OK so work and family issues have conspired to ensure that I haven’t updated this, or the website – or most of my outside work interests (the music publication etc) for a couple of months. With any luck, I am back on an even footing now and can get back to the things I love doing.
The photography is fun, although I am not destined to be a people photographer, I can see I will have to curb my enthusiasm a bit or I will be buying the teleconverter lens for the Panasonic sooner rather than later. Need to get more walking done though, am in danger of becoming a blob …
Glorious day – we drove up the M6 and round a bit of the lakes – Kendal, Kirkstone Pass, Ullswater and Aira Force and then back to Tebay. The sun shone and the air was clear – and Wordsworth’s daffodills (or their near relatives) were flowering more-or-less where he is reputed to have seen them!
Glad I had a practice with the water photography before hand – what fun this is, I am probably going to bore everyone silly, though!!
Have spent an entertaining afternoon trying to understand how photographing moving water works. I read about it and tried it out variously on the water coming out of the shower head – very unsatisfactory white background – and then some deeply unpicturesque and pretty unsuccessful attempts at the weir in Emberton Park. Came home and then read some more – and found that my camera has a few helpful settings already programmed in!
So here one extreme (fairly slow) and the other extreme (fairly fast) with the camera sorting out the rest – taken at the Olney Mill race.
And then I bought a new camera. I was going to buy a little compact point and shoot with more zoom than the Pentax – but John had watched the Gadget Show – and they did a bit on digital bridge cameras. The Sony came out overall best and most expensive, naturally – but the Panasonic did really well too and I couldn’t afford that either so I bought one!
And it’s great! It seems reasonably simple to use, I don’t speak f-stops and ISO levels and stuff – but it has pictures and presets and joysticks and nice easy buttons to press. The results may not be especially great phtography, but it is fun.
I took this hellebore picture in the garden and then took out the background – and that was fun too. There will be no time for blogging from now on!!
Life seems to have been too busy to update the blog (or the website!) recently – and I really should be in bed.
Have taken on a commission to do a website for Jennys fledgling business and I just need to link to it here. Found what seems to be the ideal = cheap but with good reviews specialist WordPress host – which means that I can gradually handover control of the CMS to the client and be on hand for technical support.
Hope it works – in the meantime here it is:
I upgraded my WordPress install to the latest version – and it broke my theme! Something non-standard in the CSS I presume – so I have found a different theme to work with and am in the process of making it my own – could be a long and painful process – in the meantime I am learning much more about CSS than I knew originally so it’s a benefit. Must lose the indent on this style … success (although you haven’t seen the change!)
And then I thought I’d see about making a music index page – and lo and behold, there was a plugin to do that too!
The initial flurry of activity has died down – as work and social committments and some much needed DIY in the house have taken over for the next week or so, then I’ll be back to this again with renewed enthusiasm (I hope)
I am in the process of dragging barbaratate.com and douglastate.com under one roof – and for better or worse have opted for a WordPress installation to double as both a blog and a CMS – let’s see how it goes as I move the content from the two sites across! To start with though, there will be very little new content to see!
Barbara