Days 57 - 60 From Best to Worst

Day 57 - Monday 26th Sept 11 - New Bag

Aahh Monday's I hate thee so much!!!!  But my photo for today is exciting, this is my new camera/ handbag - isn't it awesome, it arrived in the post last week, I bought it from a company called Jo Totes and this was my birthday present from Mum and Dad. 

I absolutely love it, the bag came with special inserts that protect your camera and it is huge, I can fit both my camera's and my extra lens, along with my wallet and crap etc. Do you like my styling, thought it looked better with the mag!!

Day 58 - Tuesday 27th Sept 11 - Sunset

Today I was hoping to use my new bokeh kit but I don't think it is going to work very well with my lens which is disappointing - even though when I bought it I thought it was compatible, I'm not so sure now. I am yet to give it a really good try but so far I am having problems getting the pretty sparkles it is supposed to produce.  I stopped off at the water on the way home hoping to catch some sparkles as the sun was setting but as it didn't work I just took some more sunset photo's instead and How spectacular is this!!!!! I am sooooo happy with this photo, the colour, the frozen clouds, the pelican in the shade - love it, love it, love it, actually this is my favourite photo so far in this project.

Day 59 - Wednesday 28th Sept 11 - Winner

So excited today, recently I won first prize in a competition that I didn't even remember entering.  The prize was $1000 worth of designer cashmere clothing from an Australian company called Gasperre and the parcel arrived today. 

So I won a black cardigan - not really my style but will be nice on a cool night in summer, a beautiful baby blue throw and a sloppy jumper - the company have been so lovely and I had my choice of colours etc - so if you ever want to splurge (and I mean splurge!!) Then I would recommend this company. 

Winner!!!

Day 60 - Thurs 29th Sept 11 - Bokeh

So I go from my best photo so far to my worst photo so far - all in two days.  I bought this Bokeh Kit from the USA and it is supposed to make pretty light effects except I just can't get it to work.  Not sure if it is my lens or just my blondeness - but this was me experimenting last night.  I am hoping for a bit of sunshine this weekend so I can get down to the water and play a bit more.  This photo was taken in my lounge room and it is supposed to be a heart shape - I don't mind the softness of it but overall pretty disappointed. It's actually getting harder and harder to find things to photograph at the moment - I'm almost all done on flowers and lunch time walks - hopefully with daylight saving starting this week I can try and get out for a few drives in the spare 15 min's I have between getting home and going to dance during the week.  This means's being super organised and actually taking my dance clothes with me before work each day and ensuring I have done all my food shopping on the weekend.  On a side note - it is the start of a long weekend and hopefully it'll be a good one - heading out on the town with my dancing girls Friday night and GRAND FINAL day on Sunday where Manly is going to whip the Warriors Arse!!! 

Let's hope I get some good photography in as well. 

Cheers Donna

Days 54 - 56

Days 54- 56 Weekend

 

Hooray for weekends, but man they just seem to disappear far too quickly.

Day 54 - Friday 23rd Sept 11 - Kye

Today's photo is of my good friend Mandy's son Kye.  Mandy is pretty much my oldest friend, we have known each other since Kindy and I think it is pretty cool to still be friends with someone nearly 30 years later.  Mandy had asked me to babysit her two kids so she could have a night out in the city and knowing how lovely her kids how could I refuse.  Her youngest Zoe went to bed no problems at 7.30 and then Kye and I sat up watching the footy (Manly won - whooo hooo bring on the grand final now!!).  I took a few photos of the kids, but I have messed with one of the settings on the camera and everything is coming out blurry (even when I manual focus) - so I had to reset the whole thing on Sunday.  I think this is a lovely photo of Kye, even though he has a bit of a black eye after a basketball injury that day. I am working on my portrait photography and I think the lighting could of been better, hopefully my new flash will help fix that.

Day 55 - Saturday 24th Sept 11 - Lia

Today started with breakfast with my lovely friend Bec and her daughter Lia - we have been trying to catch up for weeks now and finally secured a time and date - I absolutely love this photo - Lia is nearly 1 and she is going through that "look at me I'm so cute phase" - she just looks so happy in this photo. The rest of my day was spent dancing and cleaning - we had rehearsals for a performance this evening and then I did a ballet fit class - awesome but really hard and so sore as I write this on monday.  Tonight we had a Girls Night at the studio where I do my dancing, Tina and her sister Amanda (who has just returned from a long stint in the UK) came down to see me perform my Brazilian Samba routine - it was so much fun, it's been awhile since I performed and of course I loved it - am now looking forward to doing a few more performances. 

