I'M SO GLAD I LIVE IN A WORLD WHERE THERE ARE OCTOBERS.

Autumn is such a short but beautiful season so I took some pics of the changing colour of the trees in Kelvingrove Park (one of my favourite places!) to remind me of this, I also tried to catch images of the leaves as they were falling but my shutter speed skills let me down, maybe next year.

I found some lovely quotes about Autumn too which are so true ~

“Autumn is the hardest season. The leaves are all falling, and they're falling like
they're falling in love with the ground.” 
― Andrea Gibson

“You expected to be sad in the fall. Part of you died each year when the leaves fell from the trees and their branches were bare against the wind and the cold, wintery light. But you knew there would always be the spring, as you knew the river would flow again after it was frozen. When the cold rains kept on and killed the spring, it was as though a young person died for no reason.” 
― Ernest Hemingway, A Moveable Feast

“Autumn is a second spring when every leaf is a flower.” 
― Albert Camus

GOALS FOR 2013 REVISITED

Can you believe it's December already!

I meant to do a 6 month catch up on the goals I set my self at the start of 2013 but it looks like it's going to be a total recap.

I'm a fan of reflecting and as I look back over 2013 I feel so chuffed that I've met 3 out of the 5 goals I set myself, turns out writing them down does give you a better chance of them becoming a reality!

1. Take photography classes.
I signed up for a 10 week evening class in March and am so glad I did, I absolutely loved it.

The black and white picture of a twisted iron gate is my favourite.
At the start of every class the tutor explained what we would be learning which almost always sounded like a foreign language but after 3 hours I would like to say that it did actually made sense! A definite plus to learning a new skill was meeting a lovely bunch of people which made 3 hours every week fly by. 

I was lucky enough to get a SLR 600D Canon and my top goal for 2014 is to definitely take more (hopefully professional) pictures.

2. Run a Half Marathon.

Although I like to keep fit  I get bored just going to the gym so decided to run the Great Scottish Run Half Marathon in October. To start training for it I started running 5kms and took part in my first ever organised Park Run event in February, although I nearly died I completed it without stopping and did it in a better time than expected.

I then ran the Bupa Womens 10km Race and raised £255 for Breast Cancer Care, running for charity definitely gave me the boost I needed to finish. They definitely helped prepare me mentally and physically for the Half Marathon on 6th October but it was harder than I thought it would be although I'm proud to say that I didn't feel like crying until the 15th kilometre. The pic is me at the finish line and can't believe I'm actually smiling!

3. Travel More.

I honestly feel that travelling and visiting different places are good for my soul and at the start of the year I decided that no matter what I would visit some places that have been on my wish list forever. There are so many factors that can affect this goal - mainly money but I managed to visit Gothenburg at Easter which was gorgeous and sooo clean (still can't believe that's something that I keep saying when I think of the trip but it was!)

I have wanted to visit the culture and art soaked place that is Berlin for the longest time and am pleased to say it lived up to my expectations. I took a pic of the Brandenburg gate but I have so many other pics I'll have to put them in a post of their own.

Goals still on the list:

4. Create a T-Shirt design & 5.Create a Tote Bag design.

Goals 4 and 5 are sot of the same.

I absolutely love a T-Shirt and tote bag design and have always wanted to create my own range. However sometimes I have so many ideas I can't decide on just one and end up coming to a stand still.

I'm working on this procrastination so this goal will be moving soon.

PHOTOGRAPHY CLASS > WEEK 8 PART II

While we were on the roof taking pictures of the panoramic views in this weeks photography class we also had to take a "squinty" picture. That sort of goes against the whole point in taking pictures right?

It was to use in a Photoshop tutorial so away I went taking pictures at an angle to use later. We then took the image into Photoshop, copied, flipped and rotated the single image until it looked like the picture above.

What a great technique and one I'll definitely be using more of.

PHOTOGRAPHY CLASS > WEEK 8

This week in photography class we went up to the roof of the 13 floor college to take pictures of the view. We were lucky it was such a gorgeous day and I think you can tell this is a rare occurance in Glasgow due to the slightly obsessive way I try to get as much of the blue sky in the frame as possible. The brief we were given before we started shooting was to take some pictures that could be stitched together to produce a panoramic image and a "squinty" picture that we could use in a photoshop experiment.

I always think that if we had more days of sunshine this city would have it all and looking at these images confirmed this for me. They instantly remind me of the grid structure of the roads and street's in New York and Barcelona. I took some shots looking straight at the sun and although I've never been something about the resulting image makes me think of San Fransisco.
What do you think?

