Monday, September 26, 2011

It's only taken me....

....7 years, 7 months and 2 days to get this picture :) My first digital camera ( an Olympus C750UZ ) arrived in the mail on the 24th February 2004, and ever since it arrived I've wanted to photograph the Superb Fairy-Wrens  that frequent my garden, a task that unfortunatly turned out to be easier said than done due to them being far to quick and far to shy to get close enough for a decent shot. However these past few weeks I've noticed them becoming quite cheeky and have even caught them sitting on the back step a few times. Well late this afternoon while I was out in pursuit of a Buff-banded Rail  , this little guy finally decided to put on a show for me :)

Friday, September 23, 2011

Flashback Friday

Ok so I adimit this isn't much of a flashback since it was only taken late last month, but today is my mans 40th birthday, so what better to post than a picture of him with our little man ♥ Happy Birhday Babe ♥

Thursday, September 22, 2011

Time for some pic's :)

I've had my little rant *lol* so now for some long over due pic's. This gorgeous little guy is 2nd cousin to my kids, his Mummy is just 3 weeks older than my own daughter and they grew up together till she moved away a few years ago. I was so happy they brought the gorgeous little guy to visit when he was just 17 days old. I ordered some prints this week to give as a baby gift since I haven't given them one yet, I can't wait for them to arrive and see how they look ♥





Never thought I'd be saying this but...........

today I deactivated my facebook account, Wow I still don't believe I did it, but I did. Why? when I first joined facebook it was a fun way to keep up with friends and family and see what they were up to, but lately all the people I'd like to keep up with are dropping quietly into the background, and all I ever seem to see posted is people complaining about one thing or another, or talking about how drunk they were going to get/or had got that day, ok fair enough use facebook to vent every now and then if you need to blow of steam, heck I've done it myself from time to time, but lately that seems to be all anyone ever posts and it really was starting to get me down. I'm beginning to think I'm the only person who doesn't go out and get drunk every weekend. I've had a bit of a bad week this week, 3 out of 4 kids have been down sick, the youngest of those has been very upset and crying/screaming a lot, I've been getting very little sleep and could see myself starting to become one of those facebook whingers which I really don't want to become, so for the first time since signing up 3 years ago I decided to seperate myself from facebook completely, and the only way I could think to do that was to deactivate my account so I did. No doubt it will only be a temporary move and I'll be back, but for now I'm taking a break and taking a long hard think about who's on my friends list and think it will be getting a major cull upon my return as honestly I don't think I even know half the people on there. Oh and one last thing, as lovely as some of the status are that get copy and pasted are, after the 50 millionth time you've read something that year it really does loose it's original intent.

Monday, March 7, 2011

Slacking off again

Well I've managed to do it again, I've failed to post for over a week :( I have however managed to take lots and lots of photos in that time, and had two gorgeous little men come to visit. So I've now got lots and lots of editing to do. I'll post some pics of the two little men later, for now here's a pic of my little man trying out one of the sets we put together for the babies ♥

Friday, February 25, 2011

Flashback Friday

This week a lady contacted me to ask if I could take photos of her two month old son, and asked if I'd photographed many little boys in that age group. After thinking about it for a while I realized that the only little boy I've ever photographed at that age was my own little man, and even that was back before I started trying to get creative. So this morning I went back through my albums from back then to see what I had there to play with, and this is what I came up with. Mind you I think my little man was smaller at 2 months of age, than what the little man I've been asked to photograph was at birth :)



Tuesday, February 22, 2011

Timeless Tuesday

I've decided that since I'm so slack at putting up new photo's on a regular basis, that I will try to regularly post some of my earlier photo's so that my posts aren't so few and far between, and also hopefully influence myself to edit some of them and get them printed for my folio. My plan is to have 'Timeless Tuesday' and 'Flash Back Friday' where I will post at least one photo of the past. I'll start off by posting one of my all time fav' pics, it's of my son Thomas, taken when he was 3 month old. I have this photo on my wall printed in colour, but I was just going through some folders and found this one that I'd converted to Black and White and added the borders. He was OH SO TINY compared to the two little Princes that came to visit yesterday ♥

♥Two Princes and a Princess ♥

This gorgeous little Princess and her Mummy came to visit me yesterday to get her photo's taken, it's the first time I've ever taken photos for someone who isn't either family or close friend. I was quite nervous and very unorganised and extremly unsure of myself, especially since it was my first time using the 50mm f2 on someone other than my own kids, but we managed to get some gorgeous photos that I hope her Mummy will love, and I also got the chance to snap a few shots of my two handsome nephews who came along for the day too ♥


Wednesday, February 9, 2011

New Lenses at Last :D

Ever since I bought my DSLR in late 2007, the 50mm f2 macro lens has been on the top of my wish list, but with a price tag of over $800 here in Australia, and the AU$ being quite low for a long time, it wasn't going to become a reality any time soon. I started saving and had plans of making my purchase some time in the later part of 2009, however just as I was making plans to make my purchase I found out I was pregnant again, so once again the lens went on the back burner, as a new car was now top priority if we were going to be able to go any where as family of 6. Finally in late 2010 we finished paying off our car and I was able to set my sights on getting my lens once again, and for once things went in my favour, the AU$ soared higher than the US$ and I was able to import not just one, but two of the lenses on my wish list, for what it would have cost me for just the one lens had I bought localy. I placed my order with B&H Photo Video in NY, USA, early Friday morning, and had them in my hands first thing Tuesday morning, who can ask for better service than that! Even stuff I buy localy over the internet usually takes longer than that to arrive. I haven't had a realy serious play yet but here's a couple of shots I took yesterday just to give them a quick test run to make sure they were in good working order after their long trip here. All 3 pics are were taken in Raw and converted to jpeg in lightroom with no editing what so ever.

