SparkyFizz

New neighbour...

Elliott Joseph...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

my new little neighbour... welcome to the world!

Collecting things...

I'm always so impressed by friends who have the tenacity to collect objects over long periods of time.  My lovely friend, Kim, collects milk bottles.  Secretly what impresses me most is the fact that she has to dust all this stuff, I'm sure I wouldn't have the patience!

Camera happy...

My other soon to be 15 years old daughter is desperate to learn photography (they both are actually), and likes to take pictures of all sorts of things.  My main problem is restraining her, insisting on radical pruning of her pictures, otherwise I would have hundreds on my computer!  This is, of course, a perpetual problem with digital images.  She loves the Fuji Finepix camera, and wants one of her own for her birthday.  

She took this in Canterbury, and I can't believe it's possible to open that door.

I love this photo, just wish there was one more human leg in the procession.

My girls outside the Primrose Bakery, with their friend (centre), who spends a huge amount of her time taking photos.  Perhaps it's something about the current teenage generation who've grown up with cameras on mobile phones.  

The produce of the Primrose Bakery...

...and the aftermath!

St Patrick's Day...

Happy St Patrick's Day to all my Irish relatives and friends everywhere.  Wishing you all a wonderful day and lots of Guinness.  Sláinte!

Photography: C&G Manipulation Picture #6...

I liked this humorous picture, but once again, it was spoiled due to lack of white balance, so ideal for altering in Photoshop.

Before...

I decided to do an Andy Warhol style picture, which is more complicated, but great fun to work on.

After...

The hardest part about this creation was trying to achieve similar tones in all four pictures.  In my mind I had an idea of war time vintage colours, which I think was best achieved in the last photo.

That's the end of this little selection.  Now I'm off to start photos for Level 2...

 

Photography: C&G Manipulation Picture #5...

This was a fairly simple transformation.  

Before...

I just used a 'posterize' setting on Photoshop, and created the frame around it.

After...

 

Photography: C&G Manipulation Picture #4...

I liked the composition of this photo.  So I decided to change it a little.  I know the finished version of this has appeared in the blog at an earlier date, but I wanted to explain how I did it.  

Before...

After...

The first photo was fine, but I just wanted to change it to black and white, then reintroduce some selected colour.  To begin with I turned the image into black and white on Photoshop, then used three separate 'layers' to add each of the colours.  I zoomed in until the image was very large, then added the colour.  I didn't worry too much about accuracy, as I went back in with an eraser after each colour application.  I took much more care with the eraser!  I made sure that the colour retained transparency, in order to pick up the highlights, and I also used the 'opacity' slider to reduce the intensity.  I repeated the process for each of the three layers.  The great thing about layers is that the colours don't merge and make a mess.  The bad thing about this sort of work is that it can make you a little obsessive... 

Photography: C&G Manipulation Picture #3...

This is the final manipulated picture.  I couldn't upload the original picture for some reason.  The original was, once again, very orange due to shooting in a room with lots of overhead lights at night and not using white balance controls.

I liked the photo though, with their serious expressions, and decided I could do something with it in Photoshop.  I thought it could have been taken at any time in the last 80 years.  There wasn't much to give away the fact that it was a modern picture -  the girls weren't wearing pierced earrings for example.  The background was very simple, again, nothing to indicate the time setting.  So I decided to make it a 'vintage' style photo.  I turned the colouring to sepia, added a 'film grain' to make it look older and more grainy.  Then I added a black decorative frame.

Photography: C&G Manipulation Picture #2...

This picture was possibly the most complicated for me...

Before...

This was taken at night at home without any 'white balance' alterations, so the whole thing came out with an orange tinge.  I liked the picture though, beautiful profile and lovely negative space, so I decided I would alter it in some way.

This is a piece of vintage Sanderson upholstery fabric I inherited.  I decided to use this as a background for the profile. 

After...

I blurred the background, so that the profile would stand out.  The skin tone has been altered quite a lot.  I cut out the profile and placed it on the background.  The cutting out was more difficult than I expected in order to get a clean cut without shadows or other markings.  I used several 'layers' in Photoshop to get the final result.  I had to draw her eyelashes on a separate layer and merge it with the photo, they were too difficult to cut out...!

 

Photography: C&G Manipulation Picture #1...

Over the next few days I'm going to post some pictures I took for my City and Guilds, level 1 Photography assessment - my 'Manipulation' (Photoshop) portfolio.  This should give an idea of what's possible on Photoshop.  All the photos have been changed to a greater or lesser degree, but none of these have been altered substantially.  Some of my class colleagues produced  wonderfully altered photographs, but for this project I wanted to do some fairly simple and subtle changes.  I can't wait to do some outrageous pictures though!

I'm not going to show you my 'Typography' portfolio because they've all been posted in here somewhere over the last few months.

