tapestry weaving again

I'm so excited - I've just started Rebecca Mezoff's online tapestry weaving course. I admire her work so much and as far as I know this is the only online course of its kind. It's no lightweight but a serious course taking the art of tapestry weaving right from the basics. Until now I've tried to learn from books but believe me, there's nothing like having someone in front of you (even if it's electronically!) showing you how it's done.

This is my sampler so far. It's far from perfect but it's not too bad I think.

sampling for embroiderers' guild course

These are my samples for straight stitch, fly stitch and detached chain stitch for Module 1 of the Embroiderers' Guild hand embroidery certificate course I'm doing.

Results of an online course

These are a few of the experiments that resulted from an online course I recently took. It was great fun but I didn't quite finish it because there was an unexpected break of one week just before the last two weeks' classes and it threw me. I am very easily put off finishing things but was going great guns on this course until the halt and I just couldn't get myself going again.

This something that I must address - again!

dried hydrangea

I took this when I was on holiday in Cornwall earlier this year. It was in the house we rented and it appealed to my love of dead things! It's a dried hydrangea which has faded to a beautiful soft creamy colour - I didn't tamper with the colour after photographing it at all. It sat on a window sill in the conservatory and was getting lots of light through it, giving it an ethereal look.

I've been dealing with disappointment at missing Kat's upcoming visit to the UK in October. She's holding a couple of on-location workshops and I'm going to miss both of them because I'll be away on holiday. But it's reminded me that I haven't picked up my camera enough lately and I need to do so. It's a bit like an itch that needs scratching. But I'm a little sick of taking photos of flowers, much though I love them. It's an easy non-challenging thing to do for me - a bit formulaic, and I really want to move on to other subjects. I've recently been inspired by the blog of Nichole Robertson and her beautiful book, Paris in Colour and I think I might take her idea of choosing a colour and photographing a wide range of subjects in that colour and see if I can make it work for me. It will give me focus (no pun intended!) without tying me down to a specific subject. And getting myself out of my comfort zone will encourage me to find out how to solve the problems that come with different types of photography. 

Sketching

It's so long since I posted anything and, despite there being no need to blog regularly, I still feel guilty. I've been working on a sketching course and this is one of my studies.

WHAT FUN!!

I'm doing a course called the Experimental Art e-Course and I'm having such fun. This experiment contains coffee and tea stains, watercolour paints, acrylic ink splashes spiked with a toothpick, wax pastels and soft pastels plus gold acrylic paint.

And this one is magazine pictures stuck onto water coloured paper stained with rubbed beech leaf, oil pastels and acrylic paint applied straight from the tube with a cotton bud.

More will follow!

PINE TREE TAKEN WITH WIDE ANGLE LENS

For Christmas my husband gave me a 20mm wide angle lens. He ordered it online early in December but it didn't arrive until New Year's Eve. Naturally, as soon as it arrived I bunged it on my camera and went out for a walk. I really want it for photographing architecture and urban scenes but I was desperate to try it out on something big and this pine tree fitted the bill. I was quite close to the tree and managed to get it all in the frame, from top to bottom. But it wasn't until I got home I saw that, in my excitement to use the lens, I'd left the ISO set at 3200 after taking some indoor lowlight photographs the day before, so I had to work really hard in Lightroom to get it to look anything like reasonable.

I just joined the 2011 One Little Word workshop at Big Picture Classes and am thinking hard about what my chosen word will be. I think it may well be SLOW because two of the things I really need to work on are patience and thinking before doing. So at the end of the year when my husband gives me a 100mm Macro Lens (is it too early to start hinting :-)) I will take it slowly and get a great picture first time out!

BEACH WALKING ON A COLD DAY

Today we went for a walk at the seaside. It was bright but cold - perfect for a Boxing Day walk.  I was having a coffee at a beach cafe which was below the level of the people walking along the beach and liked the sky behind this group.

This image is also my submission for this weeks' assignment in my photography course. Only one more week to go!

STREET SCENE

This is one of the photographs I took yesterday when I was working on my Street Photography course. It was really cold and I just couldn't stay out there too long. The exercise was to produce photographs that froze action and others that showed motion, so I was photographing people walking along the street and chose this cafe as a good backdrop. In this one I had a pedestrian just coming in on the right-hand side but I decided to crop him out and convert to black and white for my blog photo today.

MORE FROSTINESS

Today has been another cold one and yesterday's frost didn't completely clear away before another last night. This buddleia is a lovely dark purple in summer and it still retains some of that colour, enhanced by its sprinkling of frost. I was tempted to convert to black and white but I like the slight greenness of the background which compliments the colour of the flower.

We've had the wood burner going full time since Friday and in the garden the smell of woodsmoke is lovely, beckoning me in to sit in front of its cosy warmth. This morning we went for a walk on the forest and the ground was rock hard - a nice change from mud. The view from the top of the hill showing everything coated with a pale coat of frost against a watery blue sky was stunning.

