I Heart Faces - “Raise Your Hands!”

As soon as I saw this weeks challenge over at I heart Faces I knew which photo I wanted to use. I love this photo of my son and husband holding hands.
My son's hand looks so small holding onto my husband's. I love the little details, such as my husband's wedding ring and my son's dirty fingernails.

Entered into I Heart Faces – www.iheartfaces.com

Scavenger Hunt - Landscape, Colour Wheel, B&W, Food & Blank Space

 It's Sunday, so time for another of Ashley Sisk's Scavenger Hunts. 

1. Landscape

I took lot's of traditional landscapes last week on holiday, but it's a bit harder to find beautiful vistas of undisturbed landscape here at home. I went down to a jetty, or pier yesterday at sunset and took  some shots.

2. Colour Wheel 

Triadic Variation

That is blue and red. I originally had this as my landscape shot but I think the red really pops out from the blue sea and Morton Island beyond.

3. Black and White

This tiny little insect was buzzing around my garden earlier this week. I love the shadow he cast on the leaf and the B&W makes him look almost mechanical I think. Taken with my 50mm and extension tube.

4. Food

Pikelets with cream and Mormor's homemade strawberry jam. I think these are just an Australian and New Zealand food, but they are basically pancakes. Mormor is Swedish for mother's mother, so my mum made this yummy jam, but I made the cross stitch jar cover. These pikelets were very popular with my son as afternoon tea.

5. Blank Space

In Sudoku you fill in the blank spaces with numbers to get 1 to 9 in all squares and rows, I used to be addicted to playing Sudoku.

I Learned - Wide-angle Landscapes

I've just got back from holidays at Rainbow Beach and I fell in love with the wide-angle end of my kit lens (Canon 18-55).  Since getting my 50mm 1.8 I've put aside my kit lens, but I recently started using it again for still life photos as it can focus closer than the 50mm, but now I've rediscovered it for landscape photography. I love how much of the scene you can include, especially when there is an interesting sky and reflections or interest in the foreground. And I love how it stretches the perspective.

I've been reading "The Landscape Photography Workshop"and been getting some great tips.
I got so inspired I got out of my warm bed at 5am to go shoot some sunrise shots on the beach.
Lucky for me there was a lot of cloud cover and mist, just perfect in my opinion. It burnt off an hour or so later for another perfect day.
By the way I spotted some whales further out that were blowing and I even saw one breach. Although I heard later in the morning that the baby whale got stuck in the shark nets and had to be cut loose.




Sorry, I just had to put up two from that morning. I love how they are quite different looks even though they are facing in the same direction and are taken on the same morning.

ISO 200, f/16, SS 1/100, focal length 18mm

ISO 100, f/22, SS 2 secs, focal length 18mm

Michelle Johnson from Love that Shot recently wrote a post for iheartfaces on falling in love with your kit lens, read it here.

Constructive critiques welcome

By the way I'd like some advise, my grandmother recently gave me some money that we decided I could spend on camera gear. I have a Canon 1000D and a 50mm1.8, extension tube for macro, 18-55mm and 55-250mm. So I'm wondering if I should upgrade my body, I can get a 60D but not a 5D (full frame), or otherwise I have been considering a real macro lens or a prime wide angle lens. What's your opinions on the best way to go?

Journey Around the Sun - Days 79 through 85

So this is the first week of our holiday at Rainbow Beach, I decided to do it in two lots to avoid one big long post and I'm struggling through the editing.
At the beginning of this week I was so sick and spent most days just sitting on the veranda, I still actually have the cough but it's more irritating than being really sick now. My husband could only get one week off, the second one, so this week I was flying solo and so I didn't take the camera to the beach much, I was scared of getting it all sandy, I had to use the blower on it a lot and I lost count of the number of times I dropped the lens cap in the sand, but at least it wasn't the whole camera!

Day Seventy Nine

Florabella Chardonnay texture applied

Florabella Olive Juice & Golden Autumn texture applied

Florabella Lady Grey texture applied

Processed with Spring Flowers, Violet action

Wild Liriope flowers, these were flowering along the path to the beach, they are so sweet I think, taken with my 50mm together with an extension tube, so they are pretty little!

Processed with The CoffeeShop Blog Velvet Truffle action

Seed pod on the beach, taken with my 50mm together with an extension tube.

