ANDRÉE'S BLOG

My Cool Teen (well one more year go go yet!)

2009-04-30T20:09:00.003+01:00

We had a great time discovering another local park this past weekend with loads of space for the children to run around. Lots to discover! I'm looking forward to going there again. Here's one of the photo's of Tamasin which I played around with...you would never know it was taken in a car park of a park... My children tell me they don't like this look... I'll probably look at it tomorrow and agree!

What we've been up to the past few days

2009-04-17T22:49:00.008+01:00

I had fun today with friends at an indoor children's play area with my three youngest children. I was even brave enough to go down the big inflatable slide with George. I quite surprised myself - I am normally chicken at anything like that LOL!

Yesterday I was out with the girls and George and we had a girly time. We did shopping (well, Supermarket shopping -not that exciting), we went to Starbucks and the girls had their hair cut. Tamasin and Charis look lovely and the hairdresser did a great job.

Here is another photo taken a couple of days ago on when we went out to the woods with a good friend of ours and her two lovely children.

Happy birthday to me!!

2009-04-14T15:02:00.004+01:00

I'm glad its the easter holidays because all the children are home and their little touches are helping to make today very special. Here are the messages that they wrote in my birthday card...

'To mum, I really think you are the most brill mum in the world. I love you and hope you have the best 38th birthday in the history of mankind. Love Henry. PS Hope your b'day is great. PPS I know I have already said that"

"To mum i fenk tat you ar the bstie mum in the weld and I lub yoo xxxxxxxxxx luv from Joel"

"Dear Mum, I love u mum your the best!!!! Lots of love from Charis xxx"

"To mum, Thanks for being so gr8. Happy Bday. Lots of love Tam xx"

"0=hug x=kiss To mum, love you! George 0x0x0x0x0x... and 1 more!"

And I also had a lovely message from Adrian in a card just from him!

These are the things that make it so special!

Here's another picture of two of the boys playing together...

PS. Excuse the new blog header, I thought it was a good idea at the time but it looks a little odd methinks....

Joel and George

2009-04-13T16:08:00.007+01:00

These two boys do love one another! It is so lovely to see George's older brothers and sisters looking after him and playing with him. And he loves them all so much!

Today I had a bit of fun with textures again....

Had another quick play in between housework LOL! I'm having a cleaning marathon today but we all need a quick break now and again, don't we?

Here's George....he's not looking at the camera, but never mind ;0) He is saying new words now, like "this", and he can finally say "no" instead of "mo". He is so expressive with his face its so funny. He had his shoes on today and he wanted some other ones on which were too big. He took off the ones he had on, saying "no" and shaking his head, looking worried. Then he tried to put the huge shoes on. Then he decided they were not right, so again, shook his had, saying "no", and finally with great difficulty finally managed to put the original ones on again (on the wrong feet probably). He is also mad on cars at the moment, especially the one he got from granny and grandad which he even sleeps with.

PRACTICING BACKLIGHTING

2009-04-09T23:00:00.005+01:00

I went out yesterday with a friend of mine and her children plus three of mine and they all had a great time climbing trees and enjoying the great outdoors! Afterwards I spent about 5 minutes trying to do backlighting, in full overhead sun! The sun was starting to go down a little so it was not directly overhead, but still pretty bright.

Fun at the Park

2009-04-07T16:03:00.003+01:00

This is from a while ago, and I wanted to try out another freebie from MCP. This time it's a frame action. I like it!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ADRIAN!

2009-04-05T06:48:00.005+01:00

It's Adrian's birthday today and he is away from home. I have a busy day ahead so won't have a lot of time to talk to him during the day. But just in case he looks on my blog, here is a message...

Happy Birthday to my wonderful husband! I love you and I don't deserve you. Thanks for being YOU! And I hope that you have a great day today.

Here is a picture of your littlest son who loves you and misses you...

On another note, if you're a photographer I want to recommend MCP actions where I got two free actions and tried them out on this photo. One is to sharpen the photo, and the other is to bring out the lights and the darks. With these two actions, you hardly need to do anything else. I also increased the saturation slightly, and softened his skin slightly with the noise reduction median setting at 1 pixel. I think that these two actions are FANTASTIC!

The Gorgeous Charis

2009-04-02T06:50:00.008+01:00

Here's one of Charis from a while back.. with added texture. Just for fun!

And now for Adrian...and he's all mine!

2009-03-31T17:14:00.007+01:00

Another two of George from yesterday...

2009-03-31T14:31:00.007+01:00

I tried to replicate my post processing from yesterday, but to no avail. I did not write down exactly what I'd done. So these two are done slightly differently. I'm not sure which are better...

Fun time out today!

2009-03-30T22:47:00.006+01:00

Adrian and I went out to the woods near our house to try out the video camera and camera, for a quick half hour today. It was fun to try and learn how the video part of the camera works, and of course take some photo's. Here is the first one of George, and I'll post some more tomorrow, including some action shots of Adrian....

Photoshop is fun!!!

2009-03-29T17:05:00.020+01:00

Tamasin and Henry... and George to come. When I've had a bit more of a play with his pictures!

