King Of The World

I thought this would make a pretty striking image with the wooden pillars rising in to the stormy sky, and then a seagull flew in and sat itself down and made the whole thing ten times better! 

Mystery Bird

This is my mystery bird photograph. It's a mystery because I haven't got a clue as to what species of bird it is! If anyone knows pass on the information please! 

More Boats!

I told you I went snap happy for all the boats! I'm not going to bore you all by constantly posting boat photographs though - these two are the last. 

If you have any suggestions to what I should photograph (and I'm always open to suggestions) feel free to get in contact! I'm going to be joining a photography club soon to improve my image quality and learn how to use my camera properly. Is it bad that I already want a new camera? I'm absolutely in love with the idea of getting a DSLR. One of my friends has one and it is an absolute beast of a camera. I just want one! 

Flaming Boat Of Glory!

One of my more in focus shots - I love the fiery colours of the boat at the top right hand corner of the image! These were just a few of the boats moored up at the harbour and I did go a bit snap happy and ended up with one too many boat related photos. More on the way! :)

Rugged Steps

The stone work caught my eye here and the worn appearance of the steps in contrast to the bright colours of the waterfront houses. I have to admit I did fiddle around a bit with this image on the computer to bump up the contrast slightly...that's all - I swear. Haha :) 

I'm happy to say that I've now been given a camera stand so my photographs will be less blurred. I'm unhappy to say that I've forgotten how to use my camera on manual (I know, I should be shot) and am going to have to teach myself how all over again.  

The pictures I'm going to be posting are all from a while back. My intentions when I took them were to post them on Lacebirds ASAP - clearly that didn't happen. So I'm posting all my older photographs before I go out and take new ones (though I can't wait to use my new stand!!!)

Pigeon Lady

This is a photograph I took of an old lady feeding pigeons at a harbour. It was an intriguing sight to say the least. I don't think the image is in focus properly but I thought I'd still post it because of the interesting composition.

Kinclaven again!

The bluebells at Kinclaven woods a few weeks

ago. It was brilliant and I recommend going there

and taking a few shots. The bluebells will probably 

be a bit past it by now though...so, next year's your 

best bet if you missed them!

How the camera lens works

When talking about camera lenses it's helpful to use the analogy of the human eye. Eyes and cameras work in    pretty much the same way, with light going through an aperture (pupil) then through a lens onto a recording surface (retina). As the pupil of the eye contracts to deal with varying light conditions the lens of a camera bends and curves in order to focus, depending on the distance of the subject.

A camera lens is basically two conjoined prisms and because prisms refract light, the rays are bent inwards to meet with each other at a focal point. The point on a vertical surface where the rays meet is the focal place which is where your film or (more likely) digital sensor is placed to capture the image formed by focusing the rays.

Again, I hope you found that interesting and, yep, the photos weren't taken by me...

Up close and personal with the Scottish bluebell

 More bluebells from Kinclaven...you'll probably get
a bit sick of seeing these after a while! Feel free to
comment because I'd love to hear any tips or constructive criticism you might have for me!

Here's something you might find interesting:

The true Scottish bluebell is under threat from hybrids, created through the crossing of Scottish bluebells and Spanish bluebells. These hybrids don't have any scent and out compete the native plant for space etc. So, if you're in to plants you can order a packet of native bluebell seeds and plant them in your garden to help save the British bluebell!

Flames

Burn baby burn! I took this because humans seem to have a fascination with fire, and I'm no exception. Flames can make suck interesting shapes so when you point and snap you can be certain every photo will be different. Then, it's just a matter of picking which one you like best.

Canoe on a perfect day

I just googled canoeing poems and came up with this which pretty much described the above photo and how laid back and enjoyable my Duke of Edinburgh training expedition was!

To hear the breeze in the trees, 

I slowly paddle the oars.

I take my time to breathe, 

to land on the island shores. 

(Jay W. Allen) 

How light works

I've just started the higher photography course at school and I thought I'd share some of my recently gained useful photography know how with you all...

Light waves come in different frequencies that relate to the energy of the wave. As humans, we can only see the visible spectrum which sits in middle part of the frequency table; so we can't see things like gamma rays because they're too high a frequency and we can't see microwaves because they're too low a frequency.

Focusing on the visible spectrum what happens to light when it hits something depends on three things...the frequency of the wave, the strength with which atoms in the material hold on to their electrons and the energy of the light wave. This can create a few different effects:



Reflection:

Like in mirrors. Light rays don't penetrate the object deeply and electrons holding the energy pass it straight back out at the same frequency. 

Transmission:

Objects like glass seem transparent because the light frequency is too high to make the electrons vibrate so that the light rays aren't captured and pass straight through the material.










Refraction: 

Light rays are slowed down and bent, creating a glittery effect like water on a brilliantly sunny day or diamonds.




Absorption:

Electrons are absorbed so rays don't bounce back and materials are opaque like wood.



Scattering:

Light rays are thrown in loads of different directions by a rough surface like that of paper.






I hope you guys have found this if not helpful, a little bit interesting and by the way, the images on this post aren't my own!

