amberbamberboo

Cousins

This is from a recent shoot of my kids and their cousins. You may not believe it from this picture, but my kids were complete pains during the whole shoot!! I’m not saying they didn’t have fun but it is almost impossible to shoot (or not to want to shoot!!) six kids when 3.75 of them are showing off, being silly, wiggling, rolling eyes and pulling faces constantly… for three and a half hours! Maybe I could hire them out as some sort of patience-endurance training team or something! Anyway, Nephew and Niece were Angels! Mine behaved as though they were out on a weekend pass.

This photo shoot taught me many things. A few of the most important are listed below.

The first is a very techincal one. Never, EVER forget to check your ISO when you are using studio lights… Just don’t. every 450 odd shots could possibly have an incredible amout of noise in them… and I don’t mean the kind of noise kids make. GRRRRRRRRR! I thought my lights were acting kinda funky and over exposing everything… I had to second guess them as my light meter wouldn’t give me correct exposure. Well, it couldn’t. The meter was set for ISO 100 and the Camera was at 1600. Double GRRRRR!

The second thing I learned… You should always be wearing protective head gear when you discover you have made such an elementary mistake on a shoot. Especially when it was a shoot that sucked you so dry.

The third very useful lesson I learned was how to use auto-align in Photoshop. What you see here is actually a composite of four different pictures. I will brush up on this new skill but you have to know this PS tool is amazing!

The forth and final thing this shoot taught me was… It’s probably not a bad idea to carry a hip flask of Scotch next time I’m doing a 3+ hour shoot with my own children!!

My other dirty blog

Some may believe that when I disappear from my dear little blog for weeks months on end that I must be busy snuggled up on my big, brown, beautiful leather sofa eating bonbons and sipping from a steaming hot mug of chocolate (or Bailey’s as the case may be)… whilst I flick through the lastest issue of Country Living dreaming of ways to beautify my life. But this is not the case. Well this is not always the case. To prove this to you I thought I would let you in on my other blog. *GASP* Yes, yes, I can hear you from here. No I have not been holding out on you. And yes, I will give you the link, but I have to warn you… it isn’t pretty! It has some pictures on it. But they are ugly. There are no reciepes for Spiced Plum Chutney or stunning shots of my undeniably beautiful children. No little stone house where the interior walls are painted red. Nope. It’s all about me getting down and dirty and taking on the big bad guys. You see on the last day of January, No, I’ll tell you what. Let’s not dirty these pretty pages with all that muck. Go. See for yourselves what I get up to when no one is looking… remember to go to the archives and work your way up if you want the full story. My Other Dirty Blog Now, if you’re back and you still think you would ever want to ‘f’ me around when it comes to my kids then you’d better believe… I will pop you like a zit!!!

Blue

Ok, I know that this has been done, and done , and done.... and is possibly ‘over done’ now; trite even. But this is “just because I can” post. I was hoping someone would teach me how to do this one day, but no. I learned all by myself! I am so totally chuffed with myself!

Now, pat me on the back and get on with your surfing. (oh yeah, and tell me how beautiful my daughter is… Thank you)

The before and the today of the stairwell

When we bought the house there were some things that I love about it, and some I hated. The stairwell, bless it, contained elements of both. I love the sweeping turn of the stairs, the view of the river out the stairwell window and the turret like way the stairs were attached to the back of the house, not taking up room in living area of the house. But I HATED the artexed plasterboard that I knew was covering an old, curved, stone wall. We made a test hole and sure enough… we struck stone! I knew the stone wall was lurking behind the gaustly, early 80’s artex because our house (before Belgium) was exactly 1 mile up the road from where we are now and had an almost identical stairwell with lovely exposed stone work. In our previous house, the stone had been completely repointed and exposed. Here we exposed the stone, had it roughly repointed, but we are going to limewash the the wall instead of leaving it bare. My hope is we will have a feature that is more in keeping with the period of the house but the limewash will let the wall breathe while brightening the stairwell and making it feel less cold. Once the limewashing is finished we will decide how to dress the stairs.

Our house

Set on the ‘old’ bridge over the Avon Water, this is our new house.

Built sometime in 1600’s or 1700’s then rebuilt in early 1800’s due to fire. It was originally a wollen mill. There is a lade (mill-race) that runs under the house and behind the hedge you see on the right of this photo. The mill wheel was housed in, what is now, my kitchen but It has not been used as a mill for many, many years. When we bought the house last year, it was a 4 bedroom house. We have successfully renovated it into the current state of a 3 bedroom house… yes, I know, a little backwards considering we have 4 kids.

The door, with my sister standing in it, is the back door, but also the only door into the house.

Since October 2007 we have been renovating the inside. There was one bedroom on the groundfloor and 3 bedrooms (2 full bathrooms) on the first floor. We took the downstairs bedroom along with the bathroom and some cupboard space and made a larger kitchen/dining area. the window for the new kitchen is located on the right of this picture just above the hedge/lade.

