Mind The Gap

Christmas countdown: 17 days!

Do you like the snowflakes? I added them after my last post :)
I wanted something wintry as my posts aren't going to be festive until closer to Christmas, and I thought they were just too cute.

I'm starting to get into the Christmas spirit now :D

I went to Ikea yesterday and bought three packs of tealights (30 pack), and more fairy lights!

I've got a crazy obsession with candles, and it's escalated...

But hey, it's the build-up to Christmas, everyone's going a bit crazy now!

♥

Hiya!

I learnt a dance to 'Me Ol' Bamboo' from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang yesterday for an audition (which I don't think went that well, but it was very fun anyway). I had the song in my head today though and I've no doubt annoyed everyone I've been in the same room with.

Well, carrying on!

Here's today's photo for you to ponder at:

It's a fairly recent one, but I'm very impressed with this - for a photo taken on my phone...

I used a filter, you can probably tell, though I tend to stay away from them. This one makes everything warmer and increases the contrast between light and dark, so even though it was cloudy and it had just rained, it appears as if the sun is shining and everything is golden.

The light in this is gorgeous, I just love the glowing platform and tracks.

♥

I love you

xxx

Trafalgar Square

Christmas countdown: 19 days!

The fairy lights went up a few days ago, and candles are being burnt! However, a HORROR - I still don't have a Christmas tree!! How have I allowed this to happen? D:

Also, shall I do something Christmassy on here? I haven't really been doing much in the lead up to Christmas, but watching vloggers such as Zoella with her 'Vlogmas' videos makes me wish my life was more exciting. And also wish I could be as cool and gorgeous as her...

Well, I guess when I'm in a more festive spirit, the posts will come along too :P

♥

Hiya!

Another photo, this one of Trafalgar Square, London.

Aperture: f/8, Exposure: 1/320 sec, ISO: 100

To be honest, I'm not so sure about this one - it's not as cool as it had the potential to be...

But, I love the fact that Big Ben is slotted between Nelson's Column and the building on the left, and it's right in the middle of the photo. The handrail leads down towards it - a lead line (and here the photography term comes out) drawing your attention.

♥

I love you

xxx

Mum's Homemade

Hiya!

Another photo :D

Not much to say about this one, except that it's so quaint and cute, and I like it.

I like this photo for the arrangement on the table, the brightness of the light and the calmness of all of it.

It's another one of my photos from Cornwall, we had lunch at this cafe and I thought the tables were set up really nicely. The waiter and waitress were lovely, and it was a very peaceful day in the countryside.

The soft light and bright colours and ice cream make me wish that is was summer again :(

♥

I love you

ttyl

xxx

Fishing in the Sunset

Hiya!

Sorry about the delay, I've been busy (posts on that later) and the WiFi died yesterday, leaving me confused and distraught.

It's alright now though, it's been sorted out and I'm reunited with my precious(ssssssss).

...anyone get it?

Anyway, I'm giving you something different today. I was messing around with the editing of this photo a bit more than I usually do, though nothing too drastic. And so I'm going to show you a few versions of the same photo with only Vibrance, Saturation, Brightness and Contrast changes.

Original (All 0)

Vibrance 20, Saturation 20, Brightness 5, Contrast 75

Vibrance 20, Saturation 20, Brightness 120, Contrast 100

Vibrance 40, Saturation 40, Brightness 100, Contrast 100
My favourite one

Vibrance 50, Saturation 50, Brightness 50, Contrast 75

So yeah, with no other editing except those, you can transform a photo loads. I'd say the fourth image is my favourite, though the darker second image is also quite nice.

This photo was taken on the jetty at my friend's farm. It's a really gorgeous place, massive, and has this huge lake with islands in it.

And also, there's a sunset. I love sunsets, that time of day is my favourite for taking photos because everything becomes golden and warm, and longer shadows make the most awesome shapes. It's called the 'Golden Hour' in photography, the time each day just after sunrise (which I would like to experience at some point if I can get myself out of bed) and just before sunset.

It's a really pretty time of the day. Try taking photos at this time if you want to (consider this a tip?), especially shooting 'towards' the light so you get cool silhouettes with light flares.

Photography may have ruined me.

♥

I love you

ttyl

xxx

Tomatoes

Hiya!

This photo was taken in Cornwall, in one of the villages I visited there.

I was walking along and waited behind the tomatoes to let someone past, so decided to take a photo whilst I was there.

Don't worry, hiding behind barrels of tomatoes is not a frequent activity of mine ;)

I love the focus on the tomatoes in the rustic barrel, and the colourful banners across the street in the background.

This photo reminds me of calm, quaint country villages and bustling shoppers at the same time. It may just be me, as when I see this photo, I see a calm scene. But I hear the noises that were around me at the time I shot this, and those were loud chatter and car engines.

Of course, you wouldn't know that, so maybe this photo isn't as great to you as it is to me?

It takes me back to the summer holidays, and that's the best thing about this.

In terms of editing (some people might be interested), I don't do much to my photos. I prefer capturing better shots rather than sitting editing for hours on a computer, though that's just my personal opinion.

I added some warmth to this photo, to make it glow a little more. It's not something I usually do, though I just felt it lacked the warmth in this particular one. I also increased the saturation/vibrance and the contrast, the things that make my photos a whole lot better.

My tip - for any photo, increase the contrast. Some require more, some less, that's all up to you. But doing this makes any scene look much cooler :)

♥

I love you

ttyl

xxx

Sky Garden

Hiya!

