Handmade

I have been having some fun fiddling around with my new(ish) camera and the computer. The photo on top looks to me like something from a hyper-exaggerated Willy Wonka world with its bursting colours while the second one looks like an old photo to me - 60s or 70s - taken on a Polaroid. My husband thought it looked like something taken on another planet!

I have to show you this beautiful neck adornment made by my grandmother (I think) many, many years ago. It's made of black beading to look like (I presume) the popular Victorian material, Jet. Having said this, I wonder if it isn't in fact older since my grandmother was not even an embryo, let alone making jewellery in the Victorian age! I'll never know for sure now but I found it languishing in an old tin in the sleep-out. I now have it on display on my dressing table.

A light-filled Sunday

Had a lovely Sunday. The weather is finally starting to tip towards milder autumnal conditions and I was finally able to sit in the car for longer than half an hour (with my back issues) so we took the opportunity to go for a drive. A wander around a very pretty country town about two hours from here followed with lots of random inning-and-outing of all the little shops that line the main street, a nice lunch and then a walk around the lake. Lots of photo opportunities but alas my camera seems to have got itself into a bit of a state. It would take only very washed out photos. Some were salvageable - like the one above which I think has almost a yellowy, retro, Polaroid feel to it - but on the whole they were blanched-out catastrophes. Lucky my birthday is on the horizon and my DH has promised me a new camera! But then I read an article in the paper this morning that said we should live life not try to capture each moment in photographs. Something in that. But I still would've like my camera to have worked!! Any ideas on why it might be over-exposing everything?

Say Cheese

I seem to be asking you a lot of questions this week. I think it's because I am thinking a lot - my mind is going at about twice the speed of my still sore body! So, today I ask...should I buy a new camera? I think I mentioned long ago that I like to take photographs. But I have been very much of the 'point and shoot' style of photographer. If the photo turns out good - great. If it doesn't look quite like it did in my mind's eye - well, what am I gonna do about it? Now, I think I want to get serious. Being the delicate, artistic soul that I am (ahem), I want to start taking some more artistic, unusual shots and I think for that to really work, I might need a) a bit more skill and b) another camera.

At the moment I have a Samsung Digimax S500. It's pretty good and I think it's probably more my fault than the camera's that it's not doing all that I want. But I am thinking of upgrading to an SLR camera. Does anyone have any thoughts on this? I really am a babe in the woods on this one, so all thoughts welcome. And can anyone recommend a book on taking good digital photos? And what's the deal on Photoshop? Do many of you use it?

Meanwhile, above are some of my 'mean and moody' (as Smash Hits used to say) shots...

Rainy days

We have had a very wet weekend. But I for one am not complaining. As I think I have mentioned to you before, we live in a very dry part of the world and once summer comes, raindrops will be something of a fond and distant memory. So I am quite happy to hear the continual pitter-patter of rain on the roof and windows and to be basically limited to indoor pursuits for a couple of days.

To pass the time as I watched the rain fall, I stitched together Billy the Dog who's a little wonky and probably wouldn't pass the inspection of a halfway decent stitcher but I think he has rather a sweet disposition (for the pattern, see Miyako Kanamori's Sock and Glove); I baked a very nice chocolate cake which disappeared not long after this photo was taken (http://recipefinder.ninemsn.com.au/readersrecipes/77220/easy-chocolate-cake); I pottered about the house practicing with the settings on my digital camera (orchids courtesy of my Fellow Traveller) and I watched some very busy earthworms make their way through the rain...

Wednesday Sunshine

A dreaded sunny day...

As the Smiths once sang in "Cemetery Gates": "A dreaded sunny day, so I'll meet you at the cemetery gates." Sunny days are not really dreaded here (they're too rare!) but it was a nice if windy day yesterday when my Fellow Traveler and I took a stroll around the massive old cemetery in the centre of our town. As you can see, I took my camera and attempted a few artsy-fartsy black-and-white shots. Cemeteries really are quite fascinating places to walk around, especially when they have headstones going back a few centuries.

Into something rich and strange

Full fathom five thy father lies

Of his bones are coral made

Those are pearls that were his eyes

Nothing of him that doth fade

But doth suffer a sea-change

Into something rich and strange

- Shakespeare, The Tempest, Act I, Scene II.

The chaos of memories

Every passion borders on the chaotic, but the collector's passion borders on the chaos of memories.

-Walter Benjamin.

Orchid Spheres

Around the pillars of the palm-tree bower

The orchids cling, in rose and purple spheres

Shield-broad the lily floats; the aloe flower

Foredates its hundred years.

- Bayard Taylor, Canopus.

Like the leaves of a book

Each has his past shut in him like the leaves of a book known to him by heart and his friends can only read the title.

-Virginia Woolf.

Shadows

Everything that we see is a shadow cast by that which we do not see.

- Martin Luther King Jr.

New Hobby

I have decided to improve my photography skills and I am sure that you, as regular visitors to my blog, can understand why! I would really like to get a better understanding of the things my digital camera can do and to really be able to express something in a photo rather than 'this is a...' or 'that is a...' Having said that, I still reliant on my dodgy little mobile phone camera when I want to take something quickly. The black and white effect is interesting, I think, and the photo of the 60s building looks pleasingly (to me!) like it was taken when that building was new (if you just ignore the car window with the modern aerial on it in the foreground...oh and all those modern cars out the front of the building...perhaps my digital photo editing skills need some work too!)