POTD January 9

This is our game-cabinet, full of things we can do on cold Wednesdays or weekends! And still, I do hear them say "I'm bored, I've got nothing to do". Well, they are children! :-) As far as photography is concerned, I gave "nature" a try. It's a ridiculous picture, but for some reason, I quite like it anyway! As you can see, I am still trying the BOKEH :-)
Thanks for looking!

January 8, Beauty and the Cat

Hello all,

I'm in a hurry this morning, so not much text! Just a couple of pictures of my girl and the cat! Taken with the 70-200 lens, priority aperture.

And no, the cat is not necessarily comfortable in the pictures, except for in the last one ;)

Thanks for looking!

POTD January 7 - Portraits!

Oooooh, I missed a day, and am late posting on this day :-O It's really hard to keep up with POTD every day now that I'm back at work, I don't have any daylight to take picture in because I leave home before sunrise and come back home when night already starts, like most people :) So for today, some more portraits taken in the house in the evening. Pictures taken with my 70-200mm lens, aperture around 5 to get the bokeh.

Alban playing with his new Lego, he loves it! He's making an airplane here, which is finished in the next photo:
His mouth is not dirty, it's actually irritated :-(
And finally a picture of Naomi, who is seriously tired after a day at school, and to be honest, maybe a little fed up with pictures :-O But she's still my beautiful little girl!

I don't work on Wednesdays, so that I can stay with the children who don't have school on Wednesdays, Yay! This means that some serious playing will be done today, as some "serious" photography of course! Thanks for stopping by at my blog!

January 5th

We did nothing special today, the children got dressed at about 3 pm, that says it all :-) A nice, lazy Sunday, typical last-day-of-the-holidays! We did go to a playground for a little while, but were really cold so we didn't stay too long. The weather was gray, not good at all for my pictures, I had a hard time taking any good ones. Besides that, there is NO color in town, or at least I didn't find any, so I had a hard time finding any good subjects for pictures too ;-) But I did manage to get this shot of my son, he was kind of hiding behind his hat (the hiding for the camera is beginning!!!) and I liked that I took the picture just when he was peeking under it to see if I was looking.

There's also this moment that I liked today, the picture is not very good, but the moment WAS. My son (in his pyjama's) and I playing Monopoly (his sister already gave up), I think he's so cute when we're playing Monopoly! And as not all photos need to be masterpieces (yay!), here's a picture of my son in action!Thanks for looking!

January 4

Yesterday morning, their was a beautiful light coming in from the window next to my Christmas tree, falling just on some ornaments that I like a lot. So I decided to take some pictures with this light only, not easy a 7.30 in the morning in winter! I quite like the result! Aperture mode. The first ornament is the one my daughter received for her first christmas, from my parents, the second ornament is from my son's first christmas, the third one is actually without any special meaning for us, let's say it's a cheapy one ;-)

I quite like the lighting on these, please tell me honestly what you think of it, help me improve!

Thanks for all your comments!! They are very much appreciated!

Bad light day! POTD January 3

Hello all! I've been reading Bryan Paterson (Understanding Exposure) these last day, carry it around as a bible actually ;-) and somehow he makes it look easy! But I discovered yesterday that is isn't!!! After the WB problem, I struggled yesterday with... light! I went outside to take my pictures (I prefer outdoor lighting!! or so I though), took my son and my camera to town and started playing tourist! Technically spoken I am a tourist around here, so I might as well act like one too ;-) We had beautiful weather, the temperatures were OK but the sun was totally saying "spring!). So I discovered that too much sun is, well, too much. In the afternoon my son had a little friend over at our house, they played in the garden but I don't have any good photos of it, because they turn either their back at me (often) or the sun is just too much (shadows in the faces). Here are the two better pictures (not perfect!) that I picked for POTD (I'm not gonna show you all my failures!!):

That is my son in the playground, climbing. I cut out the slides itself, ugly colors (you can still see a little yellow!). As you can see, the lighting is not correct (the exposure) but it is one of the best from yesterday...

Next one doesn't show a face, only (dirty) shoes. I wanted to show you some history of my town, these are my sons shoes on the Rosetta stone, a copy obviously (he's standing on the hieroglyphs part), that is on the most famous little square in town. It is terrible to take pictures of because it is a tiny square surrounded on 4 sides by building totally blocking the light!! When I took the photo I didn't actually realise the floor was that dirty :-) Disappointment there too!!

And to show you another one anyway, this is my son running on that same square and I am disappointed with this picture because my son is not at all well exposed and it could have been a really cute photo.
Well what I can I say? Any CC would be welcome! Oh, and don't worry, I'm not giving up on this, I'll get there!!!

**edit: I shot my pictures either in A mode or S mode, no full manual today!**

January 2d, portraits!

First of all, a huge Thank You for all your comments, I love comments!



The photos for today show portraits of my kids. I really wanted to give the blurry background a try, so I took these pictures with my 70-200 lens, f/4.8 (I believe) in manual, yes yes, I'm trying! Like this you meet my family at the same time :-)



First my boy, who is the youngest:

Picture taken outside, while he was on his bike. The background is basically our driveway, couldn't get any trees or other goodlooking things in the background and to be honest, didn't think of that at the moment! Then meet my girl, the oldest of the two:

She was in the living room, which isn't very tidy as we speak! hum hum. Well, I might not buy these pictures of a professional photographer ;-) but for my first attempt I quite like them. Oh, and I don't do any photo editing, simply because I don't know how to do it!

Thanks for any comments or CC, see you tomorrow!