Another photo (two this time!) for another day :)

I love this photo for its angles. It's so simple, but the shapes and patterns created by this worm's eye view are so cool.

Take the lamp, for example, the dark circle of it contrasts with the clean squares of the building next to it, and the pole aligns perfectly next to the building due to the perspective. I love the way that, if you carried on the line along the top of that building, the top of the lamp would hit it almost perfectly.

And the contrast between the darker lamp and building with the shining shimmering glass one is gorgeous. The way the glass building has that slight curve, which is so different from the building beside it...

I like to imagine them as people, a couple - the dark, mysterious, sturdy guy next to his sassy, shining, flawless lady.

Just me?

I could have done a bit more editing with this photo, increased the contrast to put emphasis on the people's shadows maybe, but I decided against it.

I just thought this was a nice photo, tbh.

It's definitely not an everyday thing.

That's the Sky Garden if anyone's interested. Of course, I've talked about this before, and these photos are ones I've already put out there.

I just wanted to show them off again... :/

♥

Also, just a quick thought before I sign out - I really don't like the word 'hella'. No offence or anything.

Well okay, it's not that I don't like it, it just seems wrong when anyone but Chloe says it in Life is Strange...

She can pull it off - she's 'hella' cool <3

Ugh, can't believe I just said that -_-

♥

I love you

ttyl

xxx

Oil Rig

Hiya!

Here's another photo from my Norway holiday -

Isn't it pretty? I never thought I would call anything with oil rigs on it 'pretty'...

This photo makes me laugh because of the story behind it.

When I first saw the oil rigs, I literally freaked out. I ran out onto our balcony and nearly dropped my camera into the sea.

A few weeks earlier, I'd just learnt about oxidation and reduction in chemistry, in terms of the loss and gain of electrons. My teacher told us a way of remembering it:

OIL RIG.

Oxidation Is Loss, Reduction Is Gain.

And so, the nerd in me screamed, and I freaked out over some plain old oil rigs because of chemistry.

I'm a weird child.

I just remember being so excited and thinking it would be so cool to show my friends this.

And that is why I laugh at myself whenever I see this, and facepalm.

I'm surprised the photo actually turned out okay, what with all my freakery :D

♥

I love you

ttyl

xxx

Favourite Photos

Hiya!

I've been going through photos recently, and I've found some really nice ones that I remember taking and absolutely loving.

And so to fill up the holes in my blog where my life is too boring to talk about, I'll show some of these to y'all during the next week!

This was taken when I was on holiday in Norway, two summers ago. These are all natural colours with, I believe, no editing at all. So I'm pretty chuffed about that :)

I love the contrast of the roughness of the rusting metal and graffiti (I can't understand any of it so sorry if it's offensive!) with the calmness of the scene, the clear blue skies with puffy clouds. It's like two opposite ideas together - dirty, rough and dangerous, and clear, calm and peaceful.

This photo also has a great balance of 'stuff' and space, of colour, of contrast, and has lovely shapes and lines.

I do like this photo very much <3

♥

I love you

ttyl

xxx

Random Photoshops...

Hiya!

As you know, I do photography. And a huge part of photography is editing photos and making weird stuff happen.

In the past two years, I've made some weird stuff, just for fun. Like Spangeboob.

Here's some other stuff I've done just for fun (some from before I took photography, I was just playing around with brush strokes, so don't expect much)

♥

Stuck-Up Lady's Office

Yes, yes. It's boring. This masterpiece was made ages ago, and it wasn't so much the artistic squiggles that caught my eye. It was the title:

'Stuck-Up Lady's Office'

My first thought was, why on earth did I think to call it that?! But then I really looked at it, and then I imagined this on the wall of a snooty woman's office. I think it's the colours and the abstractness of it that does it.

I can imagine the office to be pristine and very modern, with the walls the same grey/beige colour. Everything is sharp and shiny, but very dull. The colour scheme throughout the whole room is composed of only the colours in this piece, and maybe white, nothing colourful. And this is the only thing on the wall, it's the stuck-up lady's favourite piece of art. Every time someone asks about it, she goes on a rant about how it affects her work, and finishes off by telling the person that they would never understand it, only people like herself could understand it.

I dunno, that's what I picture when I see this...

♥

Barbed

Truthfully, I actually really like this. This is the first thing I ever made in Photoshop. I had great fun, just drawing streaks with each of the brushes, without having to worry about how it looked.

♥

A headache

I had a headache whilst making this, could you tell? I was trying out a new technique, and it went horribly wrong. This is the horrible outcome, a trippy image of a demon child with 'I have a headache' written all over it. Looking at it will give you a headache.

You're welcome.

♥

Bubbles

I'm quite proud of this. Combine a sunset, a bubble, and loads of little colourful bubbles, and you get this. The saying 'a picture is worth a thousand words' is so true here.

The sunset photo was taken on a plane, I was flying to China, so this was probably when I was over Russia. Just the fact that I took this photo when I was in the sky, with the sun, just makes me so happy.

The bubbles were blown by my cousins, for my niece and nephew (gosh I sound so old). I just happened to be sitting there and decided to take photos of them. Again, this was also in China, and looking at this reminds me of my holiday and family.

The buildings (both the reflection in the bubble and the background) are of the block of flats where my grandma lives. So that reminds me of all the dinners I had there during my stay and the old TV that was on almost 24/7.

So yeah, I really like this image :)

♥

I love y'all, and goodbye!