Moms, kids and school holidays

School only starts again in February, so the kids are already showing signs of cabin fever.  Since we have a yearly pass for the Melbourne Aquarium, I decided we should take a train trip in to the city. 

After drowning my sorrows over the broken lens in a huge box of chocolate, I decided to just have fun with the photography and focus on getting the shot, not worrying about graininess and ISO.  (My slower lens required me to shoot at 1600 ISO).

We started with the penguins again.  They swim so enormously fast! 

 

My daughter loves the seahorses.  This one was really swimming upside down.

We rushed through the  next area, since the kids wanted to get to the interactive display.  We did stop to look at some of the fish and frogs though.  The last frog is quite venomous: the poison arrow frog.

  The kids then took some time to touch the creatures in the interactive display.

Then we got to the jellyfish.  The lighting in there was great!  The kids loved how their white clothes lit up under the lights.

The jellyfish are lit with different kinds of light to show their different properties.

  These babies are about the size of my fingernail.

This giant crab looked like it was posing!  Couldn’t resist getting a shot.

The day ended up being enormous fun, in both the photography and time with the kids.

Almost a teenager

My oldest is getting close to the dreaded teenager stage.  Not quite happy with being photographed anymore, but now and then I get him to agree to my taking shots while he ‘does his thing’.  He loves climbing anything: trees, playground equipment,…  I often get him from below.

He is a real bookworm, so the glasses truly suit him.  Only problem when taking photos is that they go dark.  I decided today to try my faster lens and shoot indoors.  The lens kept giving problems, not focussing, then stopped working all together.  When I checked it to see what was wrong, I realised the lens had separated completely from the electronics…  It must have been from when I got knocked hard while in a store a little while ago.  A guy walked hard into me, knocking the bag off my shoulder.  I suspected I lost something when the bag hit the floor with that resounding clank, but the lens still seemed to be in one piece.  Apparently I was mistaken.  Now to get hold of a husband on the other side of the world, who forgot to pack his cell phone charger!

The many faces of…

My middle child has such a big heart.   He is so quick to make friends, to laugh and to rejoice in the every day things.  He crawls into the heart of everyone he meets.

He is the active one in the family.  He only recently learnt to ride his bike.  Now he races on the bicycle path like a pro, even overtaking his older brother.

When I asked him to stop moving for a minute (quite a sacrifice for him), he started pulling faces.  I couldn’t get two shots the same!  But it is just as well.  With his personality, I don’t think just one would have done the trick.

        

And he just didn’t stop!  After a while I was laughing so hard I couldn’t take any more…

 

Portraits

I decided to take this week to try different things with portraits.  Thankfully my kids aren’t yet camera-shy!  I took a few in the playground.  The sun was still really sharp and stark, so I tried to get the lighting on the faces even, letting the background blow out a bit.  A very shallow depth of field helped blur the background so it would not distract from the face.

This is one of the shots.  I liked the high key tone of the image, with similar colours in the foreground and background.  She loves the dry river bed at the playground.  I blame Makka Pakka (“In The Nightgarden”) for her fascination with rocks!

She can be such a little angel, but so strong-willed… 

I will post more shots tomorrow.  My husband is flying out early tomorrow morning, so it is going to be a really long day for us.  So I am going to bed a little earlier than normal.

A Quarter of a Second

My husband gave me a Joe McNally book for Christmas, “The Moment It Clicks”.  One section describes how to take photos at a longer exposure.  I decided to practice the technique a bit.

You sit flat on the ground, legs crossed, elbows on your knees.  It worked a charm.  Having moving subjects makes it a little trickier though!

The photos are all handheld at ¼ of a second exposure, straight out of the camera.  It took some practice (and will take some more) , but I think I am getting the hang of this…

The golden light of the evening

Since New Year’s Eve, we have been having a bit of rain and some thunderstorms.  The sky has been white with low-lying clouds.  Last night I was just sitting in the study, trying to digest some upsetting news, when I realised the whole room had lit up.  The sky had turned a beautiful golden colour.  It turned everything into a magical, romantic place.

  

I just love that we have lavender in our garden!

  

Our garden has been a little neglected with the move and all the celebrations, hence the dandelions…

It was a beautiful tribute to a wonderful mother, grandmother and great-grandmother.  Goodbye grandma Clarie, we miss you.

New Year’s Eve

I really wanted to go see the fireworks in the city, but with kids, it isn’t always a practical option.  So we spent an awesome evening with friends at home.  The kids had a ball playing with poppers.  They decorated the side hedge with all the streamers.

My daughter got super excited, maybe because she was the only girl amongst all the boys.  They looked after her really well.

Hope you had a great start to your new year.