Run Balmoral 2013

These are a couple of photos I took when I took part in Run Balmoral 2013. It was a brilliant event and I'm recommending it to everyone who enjoys running (and even those who don't!).  I completed the 5k course in 27:04 or 06 and raised 104 pounds for Cancer Research UK and an additional hundred for the Blairgowrie Lyric Choir. I hope to beat my time for next year and I'm pretty positive that I can do it as well.

 

The picture below is of some of the secondary kids unwillingly taking part in the most hilarious warm up routine I have ever witnessed. Basically you have to copy a bunch of ladies dressed like tomatoes as they bust warm up moves to pop music. I took part in the warm up for the 5k mostly because I found it so funny.

Plastic surgery

I've been really annoyed lately because since one of our laptops was upgraded to windows seven, I can't edit photos because there is no more windows live photo editor!!! The only way I can edit them when I want to is by putting the computers on my mum's laptop. When I do this, I have to delete the photos afterwards because she doesn't want them slowing down the computer. I only recently discovered I could edit stuff on mum's laptop as well...this was after I'd downloaded Gimp onto the other laptop which slowed it down sooo much. It's a good thing that laptop is on its way out anyway, otherwise I probably would have got a row!

Here are my edited photos which I went a bit mental with!

Yeah...this is like giving photographs plastic surgery

 I tried to make this one as creepy as I could...

The carving was pretty faint so I just spruced it up a bit :)

Superstition

I took these walking up by Menzies castle on the sculpture trail. My family has a bit of history with that castle and rumour has it, my dad could have been its laird. But because this is my family and opportunities for ultimate coolness constantly seem to be missed, we do not have a stake on the castle. Damn. Oh well...here are the pictures I took.

I was quite interested in the amazing rock formations that dominated the hillside the walk wound round. There were a lot of natural rock walls that would have been brilliant for climbing, and of course there were the carvings. Some were quite hard to spot - we missed the most famous one which is carved into the rocks around St David's well. The well is more like a spring really and would be pretty easy to overlook. Someone had even left their toy elephant there which had gathered a lot of plant life.

The first thing I noticed when my dad pointed out this sculpture was the eye. It took me a while to figure out that it was part of a larger piece (slow as I am sometimes). There was some dispute as to what this carving was; we eventually over ruled the possibility that it was a dinosaur and settled for a dragon instead.

I wasn't even really looking when I took this photo. I was just peering into a tiny cave and snapping away and only realised I'd taken a decent shot when I got home!

 Visitors have been leaving coins on the sculptures for good luck (I think)

My mum suggested I remove the coins to take a better picture because the money made the sculpture look cheap. My reaction:

Me: I can't!
Mum: Why not?
Me: Because!
Mum: You can put them back afterwards
Me: Mum!
Mum: What?
Me: Taboo!

Yes. I would like to claim I'm not superstitious, but the idea of removing the coins just didn't strike me as a good one.

Pictures from the garden

Heather

 
 I'm going to start by saying that today was actually warm for once! I didn't even have to wear a jacket! Those of you who live in warmer climates probably don't understand the significance of of heat after winter - let me tell you, it is bliss. So, in this brilliant heat, I took a few pictures of my garden because the sun was shining and everything looked all summery! And as you can tell the weather put me in a good mood.

Tadpoles in the pond

Just sunbathing...

For some reason this photo doesn't want a caption so I'll just write it up here. This is a hoverfly...sitting on a flower. Yup.

The cutest dog ever...(in my opinion)

Some photographs I took recently...my favourite has to be the one of my friend's dog Fergus. He's so adorable!

Do you see what I mean?

And today's photos are...

Today was the first really sunny day we've had since...probably summer. And it was WARM! Ok, so when I say warm I mean around 10 Celsius, but that's relatively toasty compared to the weather we've been getting. I took these photos on my way down to my gran's...

I think this building used to be part of a farm. It's now no longer in use and in the middle of a residential area.

 The bright colours of the plastics here caught my eye as I walked past an industrial estate.

 It was a cool bike. I had to take a photo. 'Nuff said!

After the last couple of days, rain and sun have caused the snow on the high ground to melt and now the river looks like it's about to burst.

Hope you liked these pictures. I'd appreciate your feedback if you have any! :)

Spring Frogs



Spring is springing and all the animals are getting...well...frisky. The frogs that live in my gran's pond are no exception. So, since they were splashing around and acting absolutely ridiculous I thought I'd take a few pictures.

 

 

 

Look at his guy! I swear he's smiling! This has to be one of the funniest pictures I've ever taken!

And this one's the complete opposite. I think I'll call him Grumpy.

 Frogs have such massive eyes. They're quite pretty actually...

 My brothers insisted on trying to catch the frogs since there were so many (I had to join in too). The frogs actually didn't seem to mind much and were quite happy to sit in our hands.

Some frogs were friendlier than others. This frog got the completely wrong end of the stick and seemed to think that my brothers hand was a lady frog and errr...refused to let go.

Hope you liked the pictures!

Towels

Yes, you are looking at pictures of towels. I just thought I'd post them because it proves that you really can take photos of anything and quite like these pictures really!