Shooting Winter with the S6 Edge

Hey Surfers,

I've had the opportunity to learn about HTML at my new job and its resulted in my messing with the blog. You'll probably notice that the pictures are a lot bigger now (so you can actually see what they're of) let me know if you like the change or if I should go back to the old format :)

So recently(ish) I upgraded from my Samsung Galaxy S4,whose talents are featured here, to the S6 Edge, and yes I'm not going to lie, the curved screen was a big selling point for me, but it was the 16mp rear facing camera that was the clincher.

The pictures that this phone produces are amazing for a smart phone, I rarely take my DSLR out with me on long trips now, yes I just said that...

I've been up to quite a bit so far this Winter so thought I'd share some of the pictures with you and let you see just what the S6 Edge can do. Enjoy!

London's Christmas lights are crazy

I had to get a shot of my dessert at the work Christmas meal; the lazy part of me loves getting that professional blur without having to mess around with the settings on my camera.

Southgate in Bath

Just a quick snapshot from a trip to Bath with some friends, the camera performs quite well in low light. 

On our way to the famous Bath Christmas Markets

While the panorama function can repair the odd blip you'll never be able to get everyone to stand still so expect most people to look like they're being sucked into a black hole!

The next few shots are from my birthday! I went up to Harrods with some family and,after doing a bit of shopping we stopped for lunch at MangoTree . I took the picture for memory's sake but when I was looking for images for this post the angles stood out to me so here it is!

Of course, the delicious dimsum itself

Cafe Concerto where we went for dessert

A little disappointed with the yellow cast on this picture, it's easy enough to edit out but I wanted to give you an accurate representation of the camera here. Positives? those cakes were amazing!

Another low light shot

 We decided to visit the Victoria and Albert museum before meeting the rest of the family for a birthday dinner; the Edge really does brilliantly when it comes to picking up fine detail, it's amazing how you can see every tile in the mosaic floor. Mobiles really have made giant leaps from the old flip phones we used to carry around as teens! Wow I feel old...

The final image is of the Cutty Sark which is located in Greenwich. It was pitch black and beginning to rain when I took this picture, but the lighting on the ship was enough to make a striking picture.

I hope you enjoyed this post Surfers; I'm a little in love with the camera on this phone ( the selfie mode isn't half bad either) and it has alot of other features so definetly check it out if you're looking to upgrade.

I'll be back soon with a new post.

Love Lily.

X

Fashion is an Art

Hey Surfers!

Wow it's been ages since I've posted, I haven't been feeling very inspired blogwise and fancied a bit of a break but now I'm back and raring to write!

So this the long promised continuation from my trip to London with my friend and fellow blogger, Josie of A Pretty Post It. After we finished with the Topshop event, which you can read about here, it was far too early to go home so we decided to head over to the Tate Britain and check out some of the artwork which was soon to be moving on. After jumping off of the tube we spotted a picturesque side street and Josie asked me to take some pictures for her blog. It was my first time attempting fashion photography and I had a lot of fun with it. I especially loved having a model for the first time, it took me a little while to get used to but soon I was ordering her to pose all along our route!

Had some fun photoshopping these. The light flare for example :)

This has got to be one of my favourite pictures of the day! I love the colour splash setting on my camera, I've used it for London pictures before which you can see here and it always gives great results, of course it helps when you have such a gorgeous model :)

After a stroll along the Thames we arrived at the Tate Britain Museum and had a very artistic afternoon taking pictures of, and with the pieces on display. The Tate has such a wide collection of art, ranging from classic paintings of the Greek gods to modern, thought provoking sculptures. It's most definitely worth a visit.

This was a picture of the beautiful domed roof, I had to lean very precariously over a spiral staircase to get the shot which is why it is slightly off centre. I so want to go back and shoot it again in the winter, get the night sky and also get the angle right!

More fun with the colour splash

Poor Josie being papped again.

The two pictures above are of the fantastic artwork to which the museum is home. I took quite a few photographs but these were two of my favourites; especially the one with the cameras. 

Unfortunately I'm not very well educated in art so my comments are limited >.<

We finally left the Tate in search of food, and a short tube journey found us near Trafalgar Square; all of the restaurants were packed but we managed to squeeze into Bella Italia for a delicious dinner and to rest our aching feet! My pedometer said we had walked nearly ten miles in one day.

We had a brief stroll through the square on our way to the station and I got some of my final shots of the day. I would have liked to have stayed longer but we still had to get back to Paddington and get on the long train journey home.

I hope you enjoyed this post. I have a little stock pile of pictures ready so I'll hopefully be back next week, I'll leave you with the fountains until next time.

Love Lily

Shoot like a Pro with Topshop and Olympus Pen ~

Hey Surfers!

