Back in the spring, I, along with all my colleagues at work, found myself encouraged once again to donate 'lots' for our annual charity auction. The auctions have always been a great success, over the years raising several thousand pounds for charity. Each year some of my colleagues have donated their skills as well as more tangible things, such as an afternoon's gardening, a dog walking service and even a professional chef to come and cook a meal at your home!
This year, I made my own offer for the auction - as a challenge to myself I agreed I would donate my photography skills for a portrait sitting at their home, something which would cost well over £200 at a professional studio. I'd read several articles in magazines where a similar effect could be created in a brightly lit room at home, with a white sheet for a background, a decent flashgun and reflector together with some editing work afterwards in Photoshop, so I nervously agreed to offering my services on a best endeavours basis.
Landscapes and still lifes are more controllable than people, so this was well outside my comfort zone and I was anxious to see firstly whether people would bid at all, and secondly if they did, who would win and how much would they be prepared to pay? And then of course, what would they expect for their money and could I deliver the goods?
In the event, there was no last minute Ebay-style rush to buy, and if we'd had a reserve price then my offer wouldn't have sold at all! Not to be disheartened, I was pleased to hear a couple of bids come in and the winner was Ian, a colleague on my own team, who'd pledged £12 for a family photo shoot. Not a fortune but enough to make it a serious venture - the pressure was on!
Fast forward to today, much longer after the event that it should have been, but we finally found a convenient date for the shoot. So, over at Ian's house the furniture had been moved, the white sheets were in place covering the walls and floor, and Ian's two daughters were ready and extremely excited to be the two models for the morning!
Our photo shoot turned out to be great fun, the girls were naturals at posing for the camera and even disappeared twice to change clothes! I shot a number of portraits of the two girls together, some of them on their own, and some family shots with Mum and Dad too. We had some great laughs and really enjoyed ourselves, and the hour we'd planned flew by. Afterwards I had nearly 80 pictures to assess in Photoshop, with the hope of producing a dozen or so good enough to be enlarged and printed. This would take much longer than the shoot itself, but here are a couple which I'm already very pleased with:
The next stage is to share all the pictures which have worked out, and then see which they want to print out and in what format. I'm looking forward to see how they print up in detail. Will I do it again next year? - perhaps, we'll wait and see.
This is actually delicious - it's only 'terrifying' to fit with a Halloween-themed charity cake sale at work tomorrow. It's also simple to make - just two mugs of self-raising flour and a mug each of caster sugar, milk and fruit. Then an egg, a pinch of salt and four desert-spoons of treacle. No fancy measurements - just mix it all together then into a loaf tin and an hour and a quarter at 150 C.
I was in Watford earlier this week through work, and the view from the fifth floor of my hotel wasn't the most inspiring. Having a view from above and my camera phone to hand gave me an idea to try though which I'd read about in a recent photoraphy magazine. A popular technique at the moment seems to be to make a photo appear as a scale model by adjusting the blur and focusing effects, and with plenty of traffic on the road below, this is the result.
The river flowing through the park is the Darwen, a fairly short but fast flowing river rising in the hills above the town which gives it its name. By the time it reaches the park, it has been joined by the Blakewater, the blake 'burn' which gives Blackburn its name. Wikipedia suggests 'blake' means either 'black' or possibly'clear', so the name could either refer to pollution (the river was treated as a sewer over many centuries), or perhaps to an earlier time when the river was in better health.
We walked from Abbey Village through the woods up to the visitor centre and cafe at Tockholes, the usual starting point for several routes, including some up the hillside to Darwen Tower, just a couple of miles further on. The cafe contains some displays about the area and its wildlife, but also of interest was a number of photos for sale, all taken by local photographers in the local area. These included the woods we'd just walked through as well as the nearby hills, moorland, and of course the tower itself.