Processed with The CoffeeShop Blog Velvet truffle action

Processed with The CoffeeShop Blog Sunkissed action

My son, isn't he cute! :-)

Day Eighty

Florabella Golden Autumn texture applied

Grevilleas in the garden.

Day Eighty One

Processed with Isabelle Lafrance Soulful Everyday Vintage

Both Processed with The CoffeeShop Blog Velvet Truffle action

Spinifex grasses on the beach. I just learnt something, these are the male plants, I have some female plants later in my second week, which have spiky inflorescence. Wow, I did not know that. I love the Internet!

Day Eighty Two

Both Photos Florabella Olive Juice texture applied

Vine tendrils, taken with my 50mm together with an extension tube.

Chambord and Shabby Scratch textures by Florabella applied and processed with Isabelle Lafance Soulful Everyday Vintage

Michelia Coco, a type of Magnolia.

Day Eighty Three

Processed with Paint the Moon Warm Chai action

My mum has a house here, which is where we stay. She actually made these stain glass windows for the dining room of her house, designed and cut the glass herself and did the lead lighting. Aren't they beautiful.

Day Eighty Four

Both photos processed with The CoffeeShop Blog Velvet Truffle action

When it was too hot on the beach my son painted pictures of the shells he's collected on the beach.

Day Eighty Five

Processed with The CoffeeShop Blog Velvet Truffle action

Both photos processed with Isabelle Lafrance Soulful Everyday Vintage action

Shells and patterns on the beach.

Processed with Paint the Moon Warm Chai action & Florabella Sonata texture applied

The sun setting in the garden, Dracaena and garden bokeh. 

Scavenger Hunts - 2 weeks @ Rainbow Beach

We've been on holiday at Rainbow Beach for two weeks. :-) So this week I've got two weeks worth, but I completed the Scavenger Hunts within their weeks, I just couldn't edit or upload them till we got home.  
This week:

1. Inspired by a Book or Movie

Message in a Bottle

I used to read books and watch movies a lot but since becoming a mother I just haven't had the time to immerse myself in a book, I only read non fiction parenting books, home decorating or photography books now, they're easy to just pick up and put down too. Also since getting into photography I spend most of my evenings editing, or with my husband. So I racked my brain for this prompt and thought "Message in a Bottle" was the perfect theme to use, considering we were on a rugged beach.
Message in a Bottle is a 1999 American romantic drama film directed by Luis Mandoki. Based on a novel with the same name by Nicholas Sparks, the film stars Kevin Costner, Robin Wright Penn, and Paul Newman.
Most of the work went into the prop of the bottle I tried to distress it by rubbing it along some paving and used sandpaper on it and cut a cork from a champagne cork. I even aged the paper for the letter.

2. Brown

Mushrooms growing on a log and leaf litter along the path to the beach.

3. Hazy

A hazy sunrise, the coloured sand cliffs are engulfed in mist, only to burn off and reveal another beautiful day on the beach.

4. Coffee or Tea

I love coffee and herbal teas! I especially love to go out for cappuccinos, this one is from my favourite Italian restaurant in Rainbow Beach village, Arcobaleno.  

5. Linger

We lingered away the holidays at the beach, from sunrise to sunset, feeling the soft sand beneath our feet, the sun warming our bodies, clouds drifting across the sky, we listen to the surf crash against the sand, then linger, mirroring the colours from the sky.

Last week:

1. Low Key

A feather found on the beach disappears into darkness.

2. The Colour Wheel

Monochromatic

Water drops on grasses. 

Analogous

A seed pod on the beach, taken with my 50mm lens and extension tube.

Chromatic Gradation

Wild grasses on the beach.
I hope these are right, I'm not the greatest at the colour wheel and it's hard to get pure strong colours at the beach. 

3. Circle

Somehow I missed this was supposed to be part of a self portrait, probably had something to do with looking up the prompts on my husbands smart phone, see Phone below.
But this is the circle through which I see and document my view of life.

4. Scarf

The temperature jumped ten degrees Celsius the week before our holiday but I still took some scarves with me, which of course I never wore. I hung them up on the string line between some trees though and watched them flap in the sea breezes.

5. Phone

My son is amazing with technology, I'm amazed watching him play Angry Birds on my husband's smart phone, fingers flicking here and there. I'm so cell phone challenged I accidentally deleted some comments when I checked my blog with the phone, although I started to get the hang of it after two weeks.