12 books for 2011 | invitation to photo essay

1. Water for elephants / Sarah Gruen
2. The Thirteenth Tale / Diane Setterfield
3. Three Cups of Tea / Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin 
4. The Secret Life of Bees / Sue Monk Kidd
5. Outliers / Malcolm Gladwell 
6. And then there's this : how stories live and die in viral culture / Bill Wasik. 
7. Strength in What Remains / Tracy Kidder 
8. The 10pm Question / Kate De Goldi
9. Year of magical thinking / Joan Didion
10. Her fearful symmetry / Audrey Niffenegger  
11. Atonement : a novel / Ian McEwan.
12. Blindsight / Maurice Gee

Let me know if you'll join me in this list!

My other book related project is to photograph the library book pile whenever I get books from a library.  This is going to be a like a photo essay of my reading for the year.  It will be books from whatever library I borrow from, public or academic.  If you'd like to join my project, I've made an open Flickr group you can join.  It's uncompetitive, no pressure and doesn't have to be artistic in any way.  I like seeing what other people borrow.

My first photo is this one:





Libraries (particularly public libraries), are being threatened by budget cuts and closures around the world.  In New Zealand we are fortunate that we haven't suffered the drastic cuts like the US, and now the UK where 400 libraries are planned to be closed.  That is 400 libraries worth of staff and collection that will no longer be available to the tax paying community.  Tomorrow there will be a day of protest in the UK over these closures.  Check out this scary map of libraries affected produced by the author of Public Libraries News.


View Larger Map

I think it is worth pointing out that this is more than just books we're talking about.  The printed book is an enduring physical entity and it'll be around for a while yet.  E-books are great and are becoming more important.  I'm anxious for them to mature past the issues relating to digital rights management and the multiplicity of ereaders available on the market so that we can really get our digital teeth into using them especially in the academic library world.  Libraries supply other resources like magazines, local history collections, newspapers, resources for family historians.  Have you tried the audio books available from your library?  Auckland Public libraries has great collection that you can access online and put on your mobile device via Overdrive.  Great for when you're sick, for kids, on long road trips or just to chill out.

It is worth pointing out that it is more than just resources we're talking about.  Libraries are a physical space too where people come to meet, work and relax.  They are warm and relatively safe places to be.  Public libraries are open to everyone in the community regardless of race, gender or ability.  Academic libraries provide a much needed physical sanctuary for students and even staff of their institution.  The digital space should not be disregarded either as much interaction can take place between the user and the library in the virtual realm.

So use your library.  Don't let it be taken away from you.


By Phil Bradley

In which I boast about my husband

This man (whom you see here watering the garden)

has had 6 images published in this book

published by Potton.

We now have a box of 12 of these. Guess what his whanau are getting for Christmas!?

Impossible

Trying to get photos of Miss 2 is nigh on impossible. Check out this series...

A pensive look













"Smile for mummy?"













"No! Open your eyes!"













*sigh* "You are a wally"













"Okay - one more chance"













*gives up in disgust* LOL! I have every respect for people who successfully take photos of their children without coming away with no hair left on their heads.....

Welcome to the blogging world!

DH surprised me yesterday with the announcement he has begun a blog. :)

If you are interested in photography then you might like to add this one to your rss feed and make a few comments. He intends to blog about his work, techniques etc. Without sounding immodest, I do think he knows quite a lot about the topic ;)

Here is the link: http://roddersd29.wordpress.com/

Playing with colour

This is cool. Using the Multicolr Search Lab you can create a mosaic of photos from Flickr containing up to 10 colours. I did some Christmas colours.

Visit to Bethells | Menu Plan Monday

Spent Saturday evening out at Te Henga (Bethells Beach) with the whanau. DH lent me his Canon 40D to play with and I turned it on Auto and clicked away. But I am afraid I need more practice! Especially in terms of waiting until it focuses before I click. Never mind, it was fun and with digital it is cheap...
Here are some that actually turned out.

