Amber... BamberBoo

Cousins

Click here to bigify on black

This is from a recent shoot of my kids and their cousins.  You may not believe it from this picture, but my kids were complete pains during the whole shoot!!  I’m not saying they didn’t have fun but it is almost impossible to shoot (or not to want to shoot!!) six kids when 3.75 of them are showing off, being silly, wiggling, rolling eyes and pulling faces constantly… for three and a half hours!  Maybe I could hire them out as some sort of patience-endurance training team or something!  Anyway, Nephew and Niece were Angels!  Mine behaved as though they were out on a weekend pass.

This photo shoot taught me many things.  A few of the most important are listed below.

The first is a very techincal one.  Never, EVER forget to check your ISO when you are using studio lights… Just don’t.  every 450 odd shots could possibly have an incredible amout of noise in them… and I don’t mean the kind of noise kids make.  GRRRRRRRRR!  I thought my lights were acting kinda funky and over exposing everything… I had to second guess them as my light meter wouldn’t give me correct exposure.  Well, it couldn’t.  The meter was set for ISO 100 and the Camera was at 1600.  Double GRRRRR!

The second thing I learned… You should always be wearing protective head gear when you discover you have made such an elementary mistake on a shoot.  Especially when it was a shoot that sucked you so dry. 

The third very useful lesson I learned was how to use auto-align in Photoshop.  What you see here is actually a composite of four different pictures.  I will brush up on this new skill but you have to know this PS tool is amazing!

The forth and final thing this shoot taught me was… It’s probably not a bad idea to carry a hip flask of Scotch next time I’m doing a 3+ hour shoot with my own children!!

My other dirty blog

Some may believe that when I disappear from my dear little blog for weeks months on end that I must be busy snuggled up on my big, brown, beautiful leather sofa eating bonbons and sipping from a steaming hot mug of chocolate (or Bailey’s as the case may be)… whilst I flick through the lastest issue of Country Living dreaming of ways to beautify my life.  But this is not the case.  Well this is not always the case.  To prove this to you I thought I would let you in on my other blog.

*GASP*

Yes, yes, I can hear you from here.  No I have not been holding out on you.  And yes, I will give you the link, but I have to warn you… it isn’t pretty!  It has some pictures on it.  But they are ugly.  There are no reciepes for Spiced Plum Chutney or stunning shots of my undeniably beautiful children.  No little stone house where the interior walls are painted red.  Nope.  It’s all about me getting down and dirty and taking on the big bad guys.

You see on the last day of January, No, I’ll tell you what.  Let’s not dirty these pretty pages with all that muck.  Go. See for yourselves what I get up to when no one is looking… remember to go to the archives and work your way up if you want the full story. 

My Other Dirty Blog

Now, if you’re back and you still think you would ever want to ‘f’ me around when it comes to my kids then you’d better believe… I will pop you like a zit!!!