Puppy Flynn - Complete

So I mentioned before I was putting off Flynn’s pictures, well it finally happened... I went through the thousand pictures and came up with 25 pictures I felt worthy of sharing.

For a slightly different post I thought I would do a pre and post edit of each picture. Although nearly every picture had the same effect done, a slight soft focus with Photoshop curves to boost the autumn colours.

 

Here I liked the picture but I was changing focal length and it blurred, adding a vintage look to poor quality pictures at least makes it look intentional.

Slight rotation, crop and removal of a tree.

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

I liked this picture - but the background wasn't great... I tried to bring focus in on Flynn.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Flynn getting playful.

 

This photo wasn't as crisp as I would like, but in my defence it's very hard to focus on a puppy running at you using F1.8... (bad workman blaming tools here).

Increasing the colours works really well on the browned leaves too.

 

Gift Tags

I'm a lazy Christmas shopper and I know what gifts I want to buy, so online is the way for me. Today the first batch of parcels turned up, meaning I need to hide them in wrapping paper... meaning they need name tags.

From a sheet of A3 card I've managed to create 25 mini cards to use.

If I'm feeling really lazy I might print them a bit bigger and use them for cards too.

Puppy Flynn

Flynn, he's a lovely collie puppy - I'd been wanting to go around to Andy's house for some time to photograph him playing. Last month a sunny day came along while we were both free so I headed over.

Flynn lost interest in the ball and started coming for the camera, again.

Unfortunately I’ve been putting off the processing of these images for some time now, I was there for a couple of hours and now have 1,059 pictures to worry about. In my humble opinion pet photographers have a harder time than those of us who shoot weddings. Honestly, this bundle of fluff wouldn’t stay still. He also hasn’t go the art of catching balls yet, but it’s just as cute when they bounce off his nose.

There will be a proper post to follow when I get around to getting my head around the pictures.

Winters here

Igor has a new hat which fits well. it comes just in time for winter, it seems to be getting extremely cold.

Also it looks like a beret, so even better!

Too early for decorations?

So we spent the weekend in Disney, possibly getting a little brainwashed. We came home and put the decorations up  the next day.

Each year we're picking up more random decorations, which is giving our tiny tree a quirky feel.

Left: clearly from Disney. Right: The glass blobbery - Wales.

The home made.

Disneyland - Paris.

Normally when you go on rides at a theme park they insist you leave bags on the platform while going around. I've been to a few theme parks in my time, I wouldn't ever take my best camera gear out to leave laying around unattended... so I packed my old 400D and 15-55mm + 50mm lens for this trip.

It really shouldn't be a shock, but the French have a complete lack of health and safety - you can carry whatever you like on the rides... This made me a little miffed I was having to use such a rubbish camera. However this didn't detract from the magic of the venue, it's hard not to smile like a mindless idiot when at Disney.

That's right, we had to queue for this shot! We nearly the only adults in the queue without children. Needless to say, I didn't take this shot personally - a confused park worker did, my French isn't really good enough to explain the purpose of a prime lens... but she seemed annoyed it couldn't zoom out.

 

The decorations were up, which made a very cheesy affair even cheesier.

There are two things my 400D can do very well, blur pictures and endure roller coasters (the last point was a recent lesson). With this in mind I used my tripod and set about trying to capture some motion blur and long exposure views.

Clearly we didn't got just to take pictures, it was B's birthday and somehow she'd managed a childhood without visiting. I'm glad I had my camera, I'd like to thank B for letting me stop to take pictures while she was chasing characters for hugs.

While the grand Canyon is a lot more impressive, the fact this was built just for a run away train ride impressed me!

I probably shouldn't complain too much about my 400D, it's sturdy, reliable and provided me with years of faultless use... given enough light and a good bit of glass it performs perfectly.

ii. Coffee

So I'm a little behind with the blogging - mostly as we went to Disneyland last weekend, one of the few trinkets we brought back was this mug... purchased for B from the Pirates of the Caribbean ride it's already been used for Coffee, and the amount of coffee I'm having at the moment is helping me sort all the pictures taken.

Here is one of the photos which has already been stitched together - It's the first time I've stitched long exposure photos, but it came out really well.

The other bonus to doing long exposure photos is that it nearly completely removes the people in the way of the shot. This worked well on the London by night pictures too.

i. Coffee

Anything which winds my other half up seems to hold extra appeal, coffee does this and tastes nice. Win.

Generally it gets converted into 3 sizes:

Huge

 Medium

 Tiny

Now B who complains on a regular basis that her kitchen is too small (for proof check her blog Shiny Pigeon) seemingly hasn't noticed I've taken over a cupboard with coffee items.