Wedding Gift

DH boss got married for the second time, I took some photos of the evening they had their celebration party, and put together this frame for them. It's not the way I thought it would turn out, not quite sure it's something I'm too proud of - but I will give it to them and see if they like it.
Triple embossed heart, stamped with demask stamp whilst still hot....

Note the stitiching that nearly killed me, the machine did not like the 2 strand gold thread and this took all night to do, good thing I was going for the distressed look as I was distressed by the time I got it done....

Going Manual with two willing models

Call me the rain magnet - all week long, just when I wanted to get some photos taken it rained, again on Sunday when I had some time it kept trying to rain - Yesterday when I dropped girls off to the movies and drove to Howth to take photos it started to thunder with torrential rain so after 3 very dark shots I had to run to the car...

On Sunday however, just between showers, I took these two shots in manual mode. I can feel my brain starting to understand what settings to start at and what might just work, it is a slow process, but I am getting there....




This first image is of my DD, just caught in a lovely moment
1/100 f/6.3 and ISO 400 as it was so dark













This photo is of my DD best friend and my nearly adopted daughter, hope her mum likes this one!
1/100 f/5.8 and ISO 400

First photo shoot...

1/20 f/5.0 & ISO 800

1/50 f/4.5 ISO 200

1/320 f/12.9 and ISO 200

1/200 f/5.6 ISO 400

1/200 f/14.0 ISO 400

Saturday was a glorious day and Sunday was so dark and dismal - but as my two friends work on the weekends it was hard to get a date to suit us all, so we had to go with a dark day and threatening rain all afternoon, but these two were so great to work with - I really enjoyed it and they just did it all for me to photograph - no real hard work for me. I did play with the settings on the camera, but was terrified when I got a error on my memory card that I just want back to Auto and stayed there, and got the photos off the card asap. Most of the shots are just sharpenend, cropped and lightened as it was about to rain for the whole 2 hours. - Woops just realised that some of the edits I did have not saved as I hoped, so some of them are lighter and some in B&W....

In the zone....

I have been in my element for the last two nights, U2 are playing in Dublin and very close to my house and the sound of the concert has been drifting on the evening air towards the house and I am in my craft room, being crafty and listening to the songs and singing along in my head - BLISS!!

Here is a little book I made for my friend Lisa with the photos that I have taken of her baby - now I have blurred his face out (not too nicely I might say, but to protect the baby's identity as he is in her care - doing the right thing!) - but hopefully you get the idea. I even had my sewing mahcine out, and it was out again tonight for another project I hope to finish soon.






The photos in the book are all ones I took and I took some more of him tonight I am so very pleased with them.

We had a family day at the zoo today, and the sun shone and we had a picnic - it was just wonderful. Got some lovely photos in the zoo and even went to the scary Manual side of my camera - so will have a look at what I got and upload some soon.

I have my first non family photo shoot tomorrow. The son of a friend of mine has gotten engaged and I am so delighted to be able to take their engagement photos tomorrow - so pray for some sun and that I am in a creative mood and don't crumble under the stress.....scary thought.....

Nite all - U2 just finishing their set, and they saved the best songs till last....

Ramblings....

This lovely basket of flowers arrived from my friend Trish and her husband James to say that they had a lovely time in our holiday home in Drumshanbo - it really made my day! Thanks Trish! They are just fab and I caught a quick shot of them just as the sun broke out for a few moments......(Please don't die flowers, you are just so pretty!)

Had a great time at the crop last night - helped Lisa make a start on her wedding invites, we did a bit on them but were sharing a punch so while I rested my poor sore hands, I got to have a little play and made this for a friend who really liked the ones that I had made for the teachers, so here is one for her, so Carrie, it's on the way to you....

Tea time is generally "Witching hour" in our house and in the midst of the chaos, I spotted this double rainbow and it really made me stop and think and take a deep breath.... Hope it does the same for you....

more Italy....

