Just scooting in really fast to thank everyone who commented and emailed following my post yesterday about Getting It All Wrong. Your thoughts, ideas, reassurrence and shared experiences are hugely appreciated. I’m making my way through all the emails/comments and you will get a response.

THANK YOU xx

Skippy days…we’re on holiday. In Foreign. Thus far there have been no comedy travel disasters or, more suprisingly, packing disasters. We are all present and correct in full health, in the right place in the right time with appropriate clothing. Still, it’s only day 3 of 10 days so there’s plenty of time.

Minor skirmishes to report: hire car in perfect condition when we collected it from the airport. It’s now sporting an impressive scratch across two panels after being valet parked by the hotel staff. Scratch bears remarkable resemblance to the colour of the walls in the car park. But nothing to be done, we can’t prove anything and if we moan no doubt the lovely but shit-at-parking doorman will be for the chop. Sigh.

Attempted to visit the island’s “premier beach” today. Got spectacularly lost driving, ooooh, 10 miles or so to the beach which was inaccessible by road for some unfathomable reason and high tide meant there was no beach anyway. This kind of thing happens to us with more frequency that you would imagine.

Black sand bothers me. Just looks so dirty. End of. Boys don’t care however.

Spectacular screaming melt down over an ice cream today. Really quite something. And from Bertie not Digby which was a first. It involved being forcibly removed from the cafe by me and a Very Stern Talking To. Peace was restored, we returned to the cafe only for Digby to kick off about 20 seconds later. About ice cream. Arghhh! No more ice cream, job done.

There’s a spa in the hotel. I can see it. I can smell it. I see people in robes going to it. It’s ‘free’ (read, we’ve all paid through the nose for the hotel). But I can’t seem to get to it. Those omnipresent megaboys and MrSpud are colluding against me. But my inner beauty needs to be spa-ed free. Tomorrow, I’m going to make a break for it. Cover me…

The boys are attracting the kind of attention they will yearn for as teenagers. Wherever we go there’s are people going MAD for their blonde hair and blue eyes. They are pretty used to this from home but here, where blonde hair is a rarity, they have been ramped up to celebrity status. Ruffling of hair, pinching of cheeks, ticking, chatting, offering of goodies….soon they’ll be demanding an entourage to manage the attention. I just like the free stuff…

We have resorted to bribing our children with chocolate to drink enough water. Go figure.

A British couple with a young baby are staying in the hotel. I’m having to chew my lip to resist the urge to lecture them about the dangers of Pimms and an ill-advised, unplanned second pregnancy.

Etc etc etc…we’re having a really wonderful, WONDERFUL time. It’s pretty full-on and quite exhausting as per the photo above (Digby and MrSpud having a cuddle), taken while we waited for our dinner this evening. Our boys are too young to be staying up for dinner, no matter how early, but they are too old for a day time nap too. So it’s a bit jiggly juggly getting through it. But they are being very stoic about it, and are loving being away and having a room to share.

These last few months of them spending every day together feel so precious. They are, of course, totally unaware of it but as of September (when Bertie goes to school) the dynamics of their relationship change forever. So, for now, I’ll take every minute of their comfortable ‘togetherness’ and hope they preserve some of it, even just a little bit, as time marches forward.

xxx

Ooooh Camera Club, haven’t done this for a while…have the biscuits gone stale in our absence? Should we get the club going again? Anyone need any help with anything, got a question…if so please leave a comment and I’ll wrap them up in subsequent Camera Club post. I’ve had a few email questions recently too, perhaps I’ll bundle those discussions in to the post too.

So, what did I learn this week? I’ve been doing a photoshoot this week for Gallery Thea, a lovely local ceramics shop and below are just a few of the shots. Thea needed a portfolio of images for promotional purposes: general shots of the gallery, product shots of specific items and some portraits of her. I did two separate shoots; one in the gallery (general shots and portraits) and another at home in my make very shift ‘studio’ (product shots).

The shoot in the gallery was reasonably straightforward, although the light towards the back of the shop is a bit challenging…a little dark and a little ‘yellow’ too. Ideally I’d have turned the lights off for the shot above, but the light was too gloomy back there to take it without an additional light source. Hmm, an additional light source that isn’t overhead spots that can be moved around and controlled…where could I get such a thing?

