Well, it's been a while...

Again, so long between posts its really quite scary. I think I've spent so much time dedicating myself to photography, origami and other things this year I seem to have forgotten my poor old blog, which was really the impetus for many of these things.  It was the turning point in my online social presence.

I'm enjoying the social atmosphere on Flickr, though like some other people I've come across, I sometimes yearn for constructive criticism to help me out.  People are so nice.  I do understand though, I'm one of the nice ones. Unless you know someone personally or something 'REALLY' stands out, its hard to say, "wellll, I feel that you've oversharpened just a little and could have whitened that area up a touch"..because who am I to judge? I'm self taught, I don't follow all the rules and my images are very mediocre.  Its all personal opinion really, thats all it ever is unless you're a professional...and even then I assume part of what they say when they're passing opinion is personal mixed in with technical knowledge.

Even after saying all that, I really have learnt a lot already and its only something like, day 069/366 (because thats how I think now that I'm participating in a photo a day challenge) :) And people still find ways sometimes of saying things that make you re-think an image or when you look at what others have done you think, WOW, I should try 'new' angles sometimes as opposed to the regular or not be so consumed with shallow depth of field...which I CANNOT get enough of :)

This image was taken for one of the challenges I'm participating in but I've now started up an NQR or Not Quite Right set in Flickr.  They're images that I processed, took for a challenge but one of the other images won out in the end by a whisker. I took this image after seeing other people highlighting elements of an image, using rule of thirds and as I mentioned previously, I LOVE BOKEH! 

So, with hopes that I'm not away for so long next time and that perhaps with a long weekend looming in Australia, I'll be able to get this blog up to date with some of my images :))
Please take a look at my Flickr account if you're interested to see everything as not everything will be posted here.

Cheers

xx

Holiday Bokeh

Another entry for I Heart Faces, this time just because I loved learning about bokeh and its my new favourite thing.  Will be attempting it everywhere I go.

I especially love this photo, you've already seen it.  Oh, and the stars at the front are from the head of my santa :)
Some of the others with little characters were a little blown out and I'll have to work on that next year.  In the absence of christmas cards with myself and N, bokeh lights will do :)

And so that was Christmas...

Christmas, like everything comes and goes so very quickly. With the blink of an eye gifts are opened, family has been visited and you've all but moved on to the next stage of the year, the end of it, the celebration and making of resolutions.

It all happened to me too.

Christmas was great this year, celebrating again with both N's family and mine (at different times) and visiting with family we hadn't seen for a while.

I tried to take some bokeh of our Christmas tree but I just wasn't feeling it...sometimes you just don't do you?

Hope you've all had a safe and happy Christmas...New Years is right around the corner and hope that sees everyone safely making it into 2012 too :)

2012 is the year of challenging myself.  I'm looking at participating in some book group or reading challenge, you can check out how I go on my new blog Catch the Reading Bug and I'll also be participating in a photographic challenge or two.  At this stage I'll be doing a 52 week challenge.  Will of course post links once thats sorted!

Happy New Year and hope if you're making resolutions (this is my first time) they work out well for you and you don't over extend yourself.  I've never thought they were about that, more about resolving to be a little better or do a little more or grow a little.  Not about damaging who you are or how you feel about yourself.
Good luck!

Images processed etc with Paint the Moon's whimsy set and watermarking action.