Country Kids: Country Parks & Outdoor Play

by 24 Comments

Country kids country parks

Last Sunday graced us with a beautiful blue sky and, what seemed as first, warming sunlight. It was enough to spur us on to go and feed the ducks and swans down in our local country park. We took our gargantuam bag of bread bits (I'd missed out on a bread and butter pudding by a day) and enjoyed feeding the mass of swans and their young.

feeding the ducks

The swans are so confident that they would have taken the bread out of our hands if we'd tried. As it was they were perfectly happy to snaffle them from the boardwalk.

boardwalk

The boardwalk meanders around to a lovely wooded area before exploring the other lakes. This was where we managed to explore other wildlife that was busy scavenging for food in the depths of Winter. We'll need to add nuts to the food list next time!

feeding the squirrels

After we'd defrosted in the car, we headed to Parc Play in the centre of Cardiff. It's difficult to explain the place, but it's an all-weather play centre; a warehouse with an fully covered section, a middle part which is open on one side and an out door sand pit. It was absolutely freezing there and I spent most of the time hiding under the heater-light-thingies. The Boy spent most of the hour there on the zipwire.

parc play

I'm desperately hoping for snow this weekend so that we can get out and join the rest of the country in failing to make a decent snowman!

—

 

country kids

 

Learning for Life

365 #2

by 44 Comments

Welcome to week 2 of the project 365 linky!

I was overwhelmed with how many people joined in last week; it's amazing to see so many people wanting to document their daily lives through photographs and enjoy becoming part of the 365 community! We've got a Facebook group, and now I've created a collaborative Pinterest board (if you'd like to collaborate, let me know and I'll add you).

As ever, this linky only works because of people linking to it and then contributing their thoughts to others' posts.

Join in by entering the URL of your favourite photograph of the week (either a 52 or a 365 photo) and show some comment love to everyone else in the community.

  1. Choose your favourite photo from the past week and link it up below.
  2. Please add the badge to your linked-up post so that other people know how to find all the other fabulous entries.
  3. If you can spare five minutes to comment on a few other entries I know they'd appreciate it!
365



Days 6-12 of Project 365

by 44 Comments

This week has been a bit manic with an additional day in work leaving only Tuesday for a The Boy and Me day. Therefore I tried to make the most of it and get a whole load of playing and activities done to make up for the lack of time we should have had together.

6-12 of 365

6. 'Strike!' (Bowling)

7. 'Restless' (A poorly Boy with a persistant ear infection meant his sleep this week has been hot and sweaty, and he's been very disturbed.)

8. 'Taaaaaaarzan!' (We've finished at Tumble Tots as I didn't think he was being challenged anymore, and he didn't want to go up to the next group as parents weren't allowed to be with their children. We've found a 'free-play' gymnastics session where he can explore proper gymnastics equipment and be challenged in his ability and confidence.)

9. 'Squirt!' (I'd prepared some coloured ice cubes for him to play with when I got home from work, and gave him salt and a water bottle. Great fun!)

10. 'Follow My Leader' (This is the Eggy Alphabet app we've installed on the iPad, enabling him to practise his letter formation.)

11. 'Flip!' (For Christmas, The Boy had the PlayMobil farmhouse and shop with two characters who resemble Fiona and Farmer Nick from Coombe Mill. Here, Farmer Nick is making pancakes for Fiona who is having a lie-in. Lucky Fiona!)

12. 'Sleeping Soundly' (This is how I found The Boy sleeping when I checked on him, his knees were up and bent as well. He does have some strange sleeping positions!)

[Amended: Forgot to say which was my favourite. Probably hard to believe but it's the one from Tuesday; what looks like a bad photo is actually motion blur as he swung past me at eleventy billion miles an hour while tightly hanging onto the rope for dear life.]

—

TheBoyandMe's 365 Linky
MWTWbadge

365 #1

by 25 Comments

Hello all you lovely photographers out there! Welcome to week 1 of the project 365 linky and I'm looking forward to seeing the photographic diaries of everyone who links up; this project really does turn into a community. We've already got a Facebook group, and now I've created a collaborative Pinterest board (if you'd like to collaborate, let me know and I'll add you).

