Sarah's Tea Partay

I LOVE a good Tea Party! It's my wonderful sister's birthday tomorrow, so today we had a Tea Party with the family out at Sarah and Dave's, and it was simply amazing! Lots of delicious goodies covered the table on beautiful cake stands, and the room was filled with the pretty things that Sarah has made for their home. She's a talented lady! Here are just a feeeew photos...

And after lunch we all made our own Lips and Moustaches, which created the best kind of family portraits...

  

Happy Birthday Sarah!xx

Week 4/52 : Express Yourself

I've been looking forward to doing this photo ALL WEEK, and it didn't disappoint. It was great fun! I always wonder if my neighbour across the road can see me out their front window when I'm running around the back garden with scarves over my head, or running back and forth from the camera to the bench holding props, or doing handstands ...if they can, they surely think I'm a complete weirdo. I'm also usually chuckling away to myself.

It's not too late to post up your own interpretation of 'Express Yourself', I'd love to see them :) Happy Friday!!

Next week's theme is 'Just A Peek'!

My New Hat

This post is going to be rather random...This year I want to make more use of my lighting kit, and get some practice with it, and the past couple weeks I've thought about setting it up and doing some more crazy self portraits. So when I bought a beautiful new hat the other day I thought it was the perfect prop to get me going. The photos are all pretty similar, I should have incorporated more props...*note to self for next time*

Here are a couple shots before I got started with the make up, and I've not done any post production on Photoshop with these ones...

Having the remote shutter release was a massive help! I was still going back and forth to see if I was actually in the frame, but focusing was far easier!

I absolutely love these next two shots...yes, I'm wearing lipstick in the first...and then it came off when I added the eye makeup as I didn't want to go too overboard...ha...

And I don't really have much to say about the rest of the photos...I can't believe how many I'm posting...

And here are a couple black and whites to mix things up...

So...I successfully set up my lighting kit and had some fun! Apologies for the number of me's in this post...I'm planning on branching out and doing lots of themed shoots with beautiful people throughout the year, indoors and outdoors to get practice with natural light and studio lighting. 

Hope you're all have a good weekend :) I am now, very happily, going to step away from the laptop, and my face. Haha.

Week 3/52: The View From Down Here

Is it really week 3 already?! I think this project is gonna make my year pass even quicker than last year...jeepers. So, yeah, this week's theme was 'The View From Down Here', and Tanya may have stolen one of my photos spots, but I had another one up my sleeve. Haha. I do still really want to go check out that library though, it looks amazing!

The first image in the set is in The Academy shopping centre in Aberdeen. I often wonder how many people walk under this spot without realising what they're missing when they don't look up. I love it! The others images were taken at a forest that's on the road between Kingswells and Cults. The tree on the left was amazing! It was a holly tree...that was like a spider...well, it actually reminded me of the creepy things from Alien...haaa. Yum. And the sky shot was taken down at the beach front, I was hoping to get a photo of the big wheel, but the carriages haven't been put back on it yet.

Next week's theme is 'Express Yourself', and you have to sing the song while you do it!

Sarah and Fin in Crathes Gardens

 It's amazing what you can come away with after a wee visit to the gardens of Crathes Castle...

 

And I got Sarah to snap a quick photo of me and the cutie before we left...

Week 1/52: Water

Sarah and Fin joined me on a trip to Crathes to capture some water yesterday afternoon. I absolutely love the gardens there, even in winter, when the garden's not fully blooming. Fin enjoyed watching the wee boy with his turtle squirting water fountain, and then we strolled up to the higher level of the gardens and discovered the other wee pond was frozen over. It was pretty!

We did get to see some flowers blooming in the Greenhouse, I'd never realised it was open to the public before now, so we went in and took a few super cute photos of Sarah and Fin, think that'll be a separate blog post coming soon :)

Next week's 52 Project theme is "The View From Down Here"...it's not just for short people.

'C' is for Camera Cookie Cutters!

Look what I made! I'm in love.

Aren't they cute!? Suuuure, some of them have expanded a bit too much and they just look like fried egg shaped cookies, and the vintage cameras look like traffic lights, or robots, but they still look amazing! And taste good too! Ive got 38 of them if anyone wants one...I've had 2 already. They're small!

Cookie cookie cookie starts with C!

Week 1/52: New Beginnings

So, here were are, a new year and a new project. I've felt a bit lost without my 365 project this week, so I'm super happy to be getting this project up and running! The plan is to post a set of photos every Friday, and every week will have a set theme. Let's get started shall we...