So this week I met up with my friend and fellow blogger, the lovely Josie of A Pretty Post It, headed up to London and took part in the Photography Summer School hosted by Topshop and Olympus Pen. The hour long workshops were held in the flagship Topshop store in Oxford Circus hidden amongst the racks. There were several different options to choose from but we went with "How to Shoot A City Scape" which was led by Mademoiselle Robot and R.Cleveland Aaron

We were given the option of borrowing one of the Olympus Pen camera's to try but as I had my own camera with me I declined, though I do wish I had had a chance to have a play with one. The Olympus cameras had a lot of functionality and produced some really dynamic shots with the press of a button that you would have to spend quite a while setting up on a DSLR; they're also wonderfully compact which would be perfect for trips such as this one. Josie and I soon had aching shoulders from lugging a pair of DSLRs around London.

Everything you need for a day out in London ;)

Once the introductions were over we were split into two groups; half went with Mademoiselle Robot and the others, our group, went with Cleveland. Before we left he gave us some instruction on what we were to take pictures of: Old meets New, People, Reflections and Shapes (either circles or triangles) we were then set loose on the streets of Oxford Circus.

Oxford street in selective colour

Cleveland was an amazing teacher, he pointed out things on the street that I would have never noticed, let alone thought to photograph. Looking for triangles made me see so many new and interesting angles and buildings that would make stunning photographs such as the one above; it's actually the top of the Boots store! I was in Oxford Street just a few weeks ago and had no idea that this was even there, Cleveland showed us his own picture of this building before we left so I had to try it out myself. 

Twins

We were accompanied by a representative of Olympus Pen on our excursion and she pointed out to Josie and I how our reflections in this building's window would make an interesting picture. We'd unwittingly worn similar colours which worked really well in the picture.

A little bit of old meets new.

More experiments with reflections

I really love this shot; it truly captures the insanity of Oxford Street. When I saw the bright yellow awnings I had to stop to get a shot; even though the picture is grey the yellow screams summer.

Triangles :)

I'll have to admit that I cheated on the "People" part of our assignment. Having a willing model for the first time I asked Josie to pretend to be taking a picture and snapped a shot with one of the effects on my camera.

This cafe was located down one of the quieter side roads; the sandstone building and the woman in her sunglasses paints a picture of the chic side of London. Almost feels like the opening of a movie.

"make MINE yellow"
Name courtesy of Cleveland :)

Our final stop was the BBC office, yet another building I had no idea was just down Oxford Street. When we had first headed out Cleveland showed us an effect on the Olympus cameras which made the dull British sky look stunning. I wanted to see if I could replicate it on my Nikon and managed the above using the "Low Key" effect; not quite the same but still pretty cool.

The stone tiles around the BBC building was dotted with the names of cities, I wanted to get more pictures but unfortunately we had run out of time and it was time to go back to the store.

Once we were back we were presented with an amazing gift bag! It was a complete surprise and filled with some awesome goodies. The Olympus Pen cameras actually had WIFI capabilities so you can send your pictures directly to your phone (after downloading the app) which meant Josie was able to keep all of her pictures from the day without having to wait for them to be sent over to her.

Having a look at our goody bags whilst enjoying an iced coffee.

I have to say I am quite sold on the Olympus Pen camera; while I love my DSLR it would be nice to have a camera with so many amazing capabilities but a lot less bulk! 

The Topshop Summer School was an amazing experience and I cannot recommend it enough. We both learned loads and had so much fun! Thanks to Cleveland and everyone who came with us around London, you were all brilliant and so friendly.

I believe that they still have some workshops coming up,  I'll put a link to their website here definitely go if you get a chance.

As the workshop was quite short Josie and I were left with the rest of the day to enjoy, but I'll save all of that for next week! 

I hope you enjoyed the post, Josie's blog is linked at the top of the page, make sure to pay her a visit!

See you next week.

Love Lily

x

"Hump day treat" - Having fun with Photoshop

Happy hump day Surfers!
(We're over the hump of mid week!) Also, I hope you all got the "Mean Girls" reference there.

It's been a while and I have failed miserably in terms of photography, so I had a look through my memory card before it was formatted and found a few pictures which had the potential to be quite interesting; they just needed a little help. I had a play about with Photoshop and turned out some pretty decent images (in my opinion at least!) I've included the original photographs so that you can see just how much has been changed.

Now I don't pretend to be an expert with Photoshop, I used some preset effects which are on the program then made some adjustments and added a few bits, but hey, I'm still learning.

Before

These are some shots I took back in the summer in the orchard. I was actually trying to learn about focus points when doing this and the original picture is pretty basic; however with some contrast changes and a lens flare to imitate the sun it has ended up being quite a pretty picture.

This image has actually inspired me to take some more conceptual photographs, I just need to find myself some willing models! Haha.

