December = Summer

28th Nov 11- Hydrangea
These are one of my favourite flowers and are growing in abundence outside my building at work hopefully I can grow some of my own next year - I took some cuttings and shoved them in the ground so we'll see.

29th Nov 11 - Lucid
Today I got to go to one of my lovely friends end of year concerts.  She is studying Design and Stage Techy stuff at TAFE and every year they have an end of year fashion parade.  Gotta say it was brilliant - this is one of the rainbow costumes from the third year students

30th Nov 11 - Sydney
Another cloudy day - had a market research this evening so had some time to kill after work - went for a drive down to Ball's Point Park which is a good viewing point for NYE Fireworks - I love my city even on a cloudy day - how lucky I am to live in this gorgeous city.


1st Dec 11 - Xmas Dec's
Unpacked my Xmas decorations today - so of of curse i had to photograph them.








2nd Dec 11 - Finders Keepers
Finders Keepers Market tonight - this is an awesome craft market held at Carriageworks every few months.  Lots of local artisans/ crafty people selling their wares.  These lights are just divine but way overpriced - I love vintage lamps and am always on the lookout in op shops to try and fix up one myself.  I have lot's of lovely vintage fabric and one day will be able to make something as lovely as these.

Roses/ Macro

Day 95 - Roses Thursday 3rd November

Worked in Gosford today which means I got home early which just makes me so happy.  I have a wild rose tree in my front garden and it is finally blooming and it had been raining today so I thought I would get the macro lens out and get some photo's.  I can't tell you how happy I am with these - I have posted a few as they all worked so well.  I really should use my macro lens a bit more as it helps me take great photo's.  Deciding which one to use was the hardest bit but I have decided to go with the buds as they are a bit different and look so good.

Day 96 - View - Friday 4th November

Had a funeral today and had a day off but only took 3 photo's all day, I guess I wasn't feeling very creative afterwards.  The clouds were awesome this morning when I woke up but I thought I would share my water views with you as it was such a clear day.  This is my view from my front verandah and it changes frequently depending on the weather.  I feel so lucky to have such a pretty outlook.

Long Weekend

Friday 30th Sept 11 - Dancing Friends/Shadow
I only took two photo's today - not really sure why, musn't have had my head in the right space, which leaves me with not much choice for my photo of the day.  I suppose at least I remembered to take two.  The photo I chose is of my dancing friends, I went out to dinner with them and tried out my new "photobooth" app on my phone.  I have two photo's today because when I went to post this one of my dancing friends on Facebook, it wouldn't upload - so I posted my other photo of the day shadows.

Sat 1st Oct 11 - Orchid
Had a super quiet day today as I'm totally broke at the moment, so I took a few photo's around the house.  Much to the teasing of my friends about the number of flower photo's I"m going to dedicate today to another flower shot. 

Why? When I took other photo's - well Miss Bronte =)

A:  It's a damn good photo
B:  I figure that these flowers are going to die off soon so I may as well capture them while I can, 


C:  I'm really surprised that this orchid is still alive! - see I seem to have some sort of virus running through my plants which is a bit sad.  


All the plants in my backyard have spots on the leaves and as I know absolutely nothing about gardening I'm not quite sure what is wrong with them - however some of them like this rock orchid that I inherited with my house are still successfully flowering and it is beautiful - so here it is - my flower of the week. 









Sunday 2nd Oct 11 - Grand Final Day!!Today is dedicated to the Mighty Manly Warringah Sea Eagles - 2011 Premiers of the Rugby League (NRL). 

Had a brilliant day today - I got to sleep in, caught up with lot's of my beautiful friends - drank far far too much wine - and my team won the footy! 

I have decided to make a Manly collage for today and I thank all my friends for posing specifically for my photo project - as you can see they are not a shy bunch!! 

We watched the game at a friends house and they had it projected up on the wall which was kinda cool so I took lot's of photo's of the projection - some worked, some didn't but I still thought I would include them in my Manly dedication! All the other photo's I took were drunken self portraits or were actually taken in the wee hours of Monday Morning, the best I'll post on my FB page - but many will be deleted!!!