Missy Moo posing on a log.

Climbing up the dune banks. Only the angle I turned the camera doesn't tell you how steep it was! Not long after this she face planted and there was much wailing.

DS playing steam rollers in the background, DD coming to see what Mummy is doing.

This is one that DH took as we were walking back to the car. He takes better pictures than me!

But I am quite pleased about this one. I was trying to capture the waves licking DS's ankles and the light was so nice... I think I needed to use the Sports mode to capture things a bit quicker. Missy Moo was all excited about the "wahdoo" until it came up and got her. Then there was more wailing and clinging to the Mummy leg business.

A busy week ahead. Tomorrow is DS's last day at kindy and Wednesday is his birthday, and first day at school. I went and got his books etc this morning. The school is bringing in a uniform next year so I had a look at that and will have to order some stuff in the next few months.

I'm nervous for him. The school visit we had wasn't a total success. He was okay in the classroom but once they moved to the hall to do Jump Jam he stood there looking at his feet, put his hands over his ears and got quite tearful. So we went on to kindy. I do hope it will be okay on Wednesday! I'm taking the day off tomorrow and Wednesday so I can spend some time there with him at kindy and at school.

He lost his first tooth last week. At 5!!! But he got his first tooth at 15 weeks so I suppose it is all relative. The Tooth Fairy gave him $1 because that was all she had in her purse. He wasn't concerned at all since money has no real value to him yet.

Menu Plan Monday

Monday - Chicken Herby Cobbler a la Janine
Tuesday - Devilled bangers in the crockpot, mashed potatoes plus veges
Wednesday - could be steak, could be Thai beef salad depending on how I feel
Thursday - DH away so we're having hot dogs. With sauerkraut. ;-)
Friday - Thai Meat balls, rice and some sort of vege
Saturday - DS's Pizza Party!!
Sunday - um um um not sure, depends on if the ILs are still here or not

Photo Mosaic

1. Penny Having Fun, 2. Water waits, 3. B block corridor, 4. Summer Berries Red Current01, 5. fangirl, 6. A Small Parisian Alley HDR, 7. Red.Source, 8. Ice Cream Dressed in Red, 9. Socks, socks, socks and more socks. Long live SOTTS!! ~Day 146, 10. family picnic, 11. 霧中倒影 / Misty Lake, 12. Edward Dugmore - Untitled, 1954

This has been on a few blogs lately.
Using Flickr, enter the answers to the questions below in the search box and choose your favourite. Then use the Mosaic maker to create a 3x4 mosaic.

1. What is your first name? Penny

2. What is your favourite food? Indian

3. What high school did you attend? Mt Roskill Grammar. (Couldn't believe it but someone had posted a pic of my exact school. I even know where that was taken. heh.)

4. What is your favorite color? Red (it could've easily been green or blue too.)

5. Who is your celebrity crush? Colin Firth

6. Favorite drink? Coffee

7. Dream vacation? France (or Italy, or New Caledonia, or India, or... just about anywhere)

8. Favorite dessert? Ice cream

9. What do you want to be when you grow up? wise

10.What do you love most in life? My family

11. One word to describe you? kind (well I had to say something!)

12. Your Flickr name. pdugmore2001 (in the end I had to use just dugmore because there were no results).

Cheering time!

Hello blog my old friend
I've come to post on you again

My IRL friend, stamping-guru-scrapping-goddess-extraordinaire Rachel has reached Challenge 8 of Project Scrap Away which is being hosted by Scrap 'n' Crop. Hooray! I am watching what she's doing with this latest challenge which is to use B&W and NO colour. Tricky.

There have been some awesome entries for this Project Scrap Away.

And now she needs some help to get points, so pretty please... here's what you can do.

Go to her blog and leave a comment.

Post about her and Project Scrap Away on your blog.

Leave a comment on the Project Scrap Away blog : Rachel's Friend + a link to your blog.