Olympus Zuiko 50mm f2
Taken at f2, indoors with natural light from window.



Olympus Zuiko 70-300mm f4-5.6 
Taken at 300mm f5.6, natural light in the car. 
He'd fallen asleep in the car and was just starting to wake up.


Sunday, February 6, 2011

Playing with Panoramas

Ok so I've been a bit slack lately, so much for having the good intention of posting something every day :/ Panoramas are something I've always wanted to learn to do properly, but never get around to doing it, but thanks to a great little free program called AutoStitch anyone can easily produce a resonably good looking panorama.
We've had a 1 in 100 year flood going on here now since mid Janurary, and the waters are now flowing into the two swamps just down the road from us. One of the Swamps, known as the Red Gum Swamp has been dry for quite some years now due to the drought, but thanks to flood waters, it is now full to the brim and starting to spill over onto the roadsides and low lying farmland. We went over late yesterday evening to take a look and I took a few quick snaps, but being so late in the day, and also being overcast, they were all quite dark and uninteresting, but I had a bit of a play in lightroom and came up with this. A bit surreal I know, but I like it :) I would be interested to know what others think, good or bad, all opinions welcome.

Wednesday, January 26, 2011

Happy Australia Day

My babies Master Thomas and Miss Emily :)  
Sorry about the high noise level, I accidently left the camera set at ISO 1800 :(

Tuesday, January 11, 2011

11/1/11 Puddles

It's been rain here for the last couple of days, so far we've had a total of 55ml. A few short months ago I would have thought that was a HUGE amount, but in relation to what QLD is getting at the moment it's a miniscule drop in one very big bucket. I've spent the majority of today sitting here at my computer using Facebook to keep track of dear friends in flood affected areas. Many people out there hate facebook for one reason or another, some think it's an invasion of privacy, others think it breaks up familys and makes parents neglet their children. But the past few days and weeks have proven what a wonderful communication tool facebook really is. With the help of mobile technology, many people who would otherwise be cut off from the rest of the world by this horible natural disaster, are still able to communicate and get help where needed, and friends and family in other parts of the country and the world can find out information on their loved ones. Facebook pages like this one  
http://www.facebook.com/QueenslandPolice#!/QueenslandPolice and others set up for specific areas are posting constant updates on evactations, road closures and other important information. Thanks to Facebook today I was able to find news of one friends safety with in half an hour of the evacuation notices for her area being posted, and many more soon after. Thank you Facebook you have saved me hours if not days of worrying about my friends safety. After being assured of my friends saftey I took Thomas outside in the rain to play in the mud puddles, and was thankful that mere mud puddles is all we have to deal with. He was delighted that his Big Big Sis decided to join him in the fun :)

Sunday, January 9, 2011

Dragonfly

I was just going through the photos on my C750 and came across this shot of a dragonfly that was sitting on my kitchen door a few days ago. It was taken in the shade without the flash, so I hadn't even bothered to check and see how it came out since I expected it to be blury, being hand held at a longer exposure. What a plesant surprise to find that one of the pics had turned out after all.

I made a brush :)

OK so I decided about 30mins ago that I wanted to have a go at making my own photoshop brushes. A few minutes spent on Google told me how, and OMG it's OH so simple, so I grabbed a pic off my drive and had a quick go to see if it really was as simple as it seemed. This is the result, it's nothing special, I just used the first picture that came up that looked easy to use. The first pic is the original photo and the second is the finished brush :) Now to take some pics to try and make my own grunge brushes :)

Saturday, January 8, 2011

Lazy Day

It's been pretty hot here today, I didn't actually see what the higest temp' was but if it didn't reach 40°c it must have got pretty darn close. On days like this I tend to hide inside under the air con with the little ones since it's way too hot take them outside. While they were sleeping I took the opportunity to have a play with another pic from the old goods shed. I didn't use the cracks or the finger print on this one.

Lets get the ball rolling

Since this blogs supposed to be about photos I guess I really should post one hey :) I took this photo of my son Thomas back in October at an old goods shed in town. I've been wanting to give it an old textured, grunge type look, but my editing skills (like my photography) are a work in progress and it often takes much googling for me to finally be able to edit the image how I want it. Yesterday I finally gave up on textures and instead went on a hunt for brushes and to my surprise found exaclty what I was after. I know this look probably isn't everyones 'cup of tea' but I like it, and I hope some of you out there do too :)

What's in a name.

Incase your wondering (though your probably not) I thought I'd give you a quick run down of the name. Spring has been my online title for quite a few years now, S being my first initial and pring being the first 5 letters of my partner and our childrens family name, so it's as simple as S + pring = Spring :)

Where to begin?

I've been planning on this for a long time but as usual with me it was always a gonna do that never got done. I did start a blog once, with the intent of documenting my childrens lives, but as with their baby record books it got a few entries and then forgotten about. But this blog isn't about my family, this one is about my images, my photos and my editing, UM which I guess in turn will turn out to be about my kids since they are my main subject *lol* I wonder if I will ever get any followers? I've been trying to have a play with the set out, but I have A LOT to learn about Blogging.