Christmas Greetings.

Tis the season to be jolly and all that malarky. One of best things about Christmas is getting the biggest, live tree that we can fit into our home, getting all the decorations out, putting the christmas tunes on and then all of us decorating the tree and house. Sure I had an argument with a five year old over putting decorations in the correct place on the tree but I was at least grown up enough to apologise to Callum ... once Daz had pointed out my childishness lol. Sadly when I looked at the photos I had taken I realised I had knocked the focus onto manual without knowing and pretty much all of them have come out blurred. Still there is always a silver lining in a cloud and I came across this.


As online friend Tyler says "it's got a great impressionistic, almost painterly quality to it. I know you said it was an accident, but it's a well-played accident." which I have to agree with, he has summed up what I like about the photo. Of course now I've seen the error I made with the previous photos I'll have to re-take some more which no doubt Callum will moan about "No No No no more photos please Mummy. "

Photos From Today.

I decided today that it was about time I experimented more with the manual settings on my DSLR as I haven't really done this so far, yes I know bad bad bad me. I'm still learning what all the different settings mean and I'm still mighty confused, but that is nothing new. Here are some of the shots I took today. With each photo I've mentioned if and what editing I did. I hope you like and as always thank you for popping by.




Titled: Callum
This photo I as per the others used flickr's picnik editing tool. I converted to B&W and then cross-processed it. I quite like how it turned out. If you want to see the original please visit here.




Titled: Life Lines of Autumn
With this photo I used flickr's picnik, the basic editing tools they have are quite good, I cropped, rotated, straightened and then framed the photo.




Titled: He Loves Me He Loves Me Not
Just framed on flickr's picnik, the basic editing tools they have are quite good.

C is for Child and D is for Dog F is for Flower and H is for Halloween

As some may have noticed I've been very lax in keeping up with my blog lately, I really don't know where the time has gone and even though I've had a bit of time to take photos it hasn't been that much. So not wasting any more time here are some of my latest photos. Fingers crossed I'll be able to get back into posting more often and hopefully joining in again with Sky Watch Friday.

Oh and you may notice as some of the photos of Callum the child and Dash the Dog progress that the dog's size seems to get bigger, turns out that Dash is just like Callum in the "doesn't stop growing" syndrome.

Callum at Pirates Grove, Paradise Wildlife Park

Callum at Pirates Grove, Paradise Wildlife Park

Callum and Dash Playing with toy cars

Cuddles are the best!

Callum loves getting wet

Unlike poor Dash

Now I always thought nothing would be harder to photograph than my son Callum, the boy doesn't even keep still in his sleep but alas I've been proved wrong. Yes the dog is harder to photograph. Well correction he is now, when he was much younger he loved posing but now he either wants to lick the camera or bark and growl at it. I can't even sneak up on him when he is sleeping and the dog and child photo I so dearly want still alludes me. I will just have to perservere I think or I will have to see about those photographers that do child and pet photos, if I can find a link one of the photography magazines the other month had an article about them, fantastic shots!

See how well behaved he is here, if only that was all the time. It's been interesting seeing how Dash has grown and changed, much like it has with Callum. With Dash he's now getting those springer spaniel spots they are so famous for having and his puppy fur is becoming thicker. His jumping is also becoming higher. As was told to us by our vet (but we knew anyway) he is an intelligent breed of dog and is taking well to training I only wish I could train Callum as well. lol.


Well that is enough rambling I'll leave with a few more photos.






























































Thank you for visiting and as always my photos can be seen on my flickr photostream, just follow the link.

Sky Watch Friday - Cheating isn't good but sometimes useful.

Welcome to this weeks Sky Watch Friday.

This week has been as hectic and full of surprises as ever. Firstly I'll explain mentioning that yesterday was my birthday, I've now reached the grand old age of 35, that's years by the way although I'm told regularly by family and friends it should be more like months. So with that in mind and that the weather has been spectacularly crap, it's still the school summer holidays, I have a five year old to keep entertained oh and the big surprise.... my parents came back from their holiday in Ireland with a Puppy for me as a birthday present. So yep all in all not a good chance in hell of getting any photos in. So in an effort to try yesterday to get some photos for Sky Watch Friday while at Paradise Wildlife Park in Hertfordshire, England to be able to do a blog entry I tried but it wasn't until right at the end of the day that there was anything sky worthy to take. So here's are some photos of the animals and I promise there is some form of sky in the photos.

Sleeping Tiger but look there's sky there too!

Ok so not the loveliest of shots but still there's sky there!

High up in that tree is a Red Panda

And there's the little fella... although it could well be a girl but still I got some sky in the shot!

