The children and I took a stroll around West Kirby boating lake one Saturday afternoon whilst Lou did the shopping. It was cold, with a northerly wind blowing, although this didn’t put the kids off wanting ice cream! Although, to be honest, there is never a bad time to have ice cream!!
Water like a mirror
Tranquility
Dark and Moody boating lake
Writing your name in the sand
Siblings loving each other…for once!
There is never a bad time to have donuts!
A little bear!
Mia and myself – taken by Ben!
Ben riding the miniature railway
Long shadows in the autumnal sun
Trees bathed in autumnal sun
The last week or so has been particularly bad weather wise in the UK. We’ve gone from having warm(ish) days with endless sunshine to torrential rain and floods! Traditionally, well in my sense, this time of year has always been nice as it has coincided with the birth of my daughter – incidentally, she is 2 tomorrow! So given on Sunday we had torrential rain all day and night (see picture representing how miserable it was) the weather now seems to be picking up again. Today was glorious with clear blue skies and temperatures topping out at 17C. Despite the rain putting stop to any outdoor activities we had planned for the weekend one beneficiary has been the garden. It is now starting to look very green with flowers starting to bloom and lots of birds and insects around…is it to early to say Spring is finally here?
I have for one will be keeping my fingers crossed that this fine weather continues for at least another week or so as next Wednesday myself and the family are off down to Dorset for Carol Cakes wedding. We are all extremely excited, especially the children as they are getting dressed up in the glad rags and are part of the wedding party! The weekend is also going to be pretty exciting for me also as I am taking the pictures for what will be the new Mr and Mrs Cakes! One amazing thing to look forward to is the arrival of a lens ordered in just to shoot the wedding – the amazingly awesome Canon 70-200mm f/2.8 MkII IS USM!!!!!! AWESOMENESSS
In time I am sure you will see some pictures from the wedding. Until then here are a few shots that sum up the change in weather from Sunday until today…
The Apple 12 days of Christmas app available on iTunes has given away some fantastic free apps this year. One such app is the photograph editing application Snapseed. I’ve been using it on my iPad for a few days now to edit photos from various trips as it allows me to quickly edit and upload. One of the nice features, which I have yet to find in an OS X application, is the ability to add creative effects and frames/borders to my images. I usually edit my photographs on my iMac using Aperture. Aperture is amazingly powerful but unless you add various plug-ins, most of which involve parting with cash, adding some effects or borders requires exporting to another application- usually photoshop.
I’ll continue to use Aperture as it also serves as a great way to sort and catalogue my vast image library. However, I’ve since downloaded another photo editing application from the Mac App Store called Photo Effect Studio Pro, which allows the editing and manipulation of Canon raw files (.cr2) to create images similar to the ones posted today. My workflow will have to change a little as it will require the raw file to be exported from Aperture before being opened in Photo Effect Studio Pro, but realistically this won’t result in much extra time being spent on editing images. I’ll post some shots in due course and you can let me know what you think…
Dave Johnson's Photography 