As for me - I've been doing various things. Sewing some bags, going to birthday parties, making some cards... just busy and not really feeling like blogging much. I have lots of ideas for posts but not much time to sit down to do it! I did make a bag for my Cuttlebug.


















DS has gone up north to stay with his gran and granddad so I have one very bored little girl who doesn't know what to do with herself and who follows me around getting into everything I try to do. She's adding more and more words to her vocab. The latest is "darti" and "guk" for dirty and yuk. (Said most often when changing nappies. In fact, she's started to tell me when her nap is "darti").
DH has got some lurg we've all had... made worse by the fact he's male and won't take any sick days.

So he's in bed (with his MP3 player). He pointed out to me that he now has a gallery up at one of the forums he posts on. "Maybe you'd like to put a link on your blog," he says.

Maybe I would!

My super talented photographer husband's Gallery!

Woohoo Wednesday

Your post today is to shout Hooray
About the good stuff in your day
Janine's meme is the theme
Here's my list, you'll see what I mean...

My biggie woohoo is I have won a kit from SBO in a challenge draw! I am totally stoked about this! Now go and order lots of stuff from Andrea.... hee hee hee!

I am anxiously waiting for the sweet sound of the courier. It's a bit of a bummer that the neighbour is a courier driver and every time he comes home I think there is something for me... *hums: The Wells Fargo wagon is a comin' down the street so please let it be for me!!!*

My second big woohoo is that the most excellent Tamar from Tarisota Collections is sending my Mum an Addiction collection for Mother's Day because I mentioned her in an entry on her Mother's Day giveaway post.

3rd: DH is still on vacation so it's nice to have him around. :)
4th: Shell is sending me a RAK. :) I am a lucky chicky!
5th: My tooth is still not hurting. It has to last until the 30th when I will be emptying out my wallet at the dentist to have a root canal. I had to go to the emergency dentist on ANZAC Day to get it looked at and he put in a temporary dressing so we could have a vacation. So far it's holding up. x-fingers.

And just so you know that DH truly is a better photographer than me here are some of his so called "feeble offerings".
Waitonga Falls
Tawhai Falls
Blue Duck

He won't toot his own trumpet so I'm doing it for him.
*ahem*

Holiday Antics

Enjoy the show! I've captioned the photos so you know where and what they are. Naturally, DH's 286 photos are far superior to mine, but they don't have people in them. :-)

Even though the weather turned to custard the week we were away *aside: this always happens to us* we managed to do quite a bit. DS managed to complete two 2 hour walks so we were very proud of him. Towards the end of the week though he was saying, "No more walks Daddy okay? No more walks." So on Friday we stayed back at the bach and I caught up with an old school friend who lives in the area.

I managed to lose another kilo - yay for me! Only 3 more to go before I reach my goal.

We stayed in Turangi in a bach from the Holiday Houses website. It was a good little bach, very simple but served the purpose. Most days we spent out and about in Tongariro National Park. DH had several places he wanted to photograph - most of them involving water and streams. The Mangetepopo tragedy was rather high in my mind but fortunately most of the places he went were not in the risky category.

We visited the Tree Trunk Gorge, Pillars of Hercules, Waikato Falls, Taranaki Falls, Mangawhero Falls, Waitonga falls (where Gollum eats the fish from the Forbidden Pool in LOTR) as well as Lake Rotopounamo and Lake Rotokura. I really wanted to have a swim in the hot pools at Tokaanu but we didn't get time.

DH did a lot more on the Friday and one morning when I stayed back with children at the bach. However, he did lose his lens cap in the Rangipo Desert which caused me to taunt him with this:

In the Rangipo Desert
Covered in sand
Lies a languishing lens cap
Dropped by Rod's hand

Alas for the lens cap
For now it is lost
Rod'll have to replace it
At significant cost.

I might add that this is not the first lens cap/piece of photographic equipment that he has lost or forgotten to pick up or dropped off the side of a precipice.

No added colour

No added colour
Originally uploaded by pdugmore2001.

