Day 5: Fun In The Gisborne Botanic Gardens

Today we went for a quick visit to the Gisborne Botanic Gardens, and although quite cold, we still had lots of fun.  Once again I took plenty of photos that it made it near impossible to pick out a favourite.  Hmmm seems to be a common theme with me at the moment.  These first three photos are of Jack & Lewis playing and exploring in the gardens:

This next shot is of a tree that quite literally looked like it was on fire.  God I love autumn !

And these last few shots were taken from inside a tree that has split in half.  I thought I would experiment with taking a photo through a hole in the tree.  Unfortunately the boys were too busy to play ball and come over :-)

Day 4: On The Edge Of A Precipice

Upon getting home yesterday I bundled everybody into the car, and we went for a drive around Bacchus Marsh.  The area of Bacchus Marsh and surrounding townships like Gisborne are just naturally beautiful, where one could lose oneself for a long time.  Driving along a road that links Bacchus Marsh to Gisborne was just amazing, where on one side of the road is just beautiful hillsides.  I took a few photos and narrowed it down to two but couldn't pick between the two, so I've posted them both.  In the first photo, I just love the lone tree by itself with a dead tree in the back ground, and then looking at the hills you can see a misty rain:

With the second photo I couldn't decide whether to add it or not as I just love it.  No explanations, I just love it.  I also just noticed that I've managed to capture the falling rain as well:

Just to let you know, don't be afraid of letting me know what you love and what you hate about any of the photos that I post.  Constructive criticism is definately encouraged or i'll never learn what I'm doing wrong or right ;-p

Day 3: Car Seat Diva

Today one of the twins were to have a photoshoot for Britax who manufacture the car seats for Safe N Sound.  The twin that was chosen was Sebastian, as Oliver had had his guts full and was looking like he could vomit at any second even though he was full of smiles.  The photographer was quite nice and so was his camera  : p     He was using a Canon EOS 5D Mark II ............. very nice.  Anyway I asked him if he minded me taking some photos of him and the photo shoot, as well as promising him that I wouldn't get in the way, and he was awesome about letting me.  I found he was quite fast at getting the photos he wanted which left me fumbling with my settings, and resigning to quickly taking some photos using the automatic feature so that I could at least get some photos of the shoot.  After getting some photos I switched back to manual mode to practice more with the manual settings and overexposed them a little bit but am generally quite happy.  The first three photos are in auto and the other two are in manual:

Auto:

Manual:

Day 2: Getting To Know You

I caught this magic moment today when Jack lay down next to Oliver to start chatting to him (ISO 400, F/3.5, 1/30sec, 21mm)

Day 1: Kicking Off Project 365 !!!

I thought that to kick things off, I would do so with a happy smiley boy (ISO 200, F/4.5, 1/50sec, 37mm).  The other boys will make appearances throughout the year, along with nature shots and creative shots.

Right Place, Right Time, Wrong Lens

Today was quite a learning experience with the camera and its lenses.  We had a football match to attend this morning.  It was my nephew-in-law's first football match, so naturally I took the camera along.  Out of the three lenses I had to choose from (18-55mm, 55-250mm, or the 50mm portrait lens), I chose the 55-250mm lens which turned out to be a wise decision.  It enabled me to get photos that I wouldn't normally have gotten using one of the other lenses.  Looking at my nephew out there playing, certainly took me back about 20 years.

After the football match we travelled to Ballarat to see the Woodworkers Market, where my stepfather-in-law was showing off his wood carvings for the first time in public.  On the way there we stopped off at home to grab a few things, and I had the chance to change the telephoto lens with the 18-55mm lens, but I didn't think I would need to change the lens over, so I left it.  I later regretted that decision.  When we got there, the market was in a sports centre, which was good because it was in out of the weather.  After walking around for a little while searching for my stepfather-in-law's stall, we had finally found it.  Pretty much straight away my mother-in-law asked me to take some photos of the stall.  I turned the camera on, and started to zoom out on the stall only to find that the lens wouldn't zoom out anymore.  Argh shit I should've used the other lens.  For the rest of the day I had to make do with the telephoto lens.  I found that it was good for focusing on most things, but then there was the odd close up shot where the lens was totally useless.  I just had to make do with the telephoto lens, and for closeups I used the iphone.

A Learning Curve

Today whilst thinking up ideas of what exactly I wanted to take photos of during my Project 365, I had the honour of taking photos of my stepfather-in-law's carvings, so that he would have a portfolio of what he'd done to show potential customers.  With the majority of the carvings being made of wood, I thought they would look totally awesome sitting on the grass whilst I took the photos.  After 2 hours of taking photos, as well as making sure they looked good on the grass, and the transporting of carvings back and forth from the house. I had finally finished just as my stepfather-in-law arrived home.  After showing him some of the photos, he didn't seem overly impressed.  I was quite shattered in that I didn't know what was wrong.  If they weren't any good, then tell me they need improvement.  Constructive criticism and I are friends after all ;-)  Later on I found out that the problem was that the carvings were placed on the ground, which apparently is a big no no in his culture, as it's meant to bring bad luck and evil spirits.  I didn't realise that there was a lot of faith and religious belief surrounding his carvings. After my stepfather-in-law blessed all of his carvings, all was right in the world again, and he apparently loves the photos. (ISO 100, F/9, 1/250sec, 37mm)