Before

After

This final image is one I am quite proud of; it was taken on one of the last times I was in London. 

When I first purchased Photoshop I wanted to see how much it could do so, after watching some Youtube tutorials, I had a go with some real photo manipulation and ended up with this :) I know you can still see the reflections of the buildings in the water but we'll work on it.

Hope you enjoyed this mini post. I'll be back when I have persuaded some of my friends to stay still long enough for a picture!

Have a good rest of the week.

Love E

Don't forget to check out the blogs which have links at the top of my page! They post much more regularly than I! 

x

Photo trek adventure

Hey Surfers!

Sorry for the prolonged absence, I haven't been doing much in the way of photography lately as I have been busy with other projects. I did feel bad that I have been neglecting the blog so I have a little throwback post from a trip I made up to Hampstead Heath and Chelsea last year.

This post once again showcases the capabilities of my bridge camera as I had not purchased my DSLR at this point.
I hope you enjoy the photographs :)

I believe that this was somewhere near Kensington Gardens but cannot remember. Some of the trees were losing a strange downy substance so the whole time we were there it almost felt like it was snowing.

One of the many pictures I took in the fields of Hampstead Heath. This was one of my favourites.

This was an amazing trip, my friends and I walked so much that I actually wore a hole in my boots (recently had to throw them away)...I'd like to visit the area again with my Nikon as at the top of a hill in Hampstead Heath there is a great view of the London skyline which I imagine would look amazing at night.

Thanks for reading, I will hopefully be able to start posting regularly again, we are having such amazing weather at the moment its about time to break the camera out of retirement.

Love E

Welcome to Comic Con!

Hey Surfers,

It's yet another bank holiday weekend! I don't think I remember what a five day week feels like.
This weekend I headed up to London once again with my brother and cousins for...

 I've never been to one of these events before and was looking forward to seeing all of the amazing costumes, of which there were many! The problem was the whole of the ExCeL was completely packed and there was no room to walk let alone ask people to stop for a picture. When it began to quiet down I did manage to get some shots but it was still busy, and those in costumes were there to enjoy themselves not just pose for me so I tried to take the picture as quickly as possible. In order to get the pictures the way I wanted them I really got to test out my Photoshop skills! Enjoy.

Took this whilst we were waiting to get in to the venue, luckily we went for priority tickets as the queue for on the door was enormous.

This was the first Cosplay shot that I was brave enough to ask for. All of the people in costume were so friendly and sweet to let me take their picture, I hope I've done their fantastic costumes justice :)

Thor and Loki were some of the best costumes I saw and they were incredibly nice :) Adding a background blur to this image just wouldn't work the way I wanted, so I used another effect.

These guys were awesome; I used Photoshop to enhance the colours and also add the dark hue to the background so that they really stand out.

As the day went on and the crowds thinned a little I was able to get many more pictures and had time to ask the expo goers to pose in different ways.

Really love that he is wearing the original X-men costumes XD

I felt that this picture of Angel (can't remember if that's the actual name of the character) needed a lens flare to match his battle pose; for want of a better word, it makes the image more epic, definitely had fun editing these.

I unfortunately don't know who this character is but I asked if I could take her picture in front of this toy stall, I think the juxtaposition works really well! 

At one point I'd wandered off from my family and we used this amazing display as a land mark to find one another, had to get a couple of pictures of that.

Quite possibly one of the best Jack Sparrow look-alikes I have ever seen; he couldn't take two steps without someone asking for a picture.

Dont believe the BS Bear 

An amazing dress

Roxas and Axel: FIGHT!

Childhood dream come true XD

  It was a pretty hectic day out, there were so many people and so much to see and do. Getting lunch was a challenge, I've never had a Subway sandwich made so quickly! Not even really sure what was in it...

As the expo is mainly merchandise I couldn't resist making a few purchases.

First thing I picked up was this steam punk pocket watch necklace, it's actually made of plastic but looks metallic.

This necklace is amazing, its a tiny version of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, made of paper; it's about the size of the top of my little finger! They had many different novels including Harry Potter and Twilight. The sales woman was lovely, all of their information is on the card in the background :)

My camera and I had a disagreement so these were shot on my phone.

Picked up this cat pillow, I couldn't help myself XD

Got this steam-punk/android Simba to brighten up my desk, I included the name of the artist, go give them some love!

 This has to be my favourite purchase, a sketch of myself wearing Loki's cape and Thor's hammer. The artist was so talented and drew this from a photo she took of me. Compared to all of the awesome costumes I was a little bland in my grey t-shirt and jeans >.<

Comic Con was a great experience, especially in terms of photography practice as its not often that I get to shoot portraits. It was a challenge but I learnt a lot about how to take a good picture and how to edit it.

Hope you enjoyed this post, i'll be back next week!

Love E

"What is this...? my replacement?"