Texture Tuesday: Schools out edition

Tags

art, childhood, photoaday, Photography, Project Life

“If you carry your childhood with you, you never become older.” – Tom Stoppard

Well what I did was as follows:

1. Sharpened in Lightroom 5 slightly.

2. Transfered to Photoshop cc

3. KKbrush used colour burn @ 85% opacity.

4. Duplicated the background layer, screen @ 20% opacity

5. Duplicated the background layer, soft light @ 30% opacity

6. kk_OhMy, multiply @ 25%

7. kk_LittleThings, multiply @35% opacity.

8. kk_LittleThings, Darken @ 35% opacity.

The pre shot is here , as you can probably tell I have just brightened it slightly and added the text, I quite liked the golden tones of the straight out of camera shot and just wanted to enhance it slightly.

The beauty of the Jurassic

Tags

art, blogging101, Dorset, journal, Lifestyle, photo101, Photography, photography101, Postaday, Project Life

Fishing

A path well trodden

❤

❤

On top of the world

Dodging the waves

Crashing waves

Dead slow

The view

❤

Coastline view

The end of the day

In the Photography 101 course for this weekend there were no themes, but the task was to capture some wide angle shots, what could be better than landscapes. After shooting it was suggested we create a gallery of our photos (see above). I do not usually upload my photos to WordPress, instead choosing to link to my Flickr account where I have unlimited storage, so I am not sure I will do that many galleries on my blog due to the limited storage on the free accounts.

I just love the Jurassic Coastline in Dorset and East Devon it is England’s first natural World Heritage Site. It is a unique stretch of coastline which sits amongst the ranks of the Great Barrier Reef and the Grand Canyon as one of the wonders of the natural world! The site was granted its status for its outstanding geology, which represents 185 million years of earth history in just 95 miles, covering from Exmouth in East Devon to Old Harry Rocks at Studland Bay on the Dorset coast. Over the many years that I have visited I have walked much of this coastline now though I am going to start photographing it too. Whilst visiting this time we walked from Burton Bradstock to West Bay along the beach and then back along the cliffs. Burton Bradstock acts as one of the main gateways to the Jurassic Coast and the South West Coastal Path. Hive Beach and the famous Hive Beach Cafe (if you like fish or ice-creams it is a wonderful place to have a rest), is a hugely popular family destination, made up of shingle, surrounded by spectacular sandstone cliffs. It forms part of the larger Chesil Beach; which is the largest shingle ridge in the world. Burton Cliffs offer one of the finest examples of the distinctive, alternate hard and soft layered geology of this Bridport Sands area, which make it appear to glow bright gold in the sunlight. Regular rock falls often expose some important and fascinating fossils, such as ammonites, recognised by their ribbed spiral-formed shell, my kids have found a few ammonites and sharks teeth here during our many visits, although the best ones and most well preserved can be found at Charmouth. (They just love the kids playground at West Bay after the long walk too!). There is a faultline at Hive Beach and the cliffs to the east of the fault change to the grey cliffs made up of clay and Fullers Earth. Burton Cliff though is similar to East Cliff at West Bay and the central part the Bridport Sands are topped by Inferior Oolite which is capped with a layer of Fuller’s Earth. The beach at Burton Bradstock is near the western end of the Chesil Beach and is made up of fine shingle. There has though been substantial loss of beach at Burton Cliffs as the fine shingle is moved from west to east by the long shore drift as a result of the prevailing south westerly winds and tides. Unfortunately and renewal of the beach shingle from the west is prevented by the harbour piers at West Bay, Bridport. The coastal sea level of central southern England is rising at an increased rate and in general the low water mark is moving higher inland causing beach narrowing or beach steepening. Because of this, there is no longer the large quantity of fine shingle that there used to be in front of Burton Cliff. Geologists think that over time the beach at Burton Cliff will eventually disappear and it will therefore become a rocky coast with the sea breaking onto the cliffs.

For any of you that have watched the TV show “Broadchurch” with David Tennant and Olivia Coleman, this was filmed here (I saw parts of both of these being filmed on visits to the coastline).

All of the photos above were edited in Lightroom and I then added my watermark in Photoshop CC.

5 minutes: on the PS4

Tags

blogging101, games, journal, Lifestyle, Photography, Project Life, son

As long as there are games to play it is not over. – Alex Ferguson

In control

My kids tend to be outside playing more than they are inside so I do not mind if they have the odd 30 minutes or so on computers or game consoles. My sons favourites at the moment are FIFA 15 on the PS4 (what he is playing here) or Minecraft on the iPad.

Team selection

Selecting his players, making transfers, planning his tactics, he loves managing his team just as much as playing the game itself.

Serious moments

It can be serious business waiting to see if your transfer bids have been successful!

Concentration

Then it is time to concentrate on a game, at this point I was told my time was running out, 2 minutes and counting.

In the distance

Above and beyond

Intense moments

He started to get fidgety as the game was nearing an end and seconds later after a good win for his team he jumped up and headed outside to practice his kick ups in the garden.

5 minutes: At football

Tags

Lifestyle, Photography, Project Life, son

“I eat football, I sleep football, I breathe football, I am not mad, I am just passionate” – Thierry Henry

The 5 Minute Project is curated by Dana Pugh and began as a her personal project on her family blog. To participate, you simply document 5 minutes of your life. The spirit of this project is keep it unplanned and unstaged, just 5 ordinary minutes. Of course, 5 minutes can be extraordinary, too, but you can see beauty in the mundane, it is not intended to just be 5 minutes of a portrait sitting.

I thought this sounded perfect for me, my kids are getting older now and they are less and less happy (well my son anyway) to be in front of the camera, but when I limit them to 5 minutes I might just stand a chance………………I can see my son bringing out his stopwatch, setting it to the 5 mins and telling me time is up when the alarm goes.

Todays 5 minutes was taken during my sons team football match on Sunday. He is football (soccer) crazy, the quote by Thierry Henry really sums up his view so well. He has been playing for this club since he was 7 and now at 10 he plays at the weekend at least one day for a club. He trains 3 times a week, one at Chelsea Invitational, one for his club and the other is playing Futsal (as you can see he eats sleeps and breathes football). He also plays for his school when they have matches! When he is not playing football he loves managing his team on the PS4 (FIFA 15 game) and deciding on tactics with his Match Attack card collection, I am sure these activities will feature at some point in the future for my 5 minutes.

Lets just say it was rather an action packed 5 minutes, my son was all over the pitch (as he always is both attacking, defending and in this game alone he set up 5 goals!). A fantastic win of 6v4 for this his final game with this club. This game was just a friendly as his team was disbanded by the club owners at the beginning of January, so it was nice for them to go out on a high 🙂