I think the coming week's street photography course includes work with motion and different shutter speeds. I suspect anyone outside in the cold will be walking pretty fast so I'll start panning at 1/125 and work from there. It sounds as if I know what I'm talking about doesn't it!!

MR. ATLAS

This was a submission for week 3 of the Street Photography course I'm doing. The assignment was to find a place to make a good backdrop and then to wait for someone to come into the scene to make a good image. I knew of this sculpture at a nearby town and thought it would be a good scene for my photo - unfortunately I didn't know they were re-paving the precinct!!

I got a coffee from the cafe in the background and sat around waiting for the 'right' opportunity. It was freezing cold and I was sitting on a concrete bench and I'm lucky I didn't get a nasty case of piles! Luckily, just as I was about to run out of coffee and patience, and after several pretty boring photographs, this man came along. He had a shopping bag with him which he put down just by the sculpture and bent to tie up his shoe lace. I didn't realize until I downloaded the photographs that in my image it looks as if he's trying to lift the sculpture.

I converted to black and white to try to get rid of some of the distraction of the workmen's fences in the background, but it's a real shame they were there.

Lines and Clouds

This is the museum in my home town. The slats seem to translate really well into a black and white image probably because they're very graphic and repetitive. This was part of my town walk-around yesterday for my course. I won't use them for the course assignment because that was all about taking the same view with different lenses and focal lengths.

Low tide in Norfolk

It's been a dreadful grey, rainy day today - even worse than yesterday. I stood outside this afternoon taking a series of photographs of the same image at different shutter speeds with the camera hand held as part of my course. It was to find the speed at which the image began to break down and lose its sharpness. I froze to death and by the time I'd finished I couldn't feel my fingers. I must put some fingerless gloves on my shopping list - I think I'm going to need them!

I found the picture above among the photos I took early in October when we were on holiday in Norfolk. It looks better in black and white than it did in colour - more dramatic I think. The lines of rock give it the contrast that black and white photos need. It's a shame there wasn't a strong blue sky that day which would have given more interest at the top of the photograph, but this is England!!

Street Photography Course Week 1

Well, my online street photography course officially starts today and lasts for eight weeks. I was conscious that I'd be expected to get out there and get going pretty quick, and as I had to go to London to see a client this morning I didn't want to miss an opportunity for some nifty photoing. But I didn't think I could take my beloved Canon as well as my laptop and everything else for my meeting, so I took my husband's point and shoot Lumix.

As soon as I saw these colourful hire bicycles I knew they'd make a great image.

This is my morning espresso fix at an outdoor cafe in a London street.

And this is my first real photograph of an unsuspecting person acting naturally! Woefully out of focus but my excuse is that I couldn't shoot manually so it's the camera's fault :-) I loved the expression of concentration on this little boy's face as he took a photo of his family in the concourse of Victoria Station. I took quite a few photographs there while I waited for my train home but I wasn't happy with any of them except for this one which I like for its subject but definitely not for its lack of technical ability.

For the next eight weeks I'm going to be welded to my Canon day and night. I've got to get used to focusing quickly and learn how to work out exposure with no help from the camera. Anyone heard of the 'Sunny 16' rule? Nor had I this morning. And maths was never my best subject!!

Black & White

I've just joined Justine Gordon's Black & White November flickr group. The real challenge is to find subjects with enough contrast between light and dark to make a striking black and white image and the photograph above just doesn't have that.

I took it during my afternoon walk with Misty in some nearby woods. I had this view in mind when I went out and knew I'd be able to frame the farm with close up foliage. The leaves in the foreground work really well, but the landscape beyond is made up of too many mid-tones to translate well into black and white.

So - a learning curve and, hopefully, the beginning of a journey of discovery during November.

And I finally clicked on that Buy Now button and enrolled on an online course with BetterPhoto.com on street photography starting Wednesday. Can't wait - although with a certain amount of trepidation!

STILL PLAYING ...

...but I promise to stop soon!

And yes, I've found out how to put a watermark on my photos! I took this photo in the same way as my pine tree experiment yesterday, but this time of autumn leaves.

With this one I chose a long shutter speed because the wind was blowing quite strongly. The idea was to get the branches in focus but not the leaves.

I've rejected loads of other experiments, but I'm beginning to find out what my camera can do and what it can't and what effects I get from playing around.

But to be honest, this isn't what I really want to do. I've been pursuing an online course specifically for street photography and have found one I think I'm going to enrol on. It's an 8-week course and starts next Tuesday, or again in another two months' time, starting at the beginning of January. I've almost made my mind up to go for the November one and my finger keeps hovering over that Buy Now button. I know right now I'm going to click it but am SO enjoying the anticipation.