Henry the amazing photographer on the new camera

2009-03-25T21:53:00.027Z

Well, my wonderful husband managed to get me a new camera, and it is fantastic! Actually Henry took these photo's below, and I think he did a pretty good job. He is learning a lot of the technicalities and really enjoys learning how to be a good photographer. These photos were taken indoors at around iso 2500 if I remember rightly. This camera is GREAT for low light photography. These photo's have not received any photoshop treatment. They have only been cropped and re-sized for the web. These were also taken at a shallow depth of field (I think it was about f2.8) so considering that I think Henry did pretty well on his selective focusing.

George is looking rather forlorn here because he has been sick all last night and all day today. Poor little boy. So I have been doing my best to look after him.

Here are Henry's best ones...

The lovely George

2009-03-21T12:50:00.004Z

We had a great day a few weeks ago at a lovely country park, and here is a pic of George from that day. I wanted to see if I can still remember how to post these big images!

Okay, so maybe that is a bit too big! I will keep experimentingLOL!

Hi again!

2009-03-18T17:49:00.027Z

I've not posted in a while, life has been too busy! But it's all been good. It has been children's birthday season, and we had twenty nine children over for a party for Tamasin's birthday, and seventeen for Henry's. George also had his birthday and he made do with a small celebration at our parent and toddler group at church, Teeny Tots. Have also been super busy working with Adrian helping him with his book (proofreading marathon!). But the end is in sight, the deadline is in about a week and we are well on track. Praise God!

I just tried to widen the margins on the blog, by changing the html code. I wonder if it worked...it means that the photo's will be bigger...

Added note: Yay! After a few tries, it worked!
The next thing is to design a nice header and background and put those in..

Two cute kids!

2009-02-12T21:00:00.017Z

Joel has been doing very well at school. He got his school report and got straight A's. As an example of this, he told me the other day what he had been learning. He said, 'do you know mum, that there are seven continents? They're called planets.' Hmmmm....!

And here is the lovely sleeping George. His latest antics are climbing out of his cot, then wanting to be put back in so that he can climb back out, repeatedly! He also loves to roam about the house destroying everything in sight, and climbing up to reach what is out of sight. He can also now say 'bubbles' (as in bubblebath). He still calls Tamasin 'mum' (as well as me)! We are still trying to teach him to talk more, but he still prefers smiling and nodding. He is very cute, and loves to give us cuddles.

We will all be very glad to see Adrian back tonight after his week away. We've all been missing him, and it will be great to have him back again!

GEORGE IN THE GARDEN

2009-01-29T11:31:00.003Z

George and I like to go into the garden (although it is cold, wet and muddy), to look at the fish and check they're all okay (in our pond), and have a little explore. Here is George trying to get the hang of riding the scooter. He is quite the perseverer!

Butlins and Tamasin

2009-01-28T22:18:00.003Z

Hi there! Well we just had a brilliant weekend away at Butlins with our church, and it was fun! I especially loved seeing our four youngest children all on the Noddy's car and other little rides just to keep George company and look after him. It was a great time. George loved it. It was hard work running after George a lot but I wouldn't have missed it. It was a great time. My camera seems to be working again so that's good. Unfortunately I didn't bring it to Butlins. One of the problems with having an expensive camera (even though mine is quite old now) is that you feel scared to take it on holiday etc with you for fear you will lose it, drop it or get it stolen! And in our rush to get out we didn't bring our little pocket camera with us; what a shame.

Here is a picture of the beautiful Tamasin.

LONG TIME NO POSTING - AGAIN!

2009-01-22T12:08:00.003Z

I have been so busy since my last post with life in general, and doing photography. I have done several photo sessions with my lights for various people, and it has been so much fun! I have learned so much, and yet there is so much to learn.

Unfortunately, the main instrument of the activity (aka the camera) has DIED!! Well, not exactly, but it has an intermittent fault where half of the image is black. I need to find out how much the repair will cost and how long it will take... I have heard these things can take around 6 weeks.. I hope not!

George and Dad

2008-12-21T22:10:00.003Z

When I was looking at my photos I saw a cute photo of George and Dad.

So then I thought to myself AAh thats a cute photo its nice to see little George with his Dad.

And after that I adjusted it.

(BY CHARIS WARNOCK)

more lights practice

2008-12-09T14:29:00.002Z

More lighting practice. This time going for a much more even softer effect...

More practice with lights

2008-12-03T13:32:00.008Z

Not surprisingly, but this studio lights lark seems to be a lot harder than it looks. Half of the problem is a lack of space in our house to set it all up in! Anyway, here are a couple of Joel.

LOOKING FOR MODELS

2008-11-20T17:31:00.003Z

If anyone I know who lives nearby would like to have a free photoshoot, I would love to practice on your children. Let me know!

George the Grump

2008-11-18T13:38:00.003Z

George is so funny... I am trying to get a bit of practice every now and then with my lights and backdrop etc, and you would think that I have no problem getting models to sit for me. Well, George seems to think that this job is for him only. He fiercely guards his position as my model, and will not let any of his brothers and sisters sit in 'his' chair for the camera. This photo says it all.....

Tamasin the model!

2008-11-08T20:54:00.007Z

Had some fun with my lights today with Tamasin..... It seems like yesterday when she was my first little baby! How time flies...