A big thank you to my muses, my two daughters and their lovely friend, who posed for me for all these photos, and put up with my tugging, pushing, poking and rearranging... with great patience!

Before...

After...

I changed the original picture to black and white, then put some selected colour back in in an attempt to create a simple, dreamy picture.

My Very Talented Photography Friends...

Sometime ago, I said I would try to persuade a couple of my photography course friends to allow me to put their pictures on here.  These then, are their winning photos which they submitted for the national City and Guilds Level 1 photography competition.

The photo above is by Glenn Foster.  This complicated, technical shot was quite beyond my understanding... Our first ever piece of homework was to experiment with three plastic cups, which is exactly what Glenn has done here, with fantastic results!    

This picture is by Ric Carlucci.  It's City Hall, the workplace of  London  Mayor, Boris Johnson.  Ric has taken this picture from an unusual angle.  The building is on the south bank of the Thames near Tower Bridge, was designed by Norman Foster, and opened in 2002. 

Both my friends have been doing photography for some years, and are doing the City and Guilds course mainly to achieve accreditation to work legitimately as photographers. Both of them are experienced and capable of doing professional work such as weddings, which they have done previously, and are contactable through me.

City and Guilds National Photography Competition...

 

I won second prize with this photo at the national City and Guilds Photography Competition - Part 1.  My prize was a Fuji Finepix S1500 camera - very pleased! Even more pleased about having the picture in a photography exhibition at Morley College Art Gallery near Waterloo.  It's there until closing time on Monday 26th July.  There were prizes for entries in Part 2 and 3 also.  

The picture is of Burnley Football Ground - Turf Moor, taken in April this year.  It shows the sheer joy and delight, and large amount of money spent on advertising BFC's rise to the Premier League in 2009.  There were lots of these gigantic hoardings surrounding the ground, but I concentrated on this one.  You can get a feeling for the size of it, if you compare it to the traffic lights.

The poignancy and  irony is that this picture was taken just a month or so before Burnley were relegated in 2010, so the elation was short lived, sadly...

Nevertheless, the impact of the images was amazing!  I'm assuming they're still there.  I imagine medieval cathedrals had a similar impact on congregations!

The photos in the exhibition were wonderful and inspiring.  Two of my class friends also had pictures in the exhibition. Glenn had an amazing picture of exploding plastic cups of water, the action frozen as they exploded!  Ric had a fabulous picture of City Hall, (the home of Boris Johnson, London's Mayor) which is an amazing sight on its own, but he shot it from a very unusual angle.  I'll see if I can persuade them to allow me to show them on here...

All three of us are very grateful to Kim Lucas, our professional photography tutor, for giving us the skills to be able to do these pictures.  He spent quite some time cajoling us to enter the competition in the first place!  We're looking forward to studying part two photography with Kim in September, if we ever manage to finish our part one portfolios... deadline looming...

We are all studying City and Guilds Photography at CALAT, Croydon's Adult Education Institute.  Thank you to my old friend Nicky Partridge who persuaded me to have a go... Nicky is a professional photographer who is in charge of the photography and creative courses at CALAT.  In fact the college snapped (no pun intended!) about 6 photography awards altogether, including 1st and 3rd prizes in Part 2!  Nicky's husband, Joe Partridge, who is also a professional photographer teaching at CALAT, won a national award for excellence in technology teaching in photography at the college.  Nicky, Joe and Kim, (who all studied photography together as students, and are old friends) have created a wonderful digital photography studio for all those doing courses at CALAT, so we are blessed with these facilities! 

Also thank you to my good friend, Jan Bennett, who accompanied me to the private view as my guest.  My husband stood me up in favour of a trip to Amsterdam... (working trip though).  Jan, who is a talented artist, has taken some of my photos and recreated them in beautiful pastels.  I'll try to persuade her to show some on here.  She also creates pastel and acrylic pictures of lots of different things, tigers, lions, Geisha Girls flower pictures including many in close up detail, and Buddhas amongst others.  I think she enjoyed it!  We're both just reaching the point where we can abandon our children for a few hours, now that they're old enough to be left alone, so that we can have an evening out - such liberation...!

NCT Reunion...

My lifeline 18 years ago, the National Childbirth Trust enabled our group of then, 'mums-to-be', to support each other and meet up regularly before the birth of our first babies.  I subsequently linked up with another more local NCT group after the birth.  I'm still in touch with and meeting many of them.  We now have at least 16 children in our little group!   

   

So, thank you Nina, Oscar, Luke and Imogen for humouring your various mothers the other evening by turning up to the Serpentine in Hyde Park so that we could see you all together once again, and marvel at our progeny 18 years down the line! You were all lovely and sophisticated... which makes us feel like we've done a reasonable job.  Wishing you all the very best for university or gap year.