Coolgirlsar Photos

A mother's joy begins when new life is stirring inside... when a tiny heartbeat is heard for the very first time, and a playful kick reminds her that she is never alone. -- Author Unknown

2010-01-07T09:32:00.001Z

A mother's joy begins when new life is stirring inside... when a tiny heartbeat is heard for the very first time, and a playful kick reminds her that she is never alone. -- Author Unknown, originally uploaded by Coolgirlsar.

When I was pregnant with my son Callum I was very conscious of my weight and rather than feeling that I looked pregnant I felt more like I was just fatter looking. Sadly that meant I didn't want any photos taken and so to this day I don't think a single photo exists of me pregnant with Callum.

This time round I wanted to make sure I had at least one photo or more of me pregnant and so every few weeks I get Daz to take a photo of me, well he tries he hates taking photos. Now I'm not one of those that is very good at taking self portraits but I didn't want to keep burdening Daz with taking photos of me plus I wanted to try and get some different than just full length type shots. Here's what I came up with. Out of the ones I took this is the one I liked best and then I messed around a bit with it in picnik.

Oohhh pretty.

2009-12-22T14:19:00.001Z

Oohhh pretty., originally uploaded by Coolgirlsar.

I thought seeing as it had been so long that I should really post something here. So here we go.

Yesterday although only sleet was predicted by those ever so clever weather men we had a huge heaping of snow. This is a shot from our potted christmas tree outside our front door. And the glow in the background? Well that would be from the lights we have up outside on our house. lol.

Hard Choices

2009-05-01T16:06:00.009+01:00

For a long time I've wanted to get a photo or two of my own printed up onto canvas. I've shied away so far because of the costs and not too sure where to go. Well yesterday while shopping in Romford, Essex I came upon a new business called Photo 2 Canvas and they were offering fairly good prices, good enough for me to enquire about and to then decide I'll get some. The problem now though is deciding which two photos I want to print up. I've narrowed it down to wanting photos of Callum in and prefably ones of him on his own and I'm pretty certain this will be one of them:

But choosing that second photo and having to wade through over 2,500 photos is a hard job. There are a few other photos that my husband Daz and I are very fond on but personally I am not sure how they will look transferred onto canvas. Then there are photos that I would have printed up but I know from experience of printing them onto photo paper that the quality is not good enough which is a shame.

This photo is one of Daz' favourite and at the moment may well be my second choice.

However there is this photo which a few people we know have said they like:

Then I think should I maybe just have one potrait photo done and then say a still life photo that I've taken printed up, like say this photo:

Like I said it's a hard choice. So if anyone does read this and fancy having a nose through my photos and leaving a suggestion I'd be happy to hear what that choice would be.

Project 365

2009-01-21T18:19:00.007Z

At the end of last year I decided to this year embark on a photo challenge. Flickr where I host pretty much all of my photos has many wonderful groups and there are plenty there with challenges, most notably the 365 Days group. I did a few times last year try to do those but the main part was that you had to have yourself in some form in the photo and that I found hard to do. This year though thanks to an online friend I heard about the
Project 365 Group. This sounded more up my street as I didn't have to be in the photos. So here I am Day 22 into Project 365 and enjoying it but also finding it challenging to find something to photography. It's making me think more about what I want to photograph and how I'm going to go about photographing the days subject. Now all I have to do is keep at it for a lot more day.

If anyone wants to have a look you can find my photos in My Project 365 Set. Each day I add the photo of the day to the set so you can easily keep up to date with how I am doing.

I just hope the weather picks up soon as I'm starting to run out of things to photograph around the home.

Christmas Greetings.

2008-12-17T09:55:00.005Z

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.

2008-11-20T14:05:00.003Z

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

2008-11-19T10:19:00.033Z

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 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.

2008-08-25T12:11:00.004+01:00

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

2008-08-15T13:28:00.005+01:00

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

2008-08-09T10:40:00.009+01:00

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

2008-08-08T19:36:00.004+01:00

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?

