London town

I have just returned from a wonderful trip back to London. I decided to spend a lot of my time playing tourist so with camera in hand I walked around the very familiar streets of London. One of my favourite places to visit is Shoreditch and Spitafields, here a lot of the areas have been reclaimed by the hipsters but there are still some places that have remained the same such as Brick Lane.

Growing roses in Sydney

I am so excited as I have managed to grow roses in Sydney! we live near the sea and experience high humidity and everyone told me that roses wouldn't grow.  I took advice from a specialist rose growing nursery and sent them a sample of the soil and told them the garden is in shade for most of the day and they suggested the rose called 'fabulous' and fabulous it is although sadly it doesn't have any perfume but it looks good and I can have a little bit of England each time I look out of my kitchen window.

A week in black and white

I have just finished my week of black and white and I would really recommend doing it as it forced me to think outside my comfort zone with my camera. It is easy to do the occasional black and white shot but to do it for a week does become a real challenge because so many things don't work in black and white.

Black and white is great for low light and nightime. I took this picture with my iso on a whopping 10,000 knowing that any grain would add to the effect of the night shot.

I took the above shot on an overcast day with my iso at 500

Flowers always look good in black and white but plants can sometimes look flat

 Kitchen equipment is always good to photograph in black and white

We are also doing black and white this month with our diptych over at TwoTakes so do have a look.  This week I am going to do a week of colour if anyone wants to join me.

The countdown begins...

I bet you thought this was going to be a Christmas countdown, no, this is the summer countdown. I took a walk along the beach at Bondi early this morning and the temperature was rising and everyone was ready for the sunshine and the summer.

So much was going on, it was fantastic to sit and watch the world go by with my takeaway coffee. Apologies to those of you who are feeling the cold at the moment but you are more than welcome to come and sit on the beach with me anytime.

Frangipani and sea shells

I am now the proud owner of a frangipani tree in my back garden. I have been watching it since we moved in in August when it was completely bare and finally it has flowered.

The flowers seem to only last one day and then drop onto the grass so I lovingly scoop them up and I have been placing them in my bowl of sea shells and I can't stop picking them up to smell that amazing perfume.

I am also continuing to do my course with blogging your way and for the last week it has been all about styling your photographs. I had no idea how much was involved including the need to place everything in threes or fives, the picture below shows my styled attempt for three items and the rules apply to food and interior styling.

Our homework last week was to make a styling board on Pinterest - how do you all feel about pinterest? how do you get followers? I feel a bit lost on pinterest like I did on twitter....

It's the weekend

How are you spending your weekend? the sun is shining here after a week of rain and thunderstorms. The heat continues to rise as summer approaches. So many lovely colours around at this time of year.

 time to grab a cup of coffee.

 and pull up a deckchair

Have a lovely weekend.

colours

I love to buy pomegranates, wonderful to eat and to photograph, there is something about the colour and texture that reminds me of Christmas. I like to use Nigella Lawson's recipe and make a large pavlova and then bang the halved pomegranates with a rolling pin to release all the seeds over the top,  a wonderful feeling.