We took a cable car ride up the mountains - fab views, but got stuck up in the cable car as there was a thunder storm.... 1/200 f/9.0 ISO 100

1/200 f/8.0 ISO 100

1/320 f/11 ISO 200

Baby on the lake.....1/200 f/9.0 ISO 200

Italy -

Just uploaded the camera, and all these are straight out of the camera shots - no processing done yet!!


Windows - wow I just love the balcony's and window boxes in Italy and France...
1/200 f/13 ISO 400

The Areana in Verona, Italy
1/250 f/11 ISO 200

Verona - centre
1/320 F/10 ISO 200

Lazise - lovely town on Lake Garda, on market day
1/200 f/20 ISO 400

I just wanted to see if I could upload a photo - so here is a small gift I made for friends who visited us recently, I found the frame at a car boot sale for €1 and I de-constructed it and added a photo that I'd taken of Dave and Liz and the pattern paper and few nice things. They loved it, mostly as they were with me when I found the frame and could not believe it was the same one!

Here are a few more things that I made as teacher gifts, small ones for the playschool girls, along with bottles of wine, and I also made card folders with 6 cards for Caoimhe's teacher, and head mistress - seems I have been busy! I really might make one of these notebooks for myself as I did like them when they were finished.

hmmm - Themes......

I am to find a theme for my photography course. I only started to mull this over last night, and think that I might be really boring and just go with "Faces & people" as this is generally where most of my photos are taken.

After 2 weeks in Italy and years of holidays in France I also have lots of photos of Windows and balcony's - and this might have been my theme, but since we are short of inspiration here in Dublin, I might just pass on this title.

Hopefully I will get time to upload the camera and share photos with you soon....

Ta M

Wow! I am a blogger.....

I am doing a photography course and part of the course is for me to set up a blog (Hi CJ!!). I've toyed with the idea of doing this for a long time, but always chickened out, and assumed my work did not justify a blog, so this has been a big step for me and I am going to take baby steps and will try and personalise this blog over the next few weeks.

We are only just back from holidays! A long awaited and expensive trip to Italy, Lake Garda, where I got to meet up with a friend Lainey for a day as we were on the same campsite. The weather was very hot, the landscape just stunning, and it was all there to be enjoyed but unfortunately, life just does not work out the way you planned.

The holiday started out with a few minor problems, the aircon in our mobile home did not work, and it was 37 degrees the day we arrived! Uncomfortable but not a huge problem, but as the baby is tube fed it did cause problems as the special milk was going off in the lines and in one day we went thru 3 of them.... So we bought a cooler bag, ice blocks and kept the milk and the containers in the fridge the whole time. Nutrica (thank you so much!!) couriered out some more lines to us so - problem solved...

Mid way thru, I insisted we all go for a swim in Lake Garda, and Eamonn hurt his foot in the lake and a few days later it was so bad he had to go to the local hospital as he thought he had broken something, but they sent him home with a bandage and we bought crutches and thanks to a phone call to my doctor, we got some proper help and pain control for Eamonn. He is still having problems with his foot, so let's see what happens when he actually goes to his doctor....

Three days before we go home, and the first day Eamonn feels well enough to hobble to the pool we go for a swim in the evening, and some little girl (about 4 or 5) takes a dislike to Shannon for no reason and kicks her off the 1.5 meter ladder for the water slide. Shannon falls to the side where there is no foam mat, and she cracks her head on the concrete. I run to get the car, and run with her thru the hospital, covered in sick and dripping blood to the A& E and they stitch her up (4 stitches) and as she is being sick all the time, they do a CAT scan and discover 2 fractures. So we are moved with 3 medics and a doctor to Verona Borgo Trento Hospital to the nurological unit for obervation. We just got her out in time to fly home where I nearly kissed the ground with relief.

I will post some of the Italy photos tomorrow when I upload the photos, but I want to thank you all for your texts and moral support over the last few days. It has been wonderful to get those texts and know you were all praying for us.

Funny this is supposed to be my photography and craft blog and I've just talked and talked. Sorry but it feels better to tell the story to you all - off now! Ta M