I have been having so many problems with my web site host and not receiving any support from them for a number of days now. I apologise if you have had any problems trying to look at my blog. I have now migrated to a new hosting company so all should be well. I still have the header to re-install to make loading quicker but that will have to wait another few days. I have been able to get this blog post done at last. I started to upload stuff on Thursday evening! I might just get it published before midnight on Friday

Jill, Marsha and I are working through Steve & Carla Sonheims book this year.

We are up to Unit Two, Seeing the Light. (That reminds me of the Blues Brothers Film, you know, where they are in the church singing those incredible gospel songs) sorry, yes Seeing the light. Lab 10 is about metering. As I’m a bit behind I’m not sure when you will see my attempts at this.
For now I’m catching up with Lab 8 A fun self portrait.

My lovely son helped me with this by bringing his office chair down to the garden and spinning me around (much too quickly!) but he did stay with me. Some of the results are dreadful hilarious. Chins going every which way! The jungle of a garden looks great though as you can’t see the mess detail.

The point of the exercise (I think) was to learn about the ISO setting by having some fun. Now I have to say we did laugh a lot and I played about with the settings until I saw a blur that I liked.

I used my dslr held clutched very tightly with two hands held out in front of me, and the shutter on continuous shooting.

The self-portrait of my son with the blur was taken with him holding the camera with two hands, standing up! and whizzing around! Oh to be young!

The effect on this one is one of the oil painting settings in Topaz. I like that it brings out some detail in the blur and blurs me a bit as well.

Lab 9 is a mixed media project with Carla.

I loved doing this. First of all we needed 10 pictures of textures, no problem for me as textures fascinate me. The images of the textures were then printed onto fabric, which is backed with paper to enable it to go through the printer. I was amazed that this could happen (a bit out of touch here) but disappointed that the colours weren’t brighter and the greens faded so much in the rinsing, (when the prints are dry you peel the paper off and rinse the fabric for a few seconds.) Next you make them into flags, a bit like a Tibetan prayer flag.
I took the prints to my craft evening and showed them around. Every one was so complimentary and had fun trying to guess what the textures were.
I asked the girls to choose a flag each and I embroidered their initials on, adding some positive, healing thoughts for each of them.
There are 4 flags without initials. Would you like your initials on one?

A slideshow of all the flags so that you can see them a little bit closer. If you hover your mouse over the slide you can read what the image is.

[slideshow_deploy id=’10795′]

Lab 10 Metering, Plus and Minus.

I have had so many problems, not being able to upload anything to my blog since Wednesday that I managed to do Lab 10 today (Friday)

I remember doing a whole series on metering, particularly underexposing flowers, with Kim Klassen. I always loved the softness of underexposure.

I still like the softness of the underexposed flowers.

I really like doing this in camera but it is so easy to adjust things afterwards in Photoshop. Perhaps I should try harder. Do you set your camera up in a particular mode or do you use photoshop or similar afterwards?

So, that’s me up to date. Next week it’s about Light and Dark.