2008-08-02T14:04:00.006+01:00

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.

Sky Watch Friday - Up In the Clouds

2008-07-25T10:18:00.007+01:00

Please visit Skywatch Firday to see what we are all about and to view all the other wonderful Skywatch Friday blog entries they are well worth taking the time out to view.

This is my first week of Skywatch Friday, I hope you like what you see.

The last couple weeks have been a very hectic one for me, what with the end of the school term for my son Callum (his first year at school, boy has that flown by) and then his 5th birthday which the celebrations went on for days for. Still somehow I've managed to get a few clicks at the beautiful sky.

We had a mix bag of weather, torrential rain, beautiful sunshine then storm clouds. All these photos were taken from our back garden during Callum's 5th Birthday Party.

Something Different

2008-07-14T16:51:00.003+01:00

While blog surfing today I came across a fabulous blog called Katney's Kaboodle which you should really check out as it has all sorts of fun and interestingness. While there I noticed that she had on her sidebar a six word memoir. Now a few months ago a friend (Coffee Betsy) who blogs about her amazing running skills and her family life set a meme test to a group of us that blog at Bad Genious , which is a blog about comics and their surrounding culture, this meme was the same six word memoir. So I thought it would be fun to see what everyone elses six word memoir would be. Please feel free to leave yours in the comments.

As for mine I had:

Chocolate made my bum this big.

Photos of the Week

2008-07-11T20:39:00.010+01:00

I really don't know where the days go, we've had a few days of sunshine so I've tried to make the most of that in the garden, plus there is the school run and just general family life, all good, in fact all awesome! Anyway though it is no excuse for being lax in my blogging. As I've been a little lax in my blog posting though I decided this morning that I would try and do a new theme on my blog which would be a handful of my favourite photos I've taken during the week. I'll try to get them uploaded and an entry done by each Friday and hopefully I will have time to explain why I like these ones in particular. I'm hoping it will help with a few things (1) to get me taking more photos which in turn will (2) get to me to try out more settings and experiments with my camera and hopefully also (3) this will lead to me blogging more which in turn hopefully will (4) get my lazy butt in gear to check out other blogs I've looked and and like and leave comments. There's a lot of hopefully's in there but hopefully I'll keep to them.

So as this is the first week and I've had a bit of a busy week I thought I would use photos that weren't necessarily taken this week but just offloaded, or should that be downloaded or even uploaded... oh whatever... photos taken off my camera and put on my coolgirlsar flickr account and/or my littlemonstercallum photobucket account over the last couple weeks.

First up is Genie the Elephant. It's not a hugely great shot but it makes me smile. Genie is Callum's (that's my son) class pet Elephant and each child gets to take Genie home and then write in the diary about what they did. It so happened that when we had Genie it was lovely and sunny (yes I know how strange for England!). Upon getting home, Callum put on his shorts and t-shirt, grabbed Genie and headed out to the garden. Next thing I see is Genie sitting sunbathing, Callum said that Genie didn't want to play with mud and get dirty but sunbath as he didn't get to spend much time outside. I just thought it was cute.

Next up is a shot of a Lego truck with Indiana Jones in it. I love how I've managed to capture even his stubble... plus even in Lego form Lego form Indy is still tres hot! Phwaorrhhh!. Ahem, ermm yeah sorry about that.

Lastly it's a cloud photo. I love cloud spotting and seeing what objects you can make out in clouds. With this photo I experimented with my manual mode on my DSLR I think it was the first time so was quite happy with how the photos turned out. This one reminds me of two little legs going for a run.

