Wednesday, February 20, 2013

Gloucester

A few weeks ago Gary and I visited Gloucester. We went to an Open-day for a Masters course that Gary was interested in. It turned out that the course wasn't right for him, but that's OK, he found another one closer to home anyway! :)

We spent two days and one night staying in the centre of Gloucester. It was lovely to have some time for just us. We got to talk about grown up things and do grown up things. Though Cas was on our minds a lot and we brought treats home for him. 

I took some pictures on the Sunday around Gloucester, the sky was beautifully clear blue. The histogram on my camera told me all was exposed well and I was happy. Then when I got home and loaded the images on my PC.....THE HORROR.... my sensor is DIRTY. The non-photographers amongst you will not understand this pain, but basically those beautiful clear blue skies were covered with dirty splodges from dust on my sensor. I saved the images and left them, whilst I sulked!

Anyway, I decided to stop sulking and do the editing work to remove the marks. I HATE photoshop with a passion. I use Lightroom to process my images, and love it. But photoshop always makes me feel clumsy and doesn't seem intuitive at all. So I avoid it. If images really need a little touch-up that Lightroom can't handle, I outsource (to Gary). However, cleaning these images was a simple job, and I wanted to share them, because Gloucester is a pretty place. So I braved photoshop (aren't you proud of me?!)


This first picture is the Cafe where we had breakfast. I loved it, especially because it had the most delicious tea!






 These docks where on the way between our hotel and the centre of Gloucester's shopping area. There were some pretty boats, and like I said, gorgeous blue skies.





This church was right in the middle of town:


And then, of course, there was the Cathedral. It was gorgeous, and undergoing some renovation to the stonework. 





We had a lovely time. And it wasn't as painful as I thought it would be tidying up those skies. My camera is off to the "cleaners" at the end of month! 

C
xxxx


Thursday, February 14, 2013

The "L" challenge

So, this week I've been off work ill. I've been completely incapable of doing anything, which for me is torture (and probably for those around me too). I HATE not being able to do things. I get restless, bored and frustrated. Earlier in the week, I was complaing explaining to Gary that I was upset because I hadn't managed to do ANYTHING! Knowing me as well as he does, he quickly translated this into me exacerbating my illness by stressing about all the things I wasn't getting done. He very FIRMLY told me that I was banned from anything to do with my PhD, to take the responsibility for the lack of work off me. (He's really clever with this one, he knows I'm way tougher on me than I would be on him, so if he says I can't, then I can't). In order to keep me occupied, he challenged me to take pictures of 10 things beginning with the letter L. However, since I couldn't go out, I had to do this in our house.

I couldn't even manage to take the pictures earlier in the week, but I did spend some time thinking about what I could shoot. Today, I felt a little better, so I set off to complete the challenge:


1) Leaf-lights:



2) Liquid:



3) Lock:



4) Lego (obvious choice in our house):



5) Laces:



6) Lemur:



7) Lion: 



 8) Lambs: 



9) Lamp:



10) Lead:

After all of the shooting, I went back to the living room where our lovely dog demonstrated his NEED for cuddles. So bonus shot:

11) Luke (could you resist those eyes?):


This was actually quite fun, it wasn't too demanding, and once I'd taken the shots there was some minimal processing which engaged my brain again. However, it has left me really tired (how lame is that?! I HATE being ill! Did I mention that before?) so I'm off to veg on the sofa and cuddle my dog. 

C
xx