My little cropping group got together finally and I managed to create one single LO in the evening. I'm still not entirely happy with it but am not sure what to do to to make it better.

I have all these ideas but putting them into reality is another matter. My mojo is blocked or something. How to spark my creativity? Part of the problem is time and being able to feel free to sit down and do things. Last week was hopeless because I didn't feel I should disappear into my scrapping lair while the ILs were here.

DH has been playing with his toys he got for his birthday.

He is a fan of the Strobist website and has got some flashes etc to play with. He's been 10 years at his place of work and they gave him some money as a gift which he used to get some other gear too. Here is his effort.

Licorice Allsorts (Copyright 2008 Rod Dugmore)

BTW - Wordpress hates me right now. It tells me I'm posting comments too quickly. Even though it can be a day between each comment! So my lovely WP users - I'm reading but don't be surprised if my comments are sparse.

Footprints

Footprints

The good thing about marrying a mad photographer is that you get to experience sunsets with him. Sort of.

Bethells Beach, Waitakere.

More pics in my Flickr photo stream (link in the side bar). Also in my new banner! :) All my own composition including the photos.

Flaunt it Friday (late, late, late)

themommykellys theme this week:Flashbacks.
Post a photo of a time when you were/are one hot chicky!

And one

that spontaneously elicits an emphatic “what the hell was I thinking?!”

Hehe!

I can't say that I have any photos of me in my younger days where I was particularly succulent. Mum has most of my old photos. I have to say I mostly I was/am a nerdy geek!

But I do like this photo-shopped version of me that DH took.

This one was when I was... oh.. 17 or so. Taken by the ex-boyfriend of the time. I guess I don't look too bad. Wish I'd known DH then, but anyway, life doesn't always work out that way.
















As for the terrible one - this one is fairly awful. 9 months pregnant and ready. for. baby. Ack! So.... I DARE you to join in!

O happy day!

I am so lucky. I'm the recipient of the NZ Dare draw - a kit from Paper Pesto! So awesome :) Thank you!

This fortnight's dare is sounding good too.

DD discovered the laptop open on the coffee table and proceeded to pick off several keys off the keyboard, including the Enter key. I've managed to fix most of the keys back on but her manipulations have not improved things! So I hope I can keep typing without driving myself crazy.

DH (the mad photographer) has discovered an interesting site with a whole lot of photography related podcasts including various tutorials like how to take good photos at the zoo, photoshop techniques etc. Photocast Network also has links to video tutorials on programs such as the Gimp - a free photo editing program. Some of the podcasts are very interesting!

Quick post about Lightroom

I was going to make DH post a "guest spot" on my blog about Lightroom but he's too chicken. *shrug*

So.

What is it?
Lightroom is a software product from Adobe that works mostly as a collection manager of your photo collection. If (like DH) you take LOTS of photos and you wish to organise them, then Lightroom is probably one of the better products to do it.

What does it do?
There are a several aspects to Lightroom. There is the major part of organisation of your photo collection. You can assign metadata, keywords, titles etc to your photos and group them according to a hierarchical classification scheme of your own making. You can see how this appeals to my librarian's heart! The database is searchable and I have my photos catalogued in it too. So if I need a picture of DD I can search her name and it will bring up all her photos. Or if I need a picture of a lemur, I can find them quickly without searching though months and months of photos. In addition, Lightroom also has

1. A Develop module with some photo manipulation tools (e.g. crop, contrast, vibrance, histograms etc)
2. A printing "module" where you can set up print layouts and other controls

You can do the usual import and export too and some other stuff that I don't know much about.

And the $10000 question - Should you get it?

I guess that depends how much in the money you are! We essentially lucked out on this one. DH had purchased another product that did similar things, and that product was brought out by Adobe. As they weren't going to develop this product further, they offered customers the option of converting to Lightroom 1.0 for free. Which DH did.

If you are looking for a product to manipulate your photos then you are better to get Photoshop Elements or Photoshop itself. Lightroom compliments these products and works with them rather than replaces them.