Life and My new camera the Canon EOS 450D

2008-06-02T16:39:00.006+01:00

Firstly thank you again to all those kind comments left and apologies for not replying to them yet, I will do so and I promise I'll be visiting your blogs soon too. Life has been hectic. Firstly there was our belated House Warming Party which went really well even though the night before I got a tooth infection so didn't get any sleep couldn't eat anything because of the pain and no medicine worked... well apart from the medicine of drink yourself silly. I had a week of antibiotics, not being able to eat much and sleep and lots of pain. I've got to have a root canal done but for now I'm pain free. Then last week I had my son off school for holidays and my hubby took the week off too so we had lots of fun and days out. Hopefully now though I can get back to blogging and posting at others.

So yesterday I got a new camera. I wanted to upgrade from my point and click Olympus mju 760, which is a lovely camera but I want to be professional goddarn it. ;) I've spent the last few months reading articles, getting advise from family and friends and looking around. Everyone I asked advised me to either go for a Canon or a Nikon, the main reason why when I asked was "Well that's what the professionals go for.". It wasn't until I spoke to a nice young lady at a private camera shop in Romford that she explained fully and better than anyone else why. The reason? Even though a lot of the newer cameras coming out are getting great reviews? Simple. Canon and Nikon are well established, they have been round for many years and are likely to be round for many more. Because of that you pretty much can guarantee that you will always be able to get the attachments easily. She mentioned that the other week someone with a brand new Song camera had come in, they had bought it in the Sony shop but couldn't get any of the lens they wanted because the Song shop didn't stock them. Even though this particular shop didn't deal with the Sony cameras she said after after a few days they managed to track down what this person was after but it just shows that it's not that easy to get the paraphernalia. So that's why I ended up going for a Canon camera. Originally I was thinking of the Olympus E420 which is due out but after not being able to find out anything more than it was due out at the end of May and hasn't come out I decided to leave it.

So how is my new camera? It's wonderful. I was just a little bit nervous to use it, hell just to pick it up and touch it, it's isn't a cheap thing you know and I'm such a clutz at times. But pick it up I did, then I attached the lens and had a play around. There's lots I have to read up on and learn, I've never used and D/SLR camera before. I've so far been happy just using the auto focus/scene selection stuff which is helping me get a feel for the camera. Over the next couple weeks I'm going to devour the manual that came with it, all so many hundreds of pages of it and get practicing with the other side of photography.

Anyway as you can see I've added a few photos between paragraphs, these are all from my new camera. I'm sure I'll have lots more to add soon and other ways to manipulate them too.

One True Media

2008-04-21T21:30:00.000+01:00

My previous entry was about Photo Books, this one is about using your photos and making videos out of them. There's a wonderful site called One True Media that lets you do this. You can upload the photos you want to use, arrange them in any order you like and then upload and use a song you like from your computer or one from their own library. At the end you have a wonderful little video to your liking that you can share with family and friends and you can order on dvd too. I created one last year of my son and his cousins on a day out we had in the summer. For those interested here it is.

Make video montages at www.OneTrueMedia.com

Photo Books

2008-04-21T21:15:00.000+01:00

Firstly I would like to say a big thank you to those of you who have been kind enough to come visit and leave comments, they are very much appreciated.

Now onto Photo Books!

At Blurb they deal in helping you turn your photos into a Photo book. You can keep it private and have it ordered just for you or you can have it public and others can view and I assume buy it too, although I don't know if you earn commission or anything. Sounds like a fun way to store some of your favourite photos and you can add text and make you own cover and back cover too. Also they come in Hard Cover or Soft Cover. I think they are a very nice idea to have as maybe a keepsake of your child's life or that once in a lifetime holiday or just something that you like.

I've been toying with the idea of doing one for my son Callum and choosing certain photos at times of his life from birth to present day.

Fun With Photos

2008-04-07T12:54:00.000+01:00

In this day and age there are so many sites on the old web that you can just upload a photo of yours to and they can change it into anything!! Yep anything! From a jigsaw puzzle to a business card to a poster or a movie magazine cover. Some of the ones I've used that I've found fun and easy are:

Big Huge Labs

Dumpr

Moo

Qoop

There are lots more out there but these are the ones I tend to play around with the most, plus they are all linked to flickr which is where I host most of my photos.