PHOTOGRAPHY CLASS > WEEK 7

I can finally show you the black and white film pictures I took in week 5.
My main aim was to get them in focus but I'm really pleased with how they turned out, my favourites were the close up images of doors, bridges and cobbled streets. The totally beautiful depth that black and white film adds and  the mystery of how they'll turn out made me fall in love with it.

PHOTOGRAPHY CLASS > WEEK 5 & 6

Week 5:
So I thought last week's photography class was excellent and then I discovered film photography and instantly fell in love with it.
Ok so maybe at the start of the class I was like "whaddyamean we won't be able to check our pictures when we've taken them?!?" you know to check they're at least in focus.
It was a great way to test how much technical info you had taken in over the last few weeks so we loaded our B/W film and off we went to the clydeside to take our pics. We only had 36 pics in a roll of film and as we usually take about 136 with a digital camera I did feel a bit restricted but as you're taking twice as long to take the image I found myself on 26 and struggling to finish the roll. When we'd finished we then handed it into the college lab to create our negatives for us to pick up next week. Can't wait to see them!

Week 6:
This week we picked up our negatives and some photographic paper and headed off to the dark room. After 3 hours you're eyes do get used to it but when you leave it you definitely have "mole eyes".
We learnt how to use the light projectors and test how much exposure we should apply through the negative. After processing test strips and washing the prints in the chemical baths we only had time to create 3 prints that we left to dry and will pick up next week.

I can't wait to see what they look like and Ill post them here to let you have a peek too.

PHOTOGRAPHY CLASS > WEEK 4

This weeks photography class was all about panoramic images and how to create this in Photoshop with my favourite "tool" ever; Photomerge! This is where you import 5 or 6 images and click "Photomerge" and it "stitches" all your images together for you.
First of all we had to get the photos so we headed to the Glasgow Necropolis, (a Victorian cemetery) that sits on a hill and has amazing views of the city.
This week was pretty important to get our settings correct to suit the light and objects as next week we are working with black and white FILM!
Yeah that's right no option to flick through the images you've taken and delete the ones that aren't. Eek!
This week I was pretty pleased to finally get my head around setting the right exposure, it helped that the evenings are a lot lighter than they were when we started back March. The last image is actually 6 images stitched together and this was an excellent class.

PHOTOGRAPHY CLASS > WEEK 3

It's week 3 of my photography class already and it was all about composition, oh and exposure as always. We managed to get outside and the aim of this weeks class was to take pictures of objects that looked like letters and to create a word out of the letters we collected.
I created the word "Glasgow" and found that the letter "G" is really hard to find, that's why I had to feature an actual letter "G", well we were on a time limit.It was a really great exercise to get you thinking about making the shot look different and a bit more creative.

PHOTOGRAPHY CLASS > WEEK 2

This week we were working in the studio focusing on white balance and the depth of field. 
This is basically making sure anything that's white looks white in the image and creating the effect where the object that's closest to the lens is in focus but the object in the background is blurred.
There's so many things to take into account when your taking a photo, even the temperature of the light that is being used can effect the image but it was a really interesting class working with the focus, shadows and light.

HELLO ADVENTURES

I am so excited! My 2013 goals I made to travel more and to take photography classes have become a reality.In the last couple of weeks I have been given the opportunity to book trips to Barcelona and Sweden and I now have confirmation of a place on a photography course that starts in March!

I feel like this year is going to be one big adventure and even though I have visited Barcelona 5 times in 7 years, every time has been different but the people, food and landmarks are ALWAYS amazing and I honestly can't wait for this trip.

Sweden is somewhere that I have always wanted to visit, I love scandanavian designs and I don't know if that's why but its always held a sort of mysterious air about it for me and even though the highest temperature will be 4degrees I am sooo looking forward to it.

As the photography class is an introductory class for beginners I fully expect to be learning about exposure, lens and focal points (I honestly have no idea what I'm talking about) but as long as I learn how to take pictures of cityscapes and traffic with the long swirly light tracks I'll be happy. 
I've also noticed I have an slight obsession with sunrises and would love some clear recordings of them that I could actually frame instead of the out of focus variations I have on my HTC phone.

BEAUTIFUL INK

Is it fabric? Is it smoke?
Believe it or not it is actually photographs of ink in water taken by the artist Alberto Seveso.
The duo pigments make these shots truly beautiful.