Mayday Madness

Well the only mad thing about Mayday this year is that I have been home alone.  Admittedly, it's not as sad as it sounds.  Saturday morning I was up early to collect my new car from the garage, this is very exciting as I had my last car for 8 years and have run it into the ground.  I'm not even exaggerating, only last week it started protesting about driving forwards, reverse was no issue though.  Then after getting home from that I swapped places in a photography studio, instead of being the one behind the camera, this time I was in front of it for a vintage/pinup shoot.  It was lots of fun and also quite informative for a photography enthusiast like me as I did pay attention to the lighting set up and the posing.  Obviously I came home buzzing with ideas and my blog this weekend was going to incorporate vintage style photos, however, once in my tiny studio, inspiration failed me.  I took the rest of the weekend to relax as there is no point forcing things and then this afternoon I decided to take a walk to the local park, the racecourse, with my camera.  Whilst it's not the usually the prettiest of parks, there were a few flower beds and I got lost in my element.  So here are the results for you to enjoy.

Roses

Last weekend, my friend Charli bought me these beautiful roses.  She knows I absolutely love roses, especially to photograph.

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I have been a little busy all week, so have only just been able to spend some time in the studio.  Usually I rely on window light for flowers, but thought I would try the studio set up and am quite pleased with the results.

 I even think if I wanted to turn some of these into greeting cards, that these ones might work.....

Millie Maloo

I had planned on a completely different photoshoot this weekend, but as it was not successful my friend's daughter very kindly agreed to pose for me anyway.  This is my first child studio photo shoot, although what with it being in my own home and someone I know very well, it wasn't particularly daunting.

I followed all the rules from other blogs I have read about letting her be herself, which included pulling some silly faces.

Once relaxed she agreed to be cute, this isn't all that hard when you are 6 I guess ;-)

Based on these, I definitely need to work on getting less shadows in the shot, unless that is me just being fussy.  I don't think the detract at all but my space is small and I need to work out the best coverage of light.

Now time for my light nemesis, getting down on the floor.  So far Millie has been standing up for all the photos, but I wanted to a, capture her more serious side, and b, learn lighting for models on the floor.  The light is definitely better than the last set I tried, so I call that a win!

And now for my favourite as I managed to catch Millie laughing at something silly.  There's something so natural about her smile that I absolutely love!

Day out in London

Monday saw my first trip to London as a tourist. How strange did that feel?!?!?!?!?!  Even though I moved out of London 5 years ago as I was still commuting in, I still felt like a Londoner.  So 4 months of living and working outside of London made me want to go back.  I luckily had some free train travel vouchers and planned to meet up with some old work colleagues in the afternoon but thought I would make a day of it.

I checked the Met office's website before leaving in the morning and it claimed blue skies all day, brilliant, I don't need waterproofs, how wrong I was.  I didn't let this deter me though.  I had wanted to visit Borough Market as I had never been and was a little too far away from where I worked to ever pop over.

I think it would have been better to have visited at a weekend as not many of the stalls were open, but lesson learned.  Once the rain stopped, I thought I would take a walk back to "my part" of London, so walked all the way to Covent Garden from London Bridge and managed to grab a few photos along the way that encapsulate London.  It was just a shame as it was raining and my camera did not like it too much (neither did my feet).

Arriving in Covent Garden, I had to go to the market there as Monday is antiques day so there are always good photo oppourtunities.

Unfortunately due to the rain there were no street performers so I wandered off to see what was going on in Leicester Square.  As you can see, not a lot either, I am so used to it being bustling with people.

A rest from the rain was needed, so I popped into M&M world.  I've seen many friends/family with kids show up on my facebook stream with visits here, so I thought why not.  The first thing that hit me was the smell of M&Ms.  You'd think this would be a good smell but got sickly very quickly.  I had heard you could get every colour of M&Ms imaginable and it was true

I can see if you had money to spend on absolute rubbish, it being a fun shop, there was so much tat and different style clothing and lots of photo opportunities but it must have been the first time I have walked out of a chocolate shop empty handed.

It was now lunch time, off to Primani on Oxford Street and then to meet work friends.  All in all a great day out, but I will return as a tourist in better weather to get some photos that really show off why I love London.