You want me to do what? No problem!

Things in our house are busy at the best of time but with the recent addition of our new baby daughter Arwen it's just a wee bit busier!  Not that I am complaining though as our kids are the best thing ever.  Though my photography is really important to me it does take a bit of a back seat as Candytuft Cakes is our priority at the moment.  Even though Kathryn is on maternity leave there are still wedding shows to do along with the emails and the admin side.  I don't actively look for photography jobs and so just love it when they just appear out of the blue.  Over the past few days I have been offered 3 jobs and I am just off the phone planning a studio shoot for next week.  My mind has been in overdrive. 

The first two jobs are to do with a charity and I will have blog entries to follow but I am very excited about these.  The third job just came to me this afternoon.  A friend who teaches portraits within photography has asked me to come along and take her class one week to teach on speedlights.  Admittedly she called me a nerd at the same time as asking me.  To be honest I was really flattered by being asked.  My friend has been into photography for years and has a degree and a masters in photography so o be asked my her is a great honor.

I love having projects to plan and dream about.  I know that over the next few weeks leading up to the class I will be constantly thinking about it, thinking of how I can pass on my passion for speedlights and what will be the best things to teach.

I'm away now to dream some more.

Simon

Point of focus.

Any photographers out there may be aware of "tilt-shift photography".  This method can be added using a special tilt-shift lens or in post processing.  The method allows you to focus on a specific point or to simulate a miniature scene.  I have recently been asked to take some photographs during our church services to be used on our new website.  I was able to use the method in post processing to "blur" out the faces of any children in the photos for child protection purposes. 

Today I was in Portavogie harbor with my camera and took a photo of my brother-in-law's trawler.  I then was able to add the tilt-shift effect using the graduated filter function in Lightroom 4. Where the graduated filter is often used with exposure it can also be used with many other settings including sharpness. 

The image before any editing.

The image after editing

 Applying the method post processing in LR4 is obviously not as good as using an actual tilt-shift lens but it does still help to highlight a specific point in the photo.