Party!

So the party actually took place!

It was great fun and even my husband joined in dressing up as an elf.

The idea of the Fairy Quest was that Jack Frost had banished the fairies from fairyland and they now needed somewhere to live so all the party guests had to help build a house, furnish it with extras from a treasure hunt and dress up as special fairy helpers! It was a great success and all the girls had lots of fun.

Here are just a few photos of the day.

My fairy and elf helpers decorated the bushes in the driveway with the fairies we'd made before the party started.

We made a beautiful throne for the party girl but of course we all tried it out for size!

And then with the party in full swing we read the clues from the treasure hunt and got on with making some rather special fairy houses!

Thanks for all the support and encouragement in the run up to this event - it was so much fun.

Black and White

I took Hannah into the woods for a photo shoot, although she got bored quickly, she was very good at trying out different looks and poses.

This weeks task was post production, specifically trying out different techniques for converting to black and white. So two photos each converted to black and white firstly with the simple grayscale method and secondly by adding a levels and gradient map layer and making adjustments for each colour.

Grayscale method:

Layers method:

I much prefer the results of the second method because it gives more texture to the photos and allows me more control on how I want the shots to look.

London reflections

I had an amazing time in London taking lots of different shots and looking for reflections everywhere. I'm really pleased with the photos I got but the thing that really made my day was when Canary Wharf security stopped me and asked if I was professional - when I had stopped laughing, they seemed ok! (All photos straight from camera except for slight cropping and resizing)

Reflections of buildings:

I love the last of these best, although the edge near the trees is a bit dark, the colours of the water and sky are just great and I really like how the reflection came out.

Reflections of flowers: