Chez Spud

Bertie Showing us how Buster Pants, originally uploaded by Busters Mum.

Love that photo above, taken by my Dad’s wife. Love how Bertie is trying to impress us with his impression of their dog panting…meanwhile I’m ignoring him and taking photos of the dog….and Trudy has focused on me, not Bertie, in this shot. WAAAAH! Poor Bertie…

Roll up roll up Nikon gals…I’m selling my D70, my Tokina 11-16 2.8 (aka the SOOOOOOOOOOOOOPER wide) and my Nikon 18-200 VR 3.5-5.6 (aka the ultimate walkaround lens, it’s wide, it’s zoomy, it’s toptastic).

Any takers? Email me! Probably one for the Brits/Europeans in terms of postage costs and possible customs costs.

Bring on the D700! Yippee for new kit! Nikon of course…what else?

x

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A couple of months ago I read a wonderful and very poignant post on the Pioneer Woman’s blog which suddenly made me so aware of how few photos I have of me with my boys, or MrSpud for that matter. That’s the downside of having a camera stuck to your face 24/7; no one dare wrestle it off you and attempt some snaps for fear of scorn and ridicule.  Plus, many of the photos that are taken with me in them are deleted as I don’t like how I look, or it’s not a ‘perfect’ moment in some way or another…no make up on, hair looking like a bird’s nest, mountains of laundry in the background, not wearing fancy dress etc etc.

But Miz Booshay makes an excellent point that, in the future, the viewers of your snaps won’t care on jot about such details…they will just see a lovely moment in time, preserved forever.  I have very few photos of me with my mother, who died many years ago, but the ones I have are so precious. So, since I read that post, I’ve been trying to ‘get in the shot’ for some portraits and also trying to get some ‘snaps’ of us just hanging out, doing the normal ‘stuff’ of life. It’s harder than it sounds, and it involves MrSpud getting regular ear bashings for ‘GETTING IT ALL WRONG….AGAIN’ (mostly for out of focus shots, sigh, how hard can it be?).

But slowly, very slowly, there are some photos of me with the boys. I can’t go back and get the shots that are missing, notably any shots of me with both my boys when Diggy was a newborn, but I can try to make sure my thick necked, speccy twat face sneaks in to a few shots going forward.

So, I challenge you all…if you’re the ‘family photographer’, then start getting in the shot. Get in there with your partner, your children, your pets, your friends, your neighbours…anybody who is important to you. YOU might not like the way you look, or handing over your camera (especially if you are a Nikon owner…Canon? Not so much, it’s no big deal for you…tee hee)…but if you don’t do it, the people who look at your photos in the future will be so sad that you’re never in the shot.

So get in there.  And when you have, come back here and post a link for me so I can have a good nosey. I neeeeeeed to seeeeee you!

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Playing along with Jane of Spain Daily, and her Corner View. This week it’s ‘A Place of Reflection’.

Controversially, I snapped this with my old Sony P&S. The Nikon is thus sulking and pretending not to care, but I can tell that she’s hurting inside. Don’t worry trusty Nikon, it was a spontaneous shot..I was pig feeding…making them talk to Extranjera re wig preferences…pig whispering if you like? Then I spotted ‘the shot’, what’s a girl to do but point & shoot? Don’t be hurt, I still love you the most…fret not..it’s me not you..kiss and make up?

This is my office. If I was remotely creative I’d call it my studio, damn I wish I was creative. But it’s definitely a place of reflection both figuratively and, because of all the glass, literally. The desk is in the corner pointing away from the fabulous view down the fields. When I sit on the sofa to ‘do some reading’ I inevitably end up doing nothing, just watching the world go by. Although that seems to involve watching foxes pick off baby bunnies at the moment, sob.

I’m off to soothe the Nikon somemore. Nikon whispering…

Edited to add more photos, none of the inside, it’s REALLY boring! Think, peach swirly wallpaper. Hmm, redecorate?

At the bottom of the garden..office to the right

On the day it was installed...looking rather bare!

Edited again…Nikon wanted to show what she can do…clearly feeling threatened by the Sony P&S. Sheesh, talk about insecure…

Nikon has the final word

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Early Morning Poppies

There are very, very few benefits to having to get up early every single day of your life once you have children. Admittedly I don’t have to get up ‘that’ early since I make MrSpud get up with them if they wake before the internationally approved Get Up Time of 7am. I totally resigned from getting up with children once I stopped breast feeding them on the basis that I’d done back to back pregnancy, breast feeding, breast feeding AND pregnancy, breast feeding for about 3.5 years. I’ve done my time.

Anyway, I found this wonderful poppy field up the road from our house last week and it’s been niggling at me ever since. It’s screaming to be photographed…snap me..snap me….SNAP ME!!!

But the weather and the light have been rubbish, and I was getting wibbly that the moment of the poppy field glory would pass before I could get up there.

So Bertie got up at 6am today and got in to bed with us. Out of the corner of my eye I could see sunshine peeping around the blind, so I dragged myself out of bed and up to the poppy field. Huzzah! The poppies were still there, but very battered by heavy rain.

I didn’t really get the shots I wanted, but then it’s pretty much always like that. But this is quite nice. Shot with a Nikon D70, Tokina 11-16mm f2.8 AT-X for the people who care. At f22, 15mm.

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