As ever, this linky only works because of people linking to it and then contributing their thoughts to others' posts. (Well actually there's technical stuff I have to do to make it work, but you know what I mean!)

Join in by entering the URL of your favourite photograph of the week (either a 52 or a 365 photo0 and show some comment love to everyone else in the community.

  1. Choose your favourite photo from the past week and link it up below.
  2. Please add the badge to your linked-up post so that other people know how to find all the other fabulous entries.
  3. If you can spare five minutes to comment on a few other entries I know they'd appreciate it!
365



(Linky Tools has been misbehaving the last few days, if you can't see the linky then add your URL to the comments box and I'll add it for you when it's decided to stop throwing a strop again!)

Project 365: A New Year

by 13 Comments

I spent the last month or so alternating between;

"NEVER, EVER AGAIN!"

and;

"But it's my thing and I won't not be able to!"

So here I am, about to enter into my third year of taking a photograph every day. I tend to take a lot more than that but to concentrate on one that is technically good is hard work; the trick is not to make your child want to shove the camera lens into the nearest mound of playdough.

There's a lot of interest in the project at the moment and so I'm going to answer some FAQs and set out some guidelines here:

  • Project 365 involves taking one photograph a day, every day, for a year. It's your project and therefore it should be youtaking the photograph.
  • The photographs can be uploaded to either a blog (daily or weekly), Instagram, Tumblr, Posterous or 365project.org (the official and original site). I've done two years of blogging it daily and I'm losing the will to live, therefore I'm going to put the images together into a weekly collage (using Picmonkey.com) and blog it on a Saturday.
  • Each weekend I run a linky for the community. The point is to share either one favourite photo of the week in the linky or, if like me it's going to be a weekly collage, then the link to that round-up post. It is possible to link up Instagram images by finding the web version and using that URL. The linky can be found over on the 365 tab of my blog. It opens at 8pm on a Saturday evening and closes at 11.59 on Sunday night.
  • I ask that you include my 365 badge onto either the linked blog post or in a sidebar wherever the pictures are hosted (if possible). Not because I'm precious and want the information spread around, but because it means that people can find the linky more easily to see other entries and join in on the community.
  • There is a Facebook group here, it's private and you'll need to request access. As long as it's obvious to me that you're taking part in the project then you're in!
  • There's also a collaborative Pinterest board I've set up to share images. If you'd like to join then please let me know.

Here's the badge for the project, you can find the html code underneath in a nifty box thing done by Mr. TBaM.

See you on Saturday!

ShowOff ShowCase

A Photographic Flashback of 2012 (Linky)

by 36 Comments

The idea came to me when I was looking back over my photographs from Project 366, each week I have been asking the participants to pick a favourite photo from the week, and when it's only one photo out of seven then that's relatively simple. However, what if you had to pick just one photo from the whole month? One photograph from (an average of) 30 days?

And so last night I spent hours carefully selecting my favourite twelve photographs of the year, here they are:

I'd love it if you would join in?

Pick one photograph from each month throughout the year and create a collage, then link up below. You don't have to have been taking part in the 366 photography project to take part in this, everyone is welcome! The linky will stay open until Friday 4th January 2013 at midnight.



366 #52

by 19 Comments

And then there were…

?

In the last week of project 366, how many of us are still going?

A year ago, people began asking me if I was going to be doing my project 365 again. Between the period of Christmas and New Year's Eve, I had conversations with about fifteen different bloggers who expressed an interest in joining in on the project; that's when the idea came about to run a weekly linky. My only ambition for it would be to provide support to those completing the photo project as it had felt a very lonely task to undertake at times by myself.

In the weekly linky, bloggers would choose their favourite photo  of the previous week and link it up. They would then visit a selection of the other linked-up photos and comment on them, to help bolster the morale of that 366 photographer. Support through commenting was always the aim of the linky.

We started not with the 15 anticipated bloggers, but 366 #1 saw 83 people join in. 83! I was shocked, overwhelmed and so pleased to see others joining in. The linky peaked in week 4 with 89 bloggers taking part, before slowly trickling down to a steady 30-odd in the past few months.

