Photography Goals

"The sooner we become more intentional about communicating through our photography, the more powerful and clear our results will be"

- Mitchell Kanashkevich in Natural Light - Mastering a Photographer's Most Powerful Tool

Random Post

It's been quite some time since I last posted. Many things have happened since - just to mention a couple, a conference in a chateau in France and a short visit to my parents over at northern Spain.

Bear with me as I settle down back to routine and to normal life... things shouldn't take long. I've many things to write and update about, but for now I am catching up in my housecleaning and baking in general.

So, in the meantime, here's a picture of the bread buns that have come right out the oven for you to enjoy!

P.S.: The weather over here is delightful, and we've come back to find our area transformed from bleak, bare and brown to alive, lush and green!

Brand Logos and Watermarks

Yay, peoples, I've finally finished designing my brand! [hugesmile]

This is how it's gonna look for now. I am satisfied with the results, but I'm sure that in time I will change it when I get a more definite idea of what I want.

Tell me what you think about it. I used the colours I wanted - red, black and white (grey included in the last two [grin]). I wanted the name to be in two circles, although at first I wanted it to be in between them and not touching both. I liked the result of the second when I tried it.

I wanted the text to be classy and elegant, but clean and simple, so I went for caps, distinguishing between capitalized and normal in the text with large or small caps. Then, I tried different combinations of the theme colours for the circles, and this one (top) is the one that satisfied me most, even though red for the outside and white for the inside also worked very well when I tried it on a dark background. 

Then I started to play with colours and backgrounds for the watermarks. In the first sample I did (right), I really liked the black on white, extremely disliked the grey on red and the red on grey, and wasn't sure about the white on black.

For the second sample (left), I tried to get out of the theme colours - I really like the pink on black, the dark blue on grey and the orange on white. Not sure how I feel about the white on red.

It seems like I can't get an idea for a good colour for the red background. Any suggestions?

Falling Snow

See the pretty snowflakes

Falling from the sky,

On the wall and housetops

Soft and thick they lie.

- Anonymous

I am currently teaching my little five-year-old girl this part of a poem during our English lessons, and she is so good at it! She is so enthusiastic about English, and has such an amazing, sweet English accent... 

Printed...

...and ready to go! Ladies and gentleman, my project is 100% complete! My parents took it to print this morning, and now it's all nice and bound. This afternoon we received the printed photojournal, too, so I'm ready for next Monday! ^^

Today I had my last exam, which went not really sure how it went well enough, I suppose. The freedom I felt this afternoon after lunch! 

On top of that, I'm getting ready to go out tonight with friends for a birthday celebration at one of my favourite restaurants (not too fancy, but very cozy. plus the owners are lovely people!). This week has been so productive, and I am so happy and thankful about how everything has run smoothly. Thanks to those who've been praying for me! 

Toodles!

Leaves

How beautiful can a simple leaf be? Have you ever heard about the leaf nerves forming a natural fractal?

How thankful I am for a helpful little brother (the leaves are his art!), a helpful Papa (he scanned the leaf drawings for me while I was busy working!), and a good scanner!

...starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel...!

Google

When one is tired and has a lot of work ahead of her, it's awesome to open google.com and find it as it is. It brings a smile to her lips and cheers her up a bit. :)

GOOGLE.COM

Recent Sewing Project

I quite believe I'm going to sew myself a dress like this for New Year's...

What do you think? If you add a pale knitted cardigan and pale or fuchsia round high heels, it would be quite elegant and very lady-like, I'm sure!

Lingering

Today I've done something I never get to do:

Yeah, haha! It has taken me ten minutes to get out of bed today. :P Twice I've told myself, "Five more minutes! ¬o¬" It felt good to be able to do that... I had to get ready for a lesson at half past ten, so I got up at quarter to ten. It turned out, though, that the little boy is ill, so no classes today. :(

I am going to be very busy this following week. I'm going to do a project marathon... besides my usual weekend chores, I will use all my free time to advance as much as possible in my Investigation Project, because I do not want to spend my whole Christmas holidays working on it (as the school schedule has planned it). Instead, I am planning on using those holidays to add the last details and complete the photo-journal I'm including with the project. This way, I will also be able to relax and spend time with my family and some friends.

Back to work! Have a wonderful weekend! :D ♥

Late At Night

Having spent the whole day out celebrating my youngest brother's birthday, and having had only the last class yesterday, I still have some work left to prepare for tomorrow's English lesson.

I'm the teacher.

Hence, after coming home late with my family I started working on the computer, on my grammar/exercise book, etc. I'm still at it.

Now is when you say, frowning, So why are you writing a post on your blog instead of working on tomorrow's class, young lady?!
Now is when I answer... I don't know. [grin] Hehe, nah, don't worry. What I'm posting is part of my work. I'm making my student read Secret Garden for her Reading exercises. It's an English classic with quite an easy read, the structures being simple and, I find, very refreshing. It's not like, say, Jane Austen, another English classic, but which is much more complex to read. (Note: I'm not saying reading any of Jane Austen's books isn't refreshing).

Anyway, as I read the book I write down questions and words I find would be new to my student, but at the same time, I also read the book myself, and mostly, two, and even three, times every chapter. This way I notice plenty of things I wouldn't in only one read.

So far we're on the third and fourth chapter of the book. It's still not very positive nor happy, but I would like to share with you a couple of descriptions the writer makes of the environment and/or situation.

When describing the moors, "..it's just miles and miles and miles of wild land that nothing grows on but heather and gorse and broom, and nothing lives on but wild ponies and sheep."


Once Mary had entered the huge house where she was to live from then on, "...she looked a very small, odd little black figure, and she felt as small and lost and odd as she looked."


Knowing the little girl was nicknamed Mistress Mary Quite Contrary because of her attitude towards others, "...It was in this way Mistress Mary arrived at Misselthwait Manor and she had perhaps never felt quite so contrary in all her life."


There are also some words I write down for my student's vocabulary that in some way or other are special - either because of their sound, their spelling... it depends. Here are a few:

Glisten (noun): a sparkling light reflected from something wet.
Proper: suitable or appropiate; correct.
Whistle: a clear, high-pitched sound made by forcing breath through a small hole between partly closed lips, or between one's teeth.
Twinkle (verb): shine with a gleam that changes constantly from bright to faint.
Perhaps: expressing uncertainty or possibility.

[Sigh] Now that I've finished my work, I will proceed to walk up the stairs to my bedroom and my bed. I believe I deserve my rest.

And They Said Work Was A Serious Thing...

Grown ups used to say work was a serious thing, where one had to be careful with what she (in my case) did and said.
Well, grown ups weren't expecting for me to work for whom I work now...:

Yeah, I ran a race with my superior! A very respectable, learned man. And as he said... "She got beaten by the old!" We made a comic of it on the white boards later...

(Notice the camera... I'm the photographer! And I actually let him win, though... :P)

This is a comic my superior did (the one who won on our race) of him talking and my Papa translating for him to the rest of the people in the room. As you can see from the drawing, my Papa's a good imitator... =P

And they said work was a serious thing...