and browsing around in second hand stores. So much fun. More to come, stay tuned.
Last night was Earth Hour from 8:30 to 9:30pm. If you want to find out more about Earth Hour, go HERE. I also took some pictures of our participation.
Reading by candle light.
Cooking by candle light.
And having dinner by candle light.
We went to a Rock and Gems Show at the Leonardo da Vinci Centre yesterday. So many beautiful rocks, gems and beads. We learned how to pan for gold and even had a little go at it which resulted in finding a few specks of gold. What a thrill. We came home with many treasures which I have yet to photograph. These few images are from yesterday's event.
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