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A great finish to the year and new beginnings in 2012
Don’t worry about reading this drivel! It’s merely a venting blog post… I’m breathing out the old and breathing in the new!
2011 was a memorable year for me. It started off topsy turvey and if anything, pretty miserable. I had a lot of personal dramas that were eating away at me and if anything the start to the year felt very stagnant. However, I battled my way through it and overcame many niggles, (some of which I wont go in to), only to reveal a second half of the year that was rewarded by hard work and determination. I chose to tackle the main things bothering me in my life in order to turn them around for the better!
Flower Photography
It’s all about flowers with me this weekend! I’m not quite sure why. Maybe it’s the resources from my mum and my neighbours garden, or maybe it’s from my longing for the summer that we never had and now Autumn is well on it’s way, so all the pretty colourful blooms will be fading away to reveal the rusty, murky, earthy autumn colours. Perhaps, it’s simply because I think flowers are both beautiful to look at and so complex, yet simple.
Anyway, I took so many photos that I thought I’d display them in a little blog post. Below are some of my photography edits from the past 48 hours photographs. I have edited them all in photoshop in one way or another, so if you want some further information on this, I’ll break it down in another post.
If you want to purchase any of my prints, just visit my redbubble page.
What Photography means to me
Meet my nephew Caidyn… Just one of my many inspirations for my photography. I captured this photo of him yesterday, which has inspired me to write a little about photography and why I love it so much.
I have always loved photography. When I was little I remember getting my first film camera and using it to photograph everything and anything. Even though, I never had the money to get the film developed I quickly became obsessed with the idea of being able to capture moments and scenes in a photograph. I loved and still love going through old family photos and learning about my previous generations and seeing what was different in photos of a bygone era or what my parents looked like and lived like before I was even born…
As I got older I moved on to digital compact cameras, which opened up a whole new world to me. I could take so many pictures and go through them on my computer, save them, print them, show them, share them…
Photography took a backseat for a while, during my uni years, other than photos of student nights out and fun. However, time wasn’t wasted. I carried on capturing moments and also learned the art of multimedia production through mediums like web design, print, graphic design etc… It didn’t click with me that I could merge the two together. I loved design and loved my photography, but kept the two separate.
Last year, after working for many years in the web design and print field in the finance industry I felt it was time for some new creative inspiration. I returned to my love of photography and did a City and Guilds course in Digital Photography. I purchased my very first DSLR, a nikon D3000… It was here, that I fell in love with photography once more. This was a whole new photography ballgame! Both the course, the camera and also flickr opened up a brand new creative avenue and passion for me. I haven’t stopped photographing since.
I haven’t settled on a genre that I love to photograph in particular. I love child portraits, the obscure things that surround us, more creative fantasy photos and I adore nature too… I love photography itself and I also love bringing a photo or ten in to Photoshop (my favourite editing software for design and photography) and applying the skills I have learned over the yrs to come up with all sorts of interesting photographs. I feel like I have a lot to learn and a lot to give and who knows where it will take me. All I know is that on an ‘up day’ or a ‘down day’ this is what I love to do.
My friends and family have been very supportive and love my work and there’s nothing I love more than suprising them on birthdays, with a gift print, or canvas or framed Black and White piece of photography, where they know a lot of thought and effort has gone in to the work. My sister, whose house was a minimilistic barren place is now like my personal gallery of her family. I love seeing my work on her walls and I love that she loves it.
I finished my course with a delightful 3 distinctions and I have enrolled for the level 2. I can’t wait to see where photography takes me this year. I am ever-learning and ever-loving. I know I will not have a camera far away after discovering my DSLR and seeing the wonderful world around me in a whole different light! 
View my photography. Do contact me if you want to discuss or chat about anything photography related I’m ALWAYS happy to chat about it!
jquery mobile for web design – Part 1
So, to fill you in a little more about my full time employment. After graduating in 2006 with a first class (honours) in Multimedia Computing and Design, I have been working as a Web Designer and Graphic Designer in the Finance Industry. My employer is McCambridge Duffy; specialists in debt help, but we run and maintain quite a few other debt related websites. My day job involves editing sites, graphic design both for advertising and print and SEO among other various things.
So, to get to the point of this post. I love a challenge. The other day I finshed one of my most recent projects. I finished creating an iphone version our debt advice website to enhance the iphone user experience. It was a new project, so I was pleased to follow it through to the end. If you have an iphone just go to our website and you will be redirected there. I will post some screenshots of it later in the week.
In order to implement our new iphone version (and soon android version too) I used jquery mobile! And I have to say:
JQuery Mobile = The business
I will post some links to the great tutorials and resources I used along with the screenshots later in the week, so stay tuned if creating a mobile site is something you are interested in.