End of the day and a look at the clouds.

Hope you all have a lovely Sky Watch Friday. Please visit the Sky Watch Friday blog and others linked there it is a wonderful blog and well worth getting lost in for an hour or two... or more.

Sky Watch Friday - Through A Child's Eye

Sky Watch Friday for this week is bought to you by my son Callum who is five years old and me. We haven't had the best of weather this week, no surprise there though for jolly old Blighty. Yesterday after a little bit of rain we did have some sunshine so I asked Callum if he'd like to go out in the garden and do a bit of cloud spotting with me (a great hobby that we share together). Sadly there weren't many clouds around but I did let Callum have control of my Olympus mju 760 point and click camera. Here's the results.

Also please visit the Sky Watch Friday blog where there are hundreds of links to lots of brilliant blogs participating in Sky Watch Friday too.

Photos By Callum White aged Five Years

Photos by Sarah White... a lot lot older than Five Years

For some reason this reminds me of a handprint or if you look at it in a different angle a tall ship.

Aaah summer!

My budding photographer!

Somewhere up there is a bird. I promise there is!

Photos of the Week

Ok so photos of the last few weeks but it is the summer holidays so time is being spent doing other things.

As it's holiday time that means I have the company of my pride and joy my beautiful son Callum. Now Callum is hit and miss on whether he'll play ball with the photo taking, some times I have to bribe him and at other times I'm lucky in that I get that photo of him not knowing. This weeks photos I'm going to centre on Callum, hey I'm biased but he is the cutest, handsomest little guy I know.

First up is this photo I took of Callum the other week playing in our back garden under the sprinkler. I love how the water is frozen in mid motion behind him, the look on his face and the water dripping from him. It's a photo of summertime fun to me. Also I love how you can see how long his lashes are here. One thing I'm always getting comments about is Callum's big beautiful blue eyes and very long eye-lashes.






This next one is my niece Eloise. It was taken at Callum's Fifth Birthday Party a few weekends ago. She's is such a pretty little girl and has the prettiest smile ever. All I did with this one was convert it to Black and White.









This is my nephew Alex, he is 3 months older than Callum and with his sister Eloise has been brought up very close with Callum. Alex has these beautiful brown eyes and in cases it is rare to get a photo of him smiling, that's why I like this one.

And last but not least is one of my yearly group photos of the three kids which I've come to name as Best Friends Forever photos, this was taken the other week on the muggiest day I've known in a long while. I had to bribe them and there were many other photos taken before I finally got this shot

If anyone is interested I also have a blog for my son Callum, it's Little Monster Callums Blog.
Please feel free to visit and leave comments.

Sky Watch Friday - Beauty In Strange Places

Sunset Boxing Day 2007 Upminster, Essex

Earlier this year my family and I moved home. We'd been living in a two bedroom first floor flat in Romford (Essex) Town Centre. I myself had lived there for nearly thirteen years, I was only 21 years old when I bought it. While reading the Sky Watch entry for this week I thought back to all the beautiful sunrises I saw there and felt sorry at not seeing them any more and curious to why I don't get so many of them at our new home. So with this in mind I hunted out some of the photos I took from the front room of my old flat to do my Sky Watch entry for this week. In some ways I always marveled at how if we looked one way out the window you'd never guess we were slap bang in the middle of the town centre and that according to the police at times we had the highest amount of anti-social behaviour in the borough outside our doorstep.

Oh and even though I miss those sunrises I wouldn't give up our new home for anything. :D

Happy Sky Watch Friday everyone and have a lovely weekend.







And in case you didn't pick up on the links please visit the Sky Watch Friday blog there are so many wonderful friendly talented people there. Ta.

Sky Watch Friday - Where Are You Travelling?

Words by Sarah White

Oh cloud where are you floating
Is far out to sea
Or the other side of the world

How quick will you be there
Or will you be like a slow boat to china
and slowly savour all the sights
Oh cloud where are you floating
Is just the tiny bit of sky above me now
Or is it everyone’s joy for you to be
I never thought there were so many shades of white
Until I saw the beauty of your sight
Is it warm up there near the sun or cold beneath the stars
Oh cloud tell us your story so far

Honest Sir I do have a good excuse for my late homework. You see my five year old son Callum has been a little so and so at bedtimes so the planned Friday evening Sky Watching I had planned didn't really happen as I was dealing with a screaming, crying, shouting, tantrumming little boy. Still I did manage to rush out and click a few shots last night and the other day I was trying a new take on shots with the sky in and with kids. So this weeks entry is a little bit of a mixed bag. Hope you enjoy.