It's a hard project to undertake and I'm proud of every single person who's managed to see it through. I'll be honest that I'm really surprised by some who dropped out, not disappointed you understand, just surprised. I also did battle earlier in the year with someone (not in the community) who had delusions of grandeur and accused the people doing the project of demeaning the art of photography. Knob!

Yes, there have been days where we've taken a photograph for the sake of it just so we haven't missed a day. However, I know that I have taken some truly beautiful photographs of my son this year, and captured moments that I may have otherwise ignored. Most days I just snap away, but I know that when I try hard and I take into consideration composition and lighting then I can actually manage to take a technically good photograph. And I've seen so many of the other '366-ers' grow in their ability to take a photograph, and it makes me smile.

Although the primary aim of the linky was commenting, I have found it a joy to be allowed to peak into your lives each week. To see pregnancies develop and babies be born, to be in awe of newborn babies who have taken their first steps, to witness toddlers learn new skills and become their own people. I've visited countries without leaving the sofa and seen daily life from all over the globe. For that I thank you for including me.

So it leaves me to say, for one last time on this year's project:

You know the drill, join in with your favourite photograph of the week and show some comment love to everyone else in the community.

  1. Choose your favourite photo from the past week and link it up below.
  2. Please add the badge to your linked-up post so that other people know how to find all the other fabulous entries.
  3. If you can spare five minutes to comment on just a few other entries I know they'd appreciate it!
ShowOff ShowCase



And will the linky be back next week?

You bet'cha it will!

(My own project will only be posted once a week as a collage, I've lost the will to live posting daily after two years!)

366 #51

by 1 Comment

And so to the penultimate week of #Project 366; Dear God it's felt long at times but we're almost there ladies and Darren.

You know the drill, join in with your favourite photograph of the week and show some comment love to everyone else in the community.

  1. Choose your favourite photo from the past week and link it up below.
  2. Please add the badge to your linked-up post so that other people know how to find all the other fabulous entries.
  3. If you can spare five minutes to comment on just a few other entries I know they'd appreciate it!
ShowOff ShowCase



Sponsored Post: Sharing Photographs Made Easy With The Sony – NEX-5R

by 2 Comments

As I come to the end of my second year of the 'Photo A Day, Every Day' challenge I'm beginning to reflect on the shots that I've taken. This year they've been centred more around The Boy and have featured very few still life or landscape photographs. I've also used a variety of photographic equipment while snapping away; sometimes it's the iPad, more often than not it's my phone (I started the year with a HTC Desire and have ended it with a Samsung Galaxy S3) and I try to use my DSLR where possible because the quality of the photograph 99.9% of the time will be significantly superior to any other device.

Here's the thing though; my eight year old DSLR has a 6.3 megapixel lens and my three month old S3 has an 8 megapixel lens. In theory, the photographs from my phone should be better, but they're not because it's all to do with the size and quality of the lens; how much light it can sense and adjust to, the speed of autofocus for those unexpected shots, and plenty of other complicated things that I don't understand. All I know is that it is nigh on impossible to get the same quality from a mobile device as it is from a DSLR.

This, quite frankly, is a shame. Because in this day and age of social media and the use of the Internet to share lives with far-flung friends and family, it is a real pain having to upload photographs from a 'proper' camera to a laptop and then share them onto a social media site like Facebook. It's the reason why I seem to take so many photos on my phone; I can either use Dropbox to access them elsewhere, or I can upload them to my blog or Facebook directly. Something my DSLR is not capable of unfortunately.

However, the new NEX-5R compact system cameras are capable of taking a photograph and uploading it directly onto social media platforms as they contain inbuilt Wi-Fi.

A camera with Wi-Fi? A 16.1 megapixel camera with inbuilt Wi-Fi?!

It's a seriously brilliant idea, and for the photographer in me who enjoys thinking about the composition and the technicalities of a still image, then having a camera which can autofocus as quickly as a DSLR, has a range of ten lenses to ensure each photograph has the best perspective, has a Sony guarantee of quality on the machinery, can upload photographs (which has been edited directly on the camera!) to the Internet, and is capable of shooting full HD videos, it has got to be worth seriously investigating. Why wouldn't you when it would make photography so much easier.

Sponsored Post

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...