Conversely, the light at the front of the shop (where there is a lovely big bay window) was very bright, a little harsh in fact although it suits Thea’s white/brights ceramics quite well.  I think something up at the window to diffuse the light would have helped. I know that clear shower curtains are often suggested, and I’d considered taking one along but I couldn’t think how I’d fix it up easily and quickly. Later I discovered that bubble wrap would have been perfect, and one thing a ceramics shop isn’t short of is rolls and rolls of bubble wrap!

We tried some portraits of Thea seated in the window. The light is a bit hard on the side of her face, but we used a gold reflector which has dealt with the worst of the harsh light and also given Thea a nice warm ‘glowy’ look. She’s a bit camera shy, actually she’s very camera shy. I think the portrait shoot was like a kind of living nightmare for her, poor thing! Me: “OK, look up, slightly to the left, lift your chin…ok, try not to look suicidal….” She really didn’t want a traditional head and shoulders looking at the camera and cheesy smile shot, so we went for a more relaxed/candid style. There are lots more portraits but I’ll spare her blushes (by the way, I do have her permission to write this post!).

Lesson I wish I had learnt: how to fold up that damn reflector. It’s a huge circle, it’s supposed to collapse in to a much smaller circle to make it easier to carry around. The only person who knows how to do it is my 4 year old….

Another one taken in the window, with the decorations in the background diffusing the light. By now I was realising that, as I’d feared, ceramics are pretty hard to shoot. They are have a high gloss finish which means they are very reflective, and achieving perfect focus and dealing with the reflections and shadows was a challenge.

Fast forward to later that day, at home, and I start to set up my ‘studio’ to do some product shots (nursery sets and name pictures).  We’d decided that Thea would create some hand-drawn wallpaper to use as a backdrop for the product shots. But we hadn’t really discussed how I should do the set up, or exactly what kind of props I might use. It’s quickly became apparent that I was going to have to experiment with a couple of set ups, take some test shots and get some feedback before doing the shoot ‘for real’. I also spent some time chasing some good light around the house before, finally, settling on the floor of a bedroom. Very professional!

One of the issues the test shots raised was the wallpaper. It wasn’t wide enough, really, to cope with the set up we wanted….and it wasn’t ‘busy’ enough in terms of motifs. It didn’t matter how I tried to rearrange the ceramics on the paper, I would end up with big white gaps. The solution was for me to get busy with a scalpel and cut out some of the motifs and stick them in the gaps. If you look, you can pretty easily spot which ones are ‘stuck’ on. But at the size these images will be used (small) it shouldn’t be obvious. Lesson: probably it would be easier to shoot these kind of ‘set up’ shots with the client present, so they can get busy with a bit of colouring in as necessary.

The other issue was, again, the lack of controllable, even light. The lighting isn’t bad for natural light, diffused with bubble wrap at the windows, but it’s not even, the shadows aren’t really where I’d want them to be and I was at the mercy of the big shiny thing in the sky playing ball and shining. Ponders again…how can I ensure even, controllable light which doesn’t push off for months at a time?

The other problem was that I’d had to push the ISO up to deal with the relative lack of light. That’s made for some pretty chunky jpeg files to deal with. On the plus side, the lovely full-format D700 handles high ISO so well that noise hasn’t become an issue.

Finally, I moved on to the name pictures. Again, the test shots showed the wallpaper had some issues…same thing again, not really wide enough and not busy enough. That, plus slightly creamy coloured tiles and a pure white frame made these pictures especially challenging. I’d thought the reflections might be easier to handle on a ‘flat’ item like this, but in fact it was worse. The set up for these pictures took absolutely ages, I just couldn’t find a way of showcasing the product in a way that wasn’t totally flat and boring, whilst working around the wallpaper issue. After a lot of fiddling around and swearing, I finally settled on the angled approach shown above.

Other things I learned: product shots involve a LOT of blue tack. Blue tack to hold background paper in place, to hold products in place, to hold eggs in egg cups to stop them disappering. It also involves random items from around the house studio….a jar of mustard to prop the plate up…a block from the boys’ toy box to rest the name picture on to angle it up…slippers and bottles of perfume to stop the paper rolling up in to shot. It was all very high tech!

But what I really learned is that, much as I adore natural light, I’m going to have to use flash in the future for these kinds of shoots. I need to be able to have a reliable, controllable, portable source of light.

With thanks to Thea for being a super client. Looking forward to the next shoot. With flash (a-aah he’ll save every one of us).

]]> http://www.spudballoo.com/2010/03/camera-club-special-edition-what-i-learnt-this-week/feed/ 11 http://www.spudballoo.com/2010/03/lets-talk-about-love/ http://www.spudballoo.com/2010/03/lets-talk-about-love/#comments Sun, 14 Mar 2010 19:55:46 +0000 spudballoo http://www.spudballoo.com/?p=1310

Let’s talk about love…not romantic love because I’m too old and too married for all that.

I think we’ll stick with motherly love,  altogether a much more palatable subject and very topical if you’re in the UK (since it’s Mothering Sunday here, but I think not in the US?). I was treated to breakfast in bed ‘made’ by the Megaboys: brioche (straight up, no butter, no jam), grapes and a cupcake. Strangely the cake wasn’t for me, or the grapes, and I was only allowed one brioche. But the thought was there. Later I was ‘surprised’ with a bouquet of flowers, perhaps less surprising than intended since 4 year olds are totally incapable of keeping secrets (“Mummy, we’re going to surprise you with some flowers later!”).  Typically, Diggy was less enthusiastic about the whole affair and woke up grumbling, “I don’t want it to be Happy Mothers Day I want to it to be LITTLE…BOYS…..DAY”.

I’ve wittered on before about motherly love or, more specifically, the feeling of being ‘in love’ (or not) with your children.  I love them so much that I sometimes feel swamped by it, for want of a better word. And just when I feel like I’m drowning in love for them, it’s sometimes tempered by the knowledge that they will grow and move away and apart from me. There’s nothing I can do though, I’m programmed to love them forever.  They will take my love for granted all their lives (as is right and is the natural order of things) but, as a parent, I know I should cherish these years of this exquisite, unquestioning love for me. Soon enough they will be teenagers and will think they know everything, and me and MrSpud will be so old hat, so embarrassing.  So, for now, I’ll take their sweet kisses and fervent whispers of ‘you’re my BEST mummy…the best mummy in the world’ and store them up in a quiet corner of my heart…insurance for the days when doors are slammed and ‘I HATE YOU. I WISH I’D NEVER BEEN BORN’ becomes a constant refrain.

We chewed over the topic of motherly love a little last weekend at our mini-blogcamp. Bee and I took turns to unwittingly terrify Blanca about the trials of parenthood. I have pre-schooler boys, Bee has teenage girls. That’s quite a heady mix of ‘issues’ for someone yet to embark of parenthood to take on board. “Oh don’t worry!”, said Bee reassuringly. “Little children are very, very easy to love. You don’t get handed a teenager to deal with straight off, you get a tiny helpless baby.”

Her words have buzzed around my mind all week, “little children are very easy to love”. How right she is! They might not be very easy to manage, what with all the tantrums, tears, negotiations etc etc, but they are very easy to love….because they totally ADORE you and ADMIRE you. It’s a win:win situation….you become a total slave to them and their needs and, in return, they worship the ground you walk on. They get their basic needs met and a bucket of love to boot, and you get to walk round in a bubble of joy forever because these extraordinary little people worship the ground you walk on.

“You don’t get handed a teenager right off”, those words have also been niggling at me. Mostly in a ‘THANK GOD’ kind of way of course, but also because I’m beginning to see glimpses of what it might to be like to parent a teenager. Partly through my friendship with Bee, partly because I used to be a teenager myself.  Shudder. Are teenage boys are better/easier than teenage girls? Please say yes…

It being Mothering Sunday I decided it was time to get a rare shot of me with the boys. Alas this means handing over the camera to MrSpud who clearly needs to read up a bit and join my Camera Club.  At least it’s vaguely in focus, but the composition? Sigh….look at all that crap in the background, and that’ AFTER a major crop by me.  It’s not the lovely shot I’d hoped for, but in the spirit of Getting in the Picture I am sharing it as a reminder to all your Snappy Bloggers that YOU need to get in front of the camera too sometimes.

Happy Mothering Sunday to us all – with thanks and love to all the mothers everywhere, breeding and nurturing the future of the world. No wonder we’re knackered…

]]> http://www.spudballoo.com/2010/03/lets-talk-about-love/feed/ 18 http://www.spudballoo.com/2010/03/thank-you-to-mysterious-of-chelmsford/ http://www.spudballoo.com/2010/03/thank-you-to-mysterious-of-chelmsford/#comments Fri, 12 Mar 2010 19:48:11 +0000 spudballoo http://www.spudballoo.com/?p=1308

My first Art Exchange gift arrived in the mail today, all the way from Chelmsford USA (not Chelmsford about 30 miles up the road). But who send the gift? No note, no details…was it you? Do you know who it was?

Well thank you to whoever it was. The rest of today’s mail was a load of catalogues selling stuff I either don’t need or shouldn’t buy, a bill and a letter from the NHS about my medical details. Oh, and a new crochet hook.

No prizes for which was my favourite….

Cheers to Mysterious of Chelmsford x

Oh me love this! I saw one of these on Emma Bradshaw’s blog and totally and immediately hearted it. A wee catalogue card with your own list of joy/evil complete with handwritten scribblings. It’s a thing of beauty, right up there with the Grudge Book. Make one for yourself here.

Also, announces by stealth, the Spuds are going on holiday soon. To someplace hot (which ticks off another of that bloody 39 before I’m 40 list which is visibly aging me by the day). It involves a flight in an actual plane, two small boys, 27 suitcases, a lot of swearing, muttering and murderous glances, 45 bottles of wine (outgoing flight only) and MrSpud’s ‘swimming’ which looks like he’s drowning. That poem, ‘Not waving but drowning’? It was written especially for him, even though he wasn’t born when it was published.  Our 4 year old can swim better than him.

We don’t have a lot of luck with foreign holidays. Our first one was cancelled as MrSpud was loading the last of the bags in to the car, ready to leave for the airport, having got up at 4am. I noticed green pus pouring from Bertie’s ear (then 6 months old) and that was the end of our Florida jaunt. There are pitiful photos of me, cruelly snapped by our security cameras, sitting on the bottom of the stairs in the house, head in hands and crying. I wasn’t crying because I was missing out on a holiday, but because of all that wasted packing (which had taken weeks) and streeeeeeeesssssssssss.

Two months later we went to Kefalonia in Greece. I got pregnant by mistake. Bertie was 8 months old. The rest is history. We’ve not been abroad since.

So, with trepidation, we are attempting to leave the country in the hope of actually making it to our destination and returning without a surprise stowaway on board.

Watch this space.

People Who Craft…I need you. I need various volunteers to make one item and send to a random stranger somewhere in the world and receive, in theory 36 hand crafted goodies back. Some of you can’t hide, I know you craft so I’ll be emailing you direct. Be afraid….be v..e..r..y afraid.

So people who sew, knit, crochet, stamp, art journal, paint, embroider, take wonderful photographs, scrap book, felt thing, make cards, mix wonderful oils or anything else…I need you. All you need to do is make one little thing and send it on. Fun fun fun.

Please email me if you’re up for it. But, people who are known to me and who make stuff…bad luck. I’m on to you.

For my mother, eleven years distant today xxx

I’ve been pondering about Life Rules…as in Rules for Life rather than some kind of cringe making affirmation type statement (because if it were an affirmation surely it would have at least one ! if not !! and an OK!!! after it like this…Life Rules!! OK!!…and anyway I don’t do affirmations…I only do moaning & groaning)  Excuse me while I clear the clutter of unnecessary !!! from my blog [takes a moment]. I’m back.

So I thunked and thunked about some Life Rules or ‘Guiding Principles’ if we want to get all corporate about it. Not those dreary ‘eat well, sleep well, count your blessings, don’t go to bed on an argument, don’t consume entire bodyweight in Pimms No 1 etc etc’ type rules which just beg you break them. No, I mean some user friendly might actually live by them rules  And these are my rules (for me, not for everyone…you can live by them too if you want but I might be a little afraid of you…):

1. Have a framework (like a routine but without the dreer) to banish chaos but don’t be ruled by it.

2. Ruthlessly cull stuff on a regular basis (excess clothes, tat, toys, piles of paper, toxic friends and other randoms who drain the life blood from you). Stuff is the enemy.

3. Have a passion and indulge it.

4. Remember that what goes around comes around.

5. Bad stuff might have happened in the past, but it’s over now. Let it go.

6. Talk less, listen more.

7. Orandum est ut sit mens sana in corpore sano.

8. Burgundy hair never looks good on anyone.

9. Do less, better.

10. I am the master of my fate…I am the captain of my soul…and if you can’t change your fate, change your attitude.

And those are The Rules. I reserve the right to change them of course, but that’ll do for now. So what are your Life Rules (OK!!)….what do you MEAN you don’t have any? Tush and fie.

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