Monday 3rd Oct 11 - Art Deco

Today was a public holiday - thank goodness as my crazy night didn't end til 5.00am this morning when I finally caught a taxi back to Mum and Dad's for a few hours of much needed sleep (and sobering up!).  Once I was finally feeling slightly human again, I went to meet my sister and nephew for lunch.  It was such a beautiful day - the sun was shining and we just chilled out down at Collaroy Beach. 

Joel is growing up so quick and it was brilliant to spend a few quality hours of cuddle and play time with him. The rest of the day was a write off with sleeping and dancing. 

Today's shot is of the old Cinema down at Collaroy - I love Art Deco architecture and I like the angles of this photo with the street lamp.  I also took some cute ones of Joel eating dirt and trying to play with the camera but they aren't for public consumption.

 

Days 50-53

Monday 19 Sept - Day 50

Today I have my standard flower of the week photo - yep it's becoming a bit of a theme - but that's ok cause I love flowers, it's spring and they are easy to photograph - I am trying to make them interesting and take different ones though.  This was taken on my lunchtime walk.








Tuesday 20th Sept - Day 51

I thought I would be a bit creative today so when I got home I took these lights off the wall and put them in a bowl.  I bought a vintage mirror on the weekend and I love the reflection in this photo.  The lights are from thailand - I'm a bit of a fan of fairy lights - I intend to buy a bunch for my back yard when I get some cash and have been meaning to shoot these lights for a while.  I tried a setting on the camera I haven't used before also so am pretty proud of myself today.

Wednesday 21st Sept 11 - Day 52 - Dance

Today I took some photo's at my dance studio, some of the Pole girls were doing a practice performance for a show this weekend and I thought it would be a good chance for me to practice taking some motion photos.  As I was taking the photo's I thought they were looking really good, I changed my speed and set the camera for low light, however when I went to edit them they were all a bit crap - they were really dark and too much motion - I managed to fix a few up and I quite like this one.  Today my new handbag came in the mail, it is a special camera bag from America and I am sooooo excited, photo's to come soon.

Thursday 22nd Sept 11 - Day 53 - Footloose

I got a free ticket to see the re-make of Footloose tonight and as a fan of the original I was thinking it was going to be crap - but it was actually quite good - very very funny - not bad dancing and a hot male lead - can't really complain.  I was trying to get a self portrait of me and the sign but it just didn't work so today's photo is the promo for the movie.

I got more goodies in the mail today, my Bokeh Kit and Flash adapter were sitting at my doorstep when I got home - soooo excited - just got to work out how to make the Bokeh photo's work now. (bokeh is a fancy light thingy - basically I put a shape over my len's and then I should get pretty butterfly's or stars when I photograph lights in the dark - fingers crossed).

Adios Amigo's - Donna xoxo

Week 7

Monday 12th September

Back to full time work today - it was hard getting up at 5.30 this morning but I am finally well and looking forward to getting back into the swing of things. So today's photo is of yes more flowers, but Monday's are a bit of a crazy day for me as I go straight from work to dance and don't get home til 9.00pm so the only chance I really get to take photo's is at lunch.  I found this huge Azaela tree on my lunchtime walk and I like the way I framed this shot.

Tuesday 13th September

Working at Gosford today so sleep in -whoot - I ended up walking today as I didn't start til a bit later and getting parking is an absolute nightmare - and as the sun was shining and I need to lose about 10 kilo's in the next month I figured I should get my butt moving.  I kinda knew what I wanted to photograph today and hoped they would work.  Along the water front at Gosford is a row of beautiful palm trees so I spent quite awhile on my way home taking different shots of these trees, Palm Trees are hard to photograph and of course I was playing around with all the different settings that I am still trying to get my head around - I think I need them tattoed on my hand so that I remember!!  Anyway my fav photo is looking up at the blue sky with the leaves surrounding me, 
again I like the framing of this shot! 

Donna xoxo
Hope your all enjoying the sunshine also

Donna

Days 36 - Spring

Day 36 - 5th Sept 11


Back to work today after a week of being sick - but got sent home at lunchtime as the girls thought I should still be in bed.  So on the way home I stopped off at a local park to get my photo of the day - this park is right on the water and has a war memorial at it and a really old cemetery - it is quite a beautiful place - I think it is called Pioneer Park - from what I can gather - East Gosford where I live is quite an old settlement and full of history - I  keep discovering cool new places to visit which is nice.  I'm really happy with this photo as I was playing with the manual settings and managed to get the background blurred and the red pop - I still don't know what I'm doing but playing with the camera is helping me get better shots.