If you've got any specific questions about it, let me know and I'll direct them to the "master"! Heh heh!

Lemon Cheer

Well the country is in mourning and while I have no interest in sport, it really is disappointing! So I will resist gently pulling the legs of my online friends, (who are feeling this keenly) and instead I will post about this yummy cake.

Iced Lemon Curd Layer Cake
Delia Smith's Winter Collection, (1995), London: BBC Books, pg. 229

175g self-raising flour, sifted
1 level teaspoon baking powder
175g butter at room temperature
175g caster sugar
3 eggs
grated rind of a lemon
1 Tablespoon of lemon juice

For the Lemon Curd
75g caster sugar
grated zest and juice of 1 large lemon
2 eggs
50g unsalted butter

For the Icing
50g sifted icing sugar
zest of 1 large lemon
2-3 teaspoons lemon juice

Pre-heat oven to 170 degrees C (325 F). Prepare 2 x 18cm sandwich tins, 4 cm deep by greasing them, & lining with baking paper.

Measure all the cake ingredients into a mixing bowl and beat - ideally with an electric hand whisk - till you have a creamy consistency. (I used my cake mixer). Divide the mixture between 2 tins and bake them on the centre shelf in the oven about 35 mins or until the centres feel springy with lightly touched with a little finger.

While the cakes cook, make the lemon curd. Place sugar and grated rind in a bowl, whisk the lemon juice with the eggs and then pour this over the sugar. Add the butter cut into little peices, and place bowl over a pan of simmering water. Stir frequently until thickened. The recipe says you don't have to stay with it but to come back from time to time. I personally couldn't do that because I'm paranoid.

When cakes are cooked, remove them from the oven and after about 30 seconds, turn them out onto a rack. When they are absolutely cold, cute each one horizontally into 2 using a serrated knife. Spread the curd thickly to sandwich the sponges together. You will notice I didn't bother cutting the layers... my tins were slightly too large and thus the layers were too thin for me to cut into two. Heh heh - more lemon curd for me!

To make the icing, remove the zest from the lemon using a zester to get long curly strips. Sift the icing sugar into a bowl and gradually stir in the lemon juice until you have a soft runny consistency. Allow to stand for 5 mins and then spread on the cake. Scatter lemon zest on top.

DH discovered a cool technique to do in Lightroom. It's a kind of grungy, surreal, painty effect.
This is one DH did of DS and his kite. I did the one of DD. Before


and after..

Eh? Another photo Dad?

I think she's over it don't you?


P.s. The Earth Gems were in my local produce store (Kumeu Produce) ... not the organic shop, so you may be able to find them locally.

Honey I cloned the son...

A bit of photoshop fun...

A tripod, wide angle lens, 3 photos, and 3 layers in photoshop. Erase the bits to reveal the 3 ratbags!

Aaaack! Imagine having 3 of them! Scary thought.

Botheration!

Rats! DH has managed to lose all my special brushes in his upgrading of Photoshop. I shall have to go looking for them again.

Got any special ones you recommend? Leave a linky in the comments and I'll collate them and make a section on my side bar for them so I don't lose track of where they are.

Here are some that I like:
Misprinted Type
Spyglass
Deviant Art
Scrapjazz post about brushes

BTW - for some reason I'm having difficulty leaving comments on Wordpress blogs. It might just be my laptop/Firefox... so I am reading and trying to share the love but it's a bit sporadic!!

Photoshoot Disaster

Tried to do a bit of a photo session yesterday with the kiddos but it was mostly a waste of time. Small Boy was so busy being "helpful" taking pictures with his "camera" that it was annoying, and Small Girl would not smile. Most of the shots aren't sharp because the target or my hands were moving.

However, Small Girl is now 6 months so I thought I'd better record it. She is sitting up well and is working on her top 2 teeth. Won't be long and she'll be crawling judging by her tummy time behaviour these days.

I must get out to some better venue than my lounge and my dodgy black back drop....