This week at some point we've all been ill. Other than going out for Nathan's film showing last week I've been in the house doing nothing for days and days. I'm so bored! Today I started to feel a bit better and pondered going out with the girls tomorrow but this little girl has had a fever almost all day and slept for 5 hours this afternoon! Look at her little flushed cheeks, poor thing.
Seeing as I'm a little behind in my photo taking, this is a shot I took a while back that I almost used but at the time Nathan didn't like very much. Or perhaps he just preferred my other choice of the day?
Anyway, I like the fact that much of the photo doesn't seem entirely in focus which is how it should be when wine is involved ;-)
I went out for a little walk with the dog yesterday morning and discovered some handy work of our local youths. (Well I assume it was the young teens who hacked down random trees and set alight to them - perhaps I am being stereotypical and judgemental?!)Anyway, it makes for a nice photo.
On Thursday evening Nathan and I attended an award ceremony for the Exposures film festival - based here in Manchester which is specifically for student film makers. Nathan's documentary film "Lift" was nominated for two awards, Best Documentary and BBC Best of the North. He won BBC Best of the North which we are both thrilled about and here he is receiving the award!
It was a great night. No one spoke too much, there was a great atmosphere and free Corona :-) All the clips of films we saw looked excellent and there will be a dvd of those films which won awards so we're looking forward to watching that.
We were all feeling very tired and non committal in the cooking department yesterday evening so we went to MacDonald's! :-0 I think that was my first Big Mac in years!!
The children were giggling and shouting for us to come and see them and this is what we found! She climbed up quite a way to get into there, I'd say that shelf is head height for me. She's a funny one :-)
Manchester city centre was quite exciting over the weekend. Charis and some other little girls had great fun dancing with these street musicians who put on a pretty good show and drew a large crowd (by Manchester standards anyway). I took a number of shots like this one and there were two or three others that were equally good, and some that were possibly better framed and focused. This one however captures the mood and movement best and that's what I wanted. Any comments?Charis and I had gone into town to meet some friends of mine and have lunch at Kro Picadilly. That was most enjoyable as was expected. We then went shopping in Primark and thoroughly regretted setting foot in the place. We bought some nice pj's though!!
I know I've taken a shot of Picadilly gardens already this week and I'm not being boringly repetitive on purpose, it's just I happen to pass the fountains on my way to and from uni so it encourages me to take photo's of them. I altered this photo a little more than normal because I wanted to see if I could improve it as it was rather dull really.
I think you get a much better impression of the fountains in this shot than the one from the other day although it's not a well framed perhaps?
The only photo's I took today were at a friend's child's birthday party and the best one was of her but I don't think she'd appreciate me putting it on here. So instead I am using a photo that Nathan took in his office.
We have quite a few labybird's in the house at the moment, which I can only assume is because my tomato plants appear to have some little green residents.
Taken whilst waiting for the bus on my way home yesterday. (I missed the bus twice by the way, TWICE!) I also bought myself some hair dye which is currently doing it's job and about to be rinsed off any minute now.
Nathan very lovingly bought me some flowers recently and they have been much appreciated by myself and the children, sitting on our table in the kitchen whilst we eat breakfast. They are orange and yellow but here I've upped the iso and lengthened the exposure which gives the petals an exaggerated luminous glow.
The weather has been rather unusual for Manchester today. Rather than being grey, wet, dismal and cold, we've had crisp clear icy air with a glistening sun and lot's of wintry fog! It's been fantastic. This is a tree on the grounds of University that I happened upon on my way to the library.
An owl on display at the Eden Project. I was able to get close without there being a fence or barrier between us!
I almost used this as my halloween photo. This was also taken at the Eden project in one of the biodomes where all the witches, wizards, zombies and little monsters were dancing away!
This is a cheat photo (as are the following ones) because I haven't had chance to take many photo's recently. I am beginning to think that possibly my 'photo a day' may turn into more of a '7 photo's a week' senario unless I can balance my, work, uni, children, housework and hobby time more efficiently.This was taken in the edenproject whilst we were on holiday. I love my new macro lens!
It seems to be a tradition around here for some neighbours and younger members of our local community, to build and light a bonfire on the grass, by the canal, just outside our house. This year I took the kids out to have a look at it, and to watch a couple of the fireworks that the neighbours were setting off. This photo was taken from our window on the first floor with my zoom lens.
See that gap there, between the little bike and the pillar?
That's where my bike would be, had it not been stolen from the back garden! Meaners.
I put it out for a few hours because it was a bit of a hazard in the hall way with the kids coming backwards and forwards and someone helped themselves to it. They had to go into the next door neighbours garden, climb over a fence and get the bike back over it. They damaged some plants in the process too. Charming.I over exposed this photo to make it ever so slightly more interesting and colourful.
We've seen thousands of these the past few days and I expect we'll see many more thousands over the next few weeks! Wellies and raincoats for the next few months....
I wonder how many times I've pressed this button?
Newquay. Playing with my zoom lens, in poor lighting, again. This young lad and his friend appeared to be having a great time and were very good (as far as I could tell with my limited knowledge and compared to all the other surfers out there).
We went to The Eden Project on Halloween. It was a fantastic day out, looking around all the various biomes and other exhibitions. Definitely entertaining for young and old alike, although I think possibly Nathan and I would have got more out of it had we been childless for the day! We had booked ourselves into their 'Little Monster's Ball' for the evening too, which involved lots of fun fancy dress, zombie dancing and other spooky activities, with a great deal of sweets.
There was an ice rink which we had a go on (well more we held the kids up on skates for 20 mins - I believe MAtix said to Nathan "this ice is far too slippy for me daddy").
This shot was taken as everything else was closing, just before we left after a very fun day. Even though it is mostly blurred probably due to hand shake rather than focus issues, I still love it. I would like to set up a camera properly in these situations to take 'motion' photos.
We made our pumpkin lanterns a day early as we were out all day on the 31st. The kids had great fun designing and cutting out their pumpkin scary faces with their daddy. I did all the hard work, getting the flesh out and making the soup of course!
This was our smallest - and cutest - pumpkin. The face was created and cut out (with a bit of help) by Matix, my biggest little girl. She was very specific about the round eyes and round nose. I had suggested triangular ones but that was rejected!
Just for fun you can see mine and Nathan's pumpkin too. Requested by me, created by Nathan!
Chasing and running away from waves became a theme for our holiday. The girls absolutely loved it. They would scream and run back and forth getting very wet and more excitable every time. This beach wasn't far from Penzance and looked out over to St. Michaels Mount.
We had initially hoped to go across to st. Michael's Mount, either by walking when the tide was out or via boat. However the tide was up, it closed at 4pm and the last boat had just left when we arrived, boo!
Trying out my new zoom lens on a small beach at the very bottom of the country. We were almost at the southern most point but not quite, we walked down the wrong foot path!As you can see it was getting a it too dark but such was the way most of the holiday. I think this was only around 4.30pm. We had to walk down a rather steep and slippery path and down a ladder to get onto this beach and then the tide appeared to be coming in. It was a little nerve wrecking with the children so we didn't stay long, but long enough to take some photo's of course!
The first night of our holiday we arrived at our little cottage quite late so I just played around with my macros lens. This little fly really was very little.