The room to the left of the door was the old kitchen. We are in the process of turning it into a ‘mud/laundry room’. We have made a new access/doorway into this room which meant breaking through a 20” thick, stone wall. We will be adding a cloak area and a WC to this room.

Upstairs has only been redecorated by us, but we are applying for planning permission to make another 2 bedrooms in the loft area. (see? there is method in my madness!)

We have done other work in the house, like reopening the fireplace and plastering over old artex, and exposing the stone on the spiral stairwell to try and bring back some of the original features of the house.

So, do you want to see more pictures?

I’m sure there’s a life lesson in here somewhere

“Who would have guessed that when you remove Garfield from the Garfield comic strips, the result is an even better comic about schizophrenia, bipolor disorder, and the empty desperation of modern life? Friends, meet Jon Arbuckle. Let’s laugh and learn with him on a journey deep into the tortured mind of an isolated young everyman as he fights a losing battle against lonliness and methamphetamine addiction in a quiet American suburb.” I give you.... Garfield minus Garfield From Kal, my buddy and supplier of true full-blown belly laughs

Doodle Bug

Actions, droplets and All That Jazz

Last week I started my 4th College class in photography. I have successfully completed “An Introduction to Photography”, “Camera Techniques” and “Basic Studio”. This latest course is all about Photoshop. I was a little nervous about signing up for it because the course title is ”Advanced Photoshop for Photographers”. I have come to terms with calling myself a photographer now and I almost don’t choke on the words “professional photographer” when they tumble out my mouth… but anything with the word “advanced” used as an adjective in the same title as photographer is just scary. In the last year, I have done 20 photo shoots, and if you use ‘remueration’ to determine the definition of whether it was a ‘professional shoot’ or not.. then 18 were professional shoots.

Most of these shoots came to me… so to speak. I haven’t gone out and sought any business. Yet. But I feel I am at the stage now where I am ready to go out and look for business. Yesterday I chapped the door of 2 private nurseries, showed them a brief slideshow of my wonderfulness, handed them a business card and… they are going to phone me. Scary stuff!!

Anyway, I totally loved my class last week and am excited about the next 9 weeks! In the end, I needed not to worry about the “Advanced” bit in the course title as my mad PS skillz were good enough to keep up. Last week was all about showing us what we will be able to do by the end of the course. My remark at the end of the evening was… “Man, you are going to save me hours every month!!” His reply was… “No, I am going to save you weeks every month!!”

Burn’s Supper Day’

Wednesday I turned 38. Sounds old, doesn’t it? It is. I had a lovely day… once I realised that it was, indeed, just another day and stopped waiting for it to feel special. I’ve decided that we are programmed as children to feel that it should feel like it’s a special day. Once I stopped expecting it to feel special, it was.

But today, well, today is a very special day. To day is Robert Burns birthday. In our house, today is referred to as “Burns Supper Day”. Today, if your Mommy and your Mammy were kind enough to scour every store in the West of Scotland yesterday for scraps of tartan, and were dedicated enough to sit up sewing until the wee hours, then today… you got to wear tartan to school. Today, you would have jumped out of bed and tidied your room and gotten dresses without having to be prodded. Today, you wouldn’t have to do any work at school. Today you’d get to recite the Bard’s poems and eat and breathe Scottish-ness all day… Dancing jigs and reels and truly have a special day!

Maybe one day, long after I’m dead and gone, the 23rd of January will be celebrated in such a manner! I can see it now… “Amber… Bamberboo Supper Night”!!

I don’t do book reviews

Living with someone like Len makes me feel any attempt at a literary critiques is redundant. Len is a ‘reader’… I just read. If I’m not enjoying a book, I don’t feel compelled to finish it. If I don’t think it’s well written, I won’t be able to tell you exacatly why I feel that way; but *I’ll* know why. If it’s not well written, but I like the story, I can continue reading… I’m no book-snob.

That being said, I am in the middle of a book that I can’t put down. Although it’s been around for a while and you’ve most likely either read it or have decided not to read it, I recommend you read it.

A Child Called “IT”.

You will ‘enjoy’ reading it, but hate turning each page… you’ll know that you can’t ‘not’ keep going. I haven’t finished yet, but can hardly put it down. It is harrowing to know it is a true story and that *any* child had to endure what he did. It will make you angry; it might make you cry. It will make you hold your children tighter and longer when they come to you for a hug. You will stroke their hair even more tenderly when they stand close to you...it will even make you question yourself if/when you ever get frustrated around your babies. It will heighten your sense of ‘justice/fairness’ in relation to loving each of your children to the same degree. And you will look at every child you pass on the street, stand next to in a store, coach on a team, watch climbing onto a bus… and you will search their eyes for tell-tale signs that all is well in their world. It will wake up the Moma Bear in you!!

It is painful to do so, but it is a must to read.

Let me know if/when you’ve read it. What did you think?