Day 56 - Sunday 25th Sept 11 - Shells

It is raining big time here today and the house is a disaster as Tina's kids came to stay and as much as I love them to bits, hey certainly know how to make a mess - all of us where a bit lethargic (maybe a bit hungover =)) this morning so we just lazed around playing with the kids and watching friends - once Tina went home I had a major cleaning mission.  I don't know what inspired this shot - I just was walking around the house looking for something easy to shoot and this was my best photo of the day - I think it's pretty - the colours worked out really well considering what a miserable day it was - must be my awesome photography skills LOL!!

Donna xoxo

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

Days 48 - 49 - Weekend

Day 48 - Sat 17th Sept 11 - Sunset
So unlike my slack Friday, Saturday I took loads of photo's. I had brunch this morning with my lovely friend Robyn and her partner Max - they were going to a wedding up the coast so came to my house which was nice.  Shortie is one of my oldest friends and we don't see each other that often but when we do we always have lots to catch up on, she got engaged recently and I got to see her proposal video (yes there is one!!) and all her overseas photos which was great, we munched down on strawberries, eggs and salmon - mmmm such a treat. 

I then raced to the ferry to meet the family for lunch at Newport Arms, I love the arms - it was a bit of mission to get there - but nicer to catch a ferry than drive for two hours, it is only a 20 minute ferry ride from the coast to Palm Beach in Sydney but as it was a Saturday it took me 20 minutes to get to the ferry and then a half hour bus ride to the arms. 

It was a lovely afternoon just to chill out in the sun and have a few vino's and catch up with the fam, I haven't seen my beautiful nephew for a few weeks so it was nice to have a bit of playtime with him - he is nearly 12 months old and crawling around exploring everything - wish I got to see him more often though. 

I then got to watch the sunset as I returned back up the coast.  Whilst I took lots of people photo's today, I couldn't got past this sunset shot - I took about trillion photo's on the ferry ride home and I just love this, I also got some awesome ones of my Joelboy, but I need to check with my sis if it's ok to publish these or not. 

Day 49 - Sun 18th Sept 11 - Best Friend

I had lots of grand plans for getting jobs done around the house this morning before catching up with my bestie Tina you know boring stuff like mowing lawns, doing washing - however Energy Australia had other ideas and decided to replace the power poles outside my house which meant no power for the whole day - whilst I did receive notice I totally forgot about it so was totally pissed off when I couldn't enjoy my morning coffee - luckily I had leftovers from brunch and could rustle up an uncooked breaky.   So instead of spending the day at home, I headed off early to see Tina.  She had a kid free day today so we spent most of the afternoon relaxing in the pub drinking wine and talking shit hence my photo of the day. 

Tina and I have been best friends for nearly twenty years and seriously we can talk and talk and talk about pretty much nothing and everything for hours on end - shame we both had to drive today as I reckon we could have downed many many more drinks. 

I have included my second fav photo of the day today as I like the artyness of it, this was taken at a school fete that we went to, where they had a vintage car and caravan show - I love old cars and wish I had the money to keep one as a weekend car. One can dream.....

Here's to another mundane week at work
Donna xoxo

Friday - Slack

So it's Day 47, and it's a friday and I don't know why but I took hardly any photo's today (only 3 or 4 in the morning and this was the best). I guess it's been a bit of a full on week with the funeral and everything and I just ran out of energy, so unfortunately today is an average photo.  I took this at 6.00am at Mum and Dad's - it is the reflection in their pool - whilst the reflection is nice, the pool is disgusting - it has some sort of algae that they can't get rid of and you can see the gunk ruining my nice photo!!  I do like the sun just tinting the top of the trees though!

Happy Weekend everyone - hope it's a good one

Donna

Days 45-46

Day 45 - 14th Sept - Vintage Cards

Today's photo is of a prize I won, I read a stack of blogs and it is so easy to enter competitions, you just write a nice message and sometimes you get lucky.  These are vintage playing cards that came from the States - i think they are gorgeous - not really sure what I'm going to do with them yet though.  I did take some photos of them looking all neat and spread out - but I liked the messy stack better.  I have also won another prize recently a $1000 voucher for some cashmere clothing company - but I am waiting to hear back from them to find out what exactly I won - but $1000 is pretty cool - still have my fingers crossed that I will win the $25,0000 home renovation package - that would just be a dream.

Day 46 - 15th Sept - Disco

Today was a bit shit, I attended a funeral for my Boss's husband who died a long fought battle with Cancer - RIP Martin.  So obviously I wasn't really in the mood to take photo's - all of my colleagues from work attended and it ended up being a nice afternoon.  I did take one photo during the day which was of the pub where the wake was held, but it was a bit shit!  I decided to stay at the parentals tonight as I was too emotionally tired to drive back up the coast.  I stayed in my old room which still has my disco ball hanging from the roof so I thought I would take some shot's of it.  They weren't that great - so I decided to play a bit in Picnic and touch the photo up - it looks pretty now.

Hope you all have a great weekend, won't be back til Monday

cheers 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