I still have to edit the rest of the week's pictures so will have to catch up in a few day's time - it's funny but because i've been so sick, I have not wanted to go anywhere near a computer which has put me way behind in my editing.


Hopefully things will look up soon


Donna xoxo

Catch Up - 29th August - 2nd Sept - Days 29-32

Well it's been well over a week since I last blogged and I have hit the one month mark (yay).  Whilst I have been quiet on the computer I have still been taking my daily picture - I have just been holed up on the couch for a week with a really bad chest infection/ flu - so I'm pretty happy that I still managed to find the motivation to take the photo's cause let me tell you, there wasn't much motivation to do anything except lie like a sloth, cough and blow my nose - charming hey! 

Monday 29th August - Day 29 Lights

I tried to be arty with some of the lights that I have in my house but not many of my shots worked out at all - Once I get time to work out how to use my DSLR properly on Manual settings I hope to re-take this photo and see if it works out better - I like the moodiness of this photo but it is a bit grainy and I had to do a bit of editing to make it look ok.

Tuesday 30th August - Day 30

Again I tried to be arty and failed - this time using my point and shoot - I was playing around with the colour settings where you enhance 1 colour and everything else is B&W - but I just couldn't get a shot that was light enough - I guess if I was taking them during the day it would be different.  I chose this one as it was the best of the bunch - and I took heaps of different ones around the house. (Apologies for the lopsidedness - but I just can't get it to sit right!)

Wednesday 31st August - Day 31

Today the only thing I did besides slothing and watching Beverley Hills 90120 (thanks Erin) was go to the doctors - I knew I had to take a photo and whilst I have no green thumb, I have been pretty excited that I actually managed to grow a plant successfully so when I got home I used my phone to take a photo of one of my favourite flower's - this beautiful freesia - and yes I grew it all by myself - well actually last year I pick a whole lot of bulbs off the side of the road and shoved them in my garden hoping for the best and viola - 1 flower grew amongst the weeds - I have done the same this year - planted a whole lot of freesia bulbs so hopefully next spring I will have more than one.

Thursday 1st September - Day 32

Spring - Yay - but still sick!  It was gorgeous outside today and I did manage to leave the house which was good.  For a few weeks now I have been eyeing off a pair of shoes but they had run out of my size - today they rang to say that they had new stock in which was exciting and as I had run completely out of food - I trekked up to the shops and bought my new shoes!

Day 25 - 25th August 11 - Orange

Again - nothing interesting to write today, except that it is a stunning (almost) spring day so I got out and about at lunch again and explored another part of St Leonards.

Again - I took lots of tree and flower shots - I'm going to have to start thinking of something more exciting to photograph if I'm going to last a year!!!

Why this one - I like the colours, I like the focus and I like that Spring is nearly here and that the sun is shining and the flowers blooming.

1 sleep til the weekend - whoooooooo - it's going to be another good one, going out with the school girls on Friday Night yay.

Day 9 - 9th August 11 - PINK!!!!

Today I'm working in Gosford which is a nice change, got to sleep in this mornign which was a treat.  I am in a totally enclosed office today and in meetings all afternoon so will have to find something to capture on my way home or from around the house tonight. All afternoon, I was thinking I will photograph my dinner tonight, my weekly dinners generally consist of buying whatever meat is on sale then cooking for at least 4-5 meals, it's not that I don't enjoy cooking, I love it but I HATE washing up, plus I don't get home til late quite a few evenings a weeks so it is good to have something that I can heat up rather than just eating cheese on toast.

I took some photo's of the cooked lasagna and then the slice on my plate but they totally sucked.  It just looked like a cheesy mess - guess I don't have a future as a food photographer.  So onto Plan B - as I mentioned yesterday my azalea tree is flowering so I picked a few blooms, popped them into a vintage glass and took some shots of them and viola they look awesome, this shot is labelled pink as that is one of my favourite colours (can't you tell) and it just pop's so much in this photo, I couldn't label it anything else.

ciao Donna xoxo