Big Huge Labs gave me and some friends an afternoon of fun on the net with the Motivational Poster Toy where you could create masterpieces like this:

Or there is the Hockneyizer Toy where you can do this creations:

With Dumpr I was granted creations such as these with the effects:

Amazing Circles:

Alien Vision

Moo I used to print up and have delivered the Minicards which I have so far used as tags on presents, to quickly write down my contact details on and I'm in the middle of creating a small mosaic with some. There are countless uses for them and the service and quality provided are top notch.

Qoop I haven't used and awful lot, I did use at Chrismtas time to play around with a Calendar but I never ordered it but it was an easy site to use.

Like I said there are lots more of these sites out there. If there are any that you use and would recommend feel free to let me know and I'll go check them out, I'm always up for a spot of photo playing.

Snow In April

2008-04-06T11:43:00.000+01:00

Today really makes you think about global warming. Did we get snow at Christmas? No! Did we get snow earlier this year? Not really. Did we get snow this April? Yes!! The great thing that did come out of it snowing today was that Callum (now 4.5 years old) got to build his first ever snowman. The three of us were out just before 10am in the garden, building snowmen and having snowball fights. Here are some photos. It's still snowing and a certain young man is hoping it settles some more so we can go out again. The wonders and coolness of snow!

Shandy The Cat

2008-04-06T09:29:00.000+01:00

For just over two weeks we've been catsitting. Said cat is 17 years old Shandy, she belongs to one of my sisters (Emma) but lives at my parents house. They went on holiday and asked if we could have her to stay. At the time we didn't think it would be a problem but between Callum constantly hassling her, Shandy's long white hairs everywhere and lots more it's been a bit of a nightmare. Today my parents get back and so tomorrow she'll be back home... and I'll be cathairless. Anyway on Friday night I realised I hadn't had the chance to experiment taking photos of Shandy so in my tipsy state I decided then and there to do so. Lesson learned? Best to use a tripod as your hands are nowhere near as steady once you've had a few drinks. LOL. Anyhow here are a few of the end results, not too bad but I think if I'd been sober I would have got a lot better.

Selective Colouring

2008-04-04T13:49:00.000+01:00

You know that little thing where you have a black and white photo with a splash of colour, well that's selective colouring. Until last year I didn't know what it was called or how to do it but thanks to some wonderful people at Photography Blog I learned how to. There are many ways in which to do this but I've found a free software programme called GIMP which allows you to do so and then a talk through guide at Create Blog which is easy to follow.

Here are some examples of what I've done. I've posted the original photo and then afterwards with the selective colouring.

This photo I did using a trial version of photoshop, it involves layers and you cutting out from the original colour photo the areas you wanted (in this case my nieces red top, the Union Jack on my nephew's trousers and the orange in the back of my son's shoe), then changing the photo to B&W, creating a new layer, pasting over the colouring bits and merging together, well I think that's how I did it, was so long ago. Very long winded and you need a very very very steady hand. Still I like how this turned out and to me gives an age old effect to the photo that makes it feel timeless.

Another photo I did (this time using GIMP) was this one.

The GIMP way was a lot lot lot easier to use and if you made a mistake easier to rectify.

I have other photos I've done, all can be seen in my flickr account which is linked to at the side. I just need to find other colours other than red to selective colour.

Come Fly With Me

2007-12-17T14:10:00.000Z

I thought that it was time that I had my own blog, I've got one for my son Callum (Little Monster Callum's Blog) and I did have one for my Jewellery that I make (Little Monster Jewellery Box) so here at last is mine! Coolgirlsar's! I hope you like the journey you'll take with me here. At the moment I'm thinking it will mostly be about my photos that I take but I do like to ramble on about things at times so goodness knows what will be posted here.