Through the Eyes of a Princess

I love taking photos - I always have.
One of the first things I spent my pocket-money on was a little camera (the long thin types)
For my 16th birthday I was treated to a Samsung Film Camera - it cost R999 ($100) (18 years ago that was a lot of money, especially for my parents) I still have that camera and I will never part with it.

Last year I treated myself to a Canon and I am still loving every second of it (even if it spends more time in the closet than out in the field)

I take hundreds of photos, share them online and then store them on my Hard Drive.
Nobody ever really gets to see them and enjoy them.
I have recently mounted a few of my photos into frames which are now displayed on my wall along the staircase, but those 13 photos are a drop in the ocean compared to the thousands I have stored.

Hard Personalised Cover

A few years back I saw the Photobooks and fell in love with the idea of having a stylish coffee-table-style book filled with photos for people to browse through.

I made myself my first book with my Thailand photos and loved the idea so much, promptly made a second book with all my day to day photos.
I have recently completed my Europe Holiday photobook and will send to print when I have some spare cash. Next I will begin work on "Through the Eyes of a Princess II"

The design work is fun because you can do anything you like! I use some of my photos as backgrounds, make a collage, frame them, drop shadow them, add scrapbooking looking embellishment images... the list is endless.

Terrible Cellphone images - sorry!

The books are professionally bound and the pages are glossy and thick enough not to tear very easily. A scrapbook album looks lovely but it becomes bulky and the embellishments and paper can get torn so easily.

 

What do you do with your digital photos?

Keep Calm - Keep Your Sanity

For the past 3 - 4 weeks I have been working ridiculously long hours that I can't even think straight anymore.

As in 12:00 midnight, 1am, 2am. Seriously.

The other morning my boss phoned and gave me yet ANOTHER deadline for 1 October and I almost lost it.

I was so upset, that I could feel the anxiety squeezing my heart.

That night I had a scary realisation: If I died that night and Peter asks me at the Gates of Heaven if I died happy, my honest answer would be no.

I haven't spoken to my brother or his wife in ages to hear the latest news about my nephew. (my Squishy is in hospital for a week with pneumonia)

I have hardly spoken to or seen my friends. 

I haven't watched/stalked/listened to One Direction (see, this is getting serious)

I am currently have 29 days worth of work and only 6 days in which to do it. I cannot work past 2am. and even after 3 weeks, I think that has to stop as well.

Last weekend, my parents and I went for lunch at a beautiful place called Blandford Manor. Beautiful old Manor house with a restaurant/pub who's tables surround a calm lake complete with 4 geese and 2 goslings.

It was a gorgeous Spring day sitting in the sun relaxing and snapping away with my camera. In summer this place is sure to be gorgeous.

Mom took a turn with the camera and after making me pose like a model, is convinced she can be a photographer! 

We had lots of laughs posing and taking fun photos. The sun thought it was doing me a favour and kept creeping into my photos. (I wanted sun flare last time, not now!!)

Sunburnt, tired, but happy. It really is about the small things in life sometimes isnt it?

T & C in the Park

Anticipating a trip to Zoo Lake for a bit of a walk and relaxing day out in the sun, I fetched Tee from the Gautrain station and off we went.... Only to realise that turning "left" was an impossibility.

Eventually we did what any intelligent girls would do - and stopped and asked the problem. Turns out the ANNUAL Jazz festival was taking place today and we had picked that one day to visit Zoo Lake.

Change of plans and off we went to Melrose Arch shopping centre for some brunch and a bit of flower shopping.

We then made our way to a park we had never even heard of and got down to some serious photography practice. (for me... Tee was my model)

I wanted to experiment with Sun Flares as I have been reading alot about how tricky this form of photography is.

After a bunch of test shots, I began to figure it out and snapped some decent shots.

Then we started messing about as usual and got a few comical shots too! 

2 hours later, wind-swept and weary, we made our way back to the station and headed off home.

I promise not to bore you, but here are a few of the shots I snapped today and yesterday. (The graininess is purely because I reduced them alot in size, otherwise they take foreeeeeeever to download) These were all my favourites and I just couldn't whittle it down any more than these 17!

Thank you to Tee for not complaining too much - I will make a willing model out of you yet!

Action in motion except the people in the middle!

How beautiful are the shimmery petals?

So natural!

Love this one!

Love the halo of sunlight

Who knew the wind would help me so much for nice shots!

Trying something new

This was fun

The silliness starts!

Ying and Yang?

These hats were an awesome buy!

Giggling over something!

See no Evil, Hear no Evil and... SPEAK no Evil (fitting for us both)

Love the washed out background

Getting the Hang of it

I bought my new camera last week.
Best decision I made!

I have already been able to take photos I never was able to before.
I just have to practice and get used to the various Aperture and exposure settings and I will be fine. My favourite is being able to choose various focal points instead of all 9 at the same time. Gives me so much more freedom!

I am looking forward to using the orange tones to capture a sunset as well as some beautiful landscapes.

For now I have focused (no pun intended) on my close ups and various focal points.

One problem having such a nice camera: I now have so many choices for 1 photo! (Warm, Vivid, Vibrant, romantic soft tones etc etc etc)

I went easy on the girls over the weekend, but I really need a model for portrait practising, I have some nice ideas for poses and want to try them out. The cat has been more than patient with me, but now I need a human!

I do ask forgiveness for the next couple of weeks, I hope I wont bore you too much with Photography talk!

For now, I will shut up and let you have a look at some of my test shots as well as a really nice photo of my girls.