The theme for Week 1 is 'New Beginnings' to fit in with the start of a new year, and what's more fitting to this theme than the beginning of a new life :) Ladies and Gentlemen, I'd like to introduce you to the newest member of the family, my cousin Ewan Bain, 3 weeks old today :)

There was a lovely family gathering on Tuesday afternoon at my grandparents house in Glasgow, where we got to meet little Ewan for the first time, and I got to take some photos :) The shoot didn't last quite as long as hoped, we only had about 10 minutes in the end, ha, but I managed to get a few cuties!

My own personal new beginning will be having more confidence in myself, and more guts to get my business name and photos out in the world, well, local area at least. Ha.

Next week's theme is...Water. And no, I didn't just decide that off the top of my had while taking a sip of water. I'd love it if you guys joined me in posting photos on my facebook page each week, doesn't have to be on Friday, and it can be from your phone, iPad or whatever :)

I hope you're all enjoying the first week of 2012!

Crave Photography Giveaway!!

I had to stop myself typing "Day..." in the title of this blog post...I'm really struggling to come to terms with the fact that my 365 project is over, it was a pretty massive part of my life...and now I'm in Glasgow...without my own laptop, using my Grampa's, and I haven't taken a Bench Monday photo today...or any photo for that matter! I did plan on keeping Bench Monday going...but perhaps it won't happen every week!

Anyway, the point in this blog post is to rave about the incredible giveaway that American photographer Crave Photography is giving away. Remember the time I stayed up through the night for an online mentoring session? Yeah, well, this is the same photographer! And she's giving away a lens that costs almost £2000...what a prize!! There'll be thousands of people entering the giveaway, and the winner is drawn at random through an online generator thingymabobber, so chances are slim, but if I don't try I definitely won't win!

This lens would be such a massively amazing addition to my camera bag, I'd get some great candid photos at weddings; being able to stand back from the crowds, and allow people to mingle without me being up close and personal, and without a flash gun too! It's seriously an incredible lens...and at the price of it you'd expect it to be! Ha. I certainly won't be able to afford one any time soon.

I hope you're all having a fantastic start to the new year, as I said, I'm in Glasgow, just for one night, and it's dull and wet as usual! Ha. But tomorrow I'll be meeting my new baby cousin Ewan, and hopefully getting some super cute photos of him, so stay tuned for that!

Can't believe I'm about to post this without any photo attached...Grampa's laptop doesn't even have a webcam I can use to take a hilarious photo of myself...what a shame!

Day 365: I Can't Believe I've Done It...

Last week, when I was thinking about coming to the end of my 365 project, I was thinking back on the whole year, and didn't feel like I'd really achieved anything...I certainly haven't progressed my business as much as I'd hoped, in some ways I don't understand where the year has gone...and wonder what on earth I did every day!

But, on Thursday night I sat and looked through the blog, looking at every photo from Day 1 to Day 364, trying to pick my favourite. And many of you will probably have gone a little crazy seeing so many blog posts filling up your Facebook wall. Apolgoies! But it was pretty emotional! For starters, I simply can't believe I actually did it! There were days that were late due to migraine interruptions, or Internet failures, or staying up till 5am...ha. But I actually took a photo every day for the whole year...a whole year!! I guess that's a pretty good achievement.

And I photographed my first two weddings!! That's a massive achievement for me too. I'm really pleased and excited to say I have more to come over the next year :) I love a good wedding!

Looking back at every photo has made me realise that I've had a pretty darn amazing year! It's certainly had it's ups and downs, with many moments of me questioning whether I was taking the right path in different situations. Asking for God's guidance, but then wondering if I was going ahead and doing things my way in the end anyway, ignoring His response. And I'm still questioning certain situations! But I need to remember to stop talking things over with myself in my head, and let God in on every conversation too.

Putting aside the, mainly trivial, worries I've had, I see a year full of moments spent with wonderful encouraging people, both Christians and non Christians. I think back to how my friendships with some of those people have grown significantly throughout the year, and I love that! I've seen the steps of Finlays growth over the year, literally. Seeing him going from just a wee riggley baby, to crawling, and then walking, no longer so little! And I see that I have in fact taken one or two rather nice photos in the last 365 days, ha.

I know I have a lot of work to do in 2012, and I think my New Year's Resolution is to find confidence in myself, and the abilities God has given me, and use that confidence to get the name of Blue Door Photography out in to the wider population and become an accomplished business woman. Blog posts will not cease after this, I am planning on doing a 52 week project...and perhaps continue Bench Monday...or a variation, as an extra. But I am aiming to make my photos more business focused each week.

And with that all said...without further adue...here is the final photo of my 365 project for 2011...

An evening at the Smiths, yet again surrounded my wonderful and encouraging people, an excellent way to finish one year, and start the next.

Happy New Year Everyone :) And thank you very much for joining me on this epic project, I hope you've all enjoyed it as much as I have! Don't remove me from your Bookmarks just yet though, keep an eye out for exciting new projects of 2012 :)