7 Deadly sins!

Clare — Sat, 19 May 2012 17:07:56 +0000

I’m working on a week of 7 Deadly sins for my 365#2 challenge (as a reminder, this year is 366 days long AND this is my third 365 project! Bad name!)…..

4 days in!

Actor Tom

Clare — Sun, 13 May 2012 11:55:06 +0000

Lots of hard work this weekend- but 60 mins of setup, 80 mins of photography and 120 mins of editing and here we have Tom’s new headshots!

Nice one Tom!

And my Home Studio:

Excitement!

Clare — Sat, 12 May 2012 10:11:18 +0000

Today I have finally opened up the huge flightcase of lighting which has very kindly been given to me by a friend. His Dad was a keen photographer, and when they cleared his house out, they needed a good home! 3 light heads with lots of lovely accessories (including a nice long sync cable!) and I can’t wait to have a play!

To quickly plug my friend’s business, please visit Ambition Creative, an experienced, multi-disciplined design studio who specialise in creating brand identities, marketing campaigns and websites delivered with style and personality . Just to note, they did NOT design my website, that was all my awful html, with a bit of help from my husband!

[edit]

I’ve added my first experimental picture:

This was all about trying to get my background lighting correct! There are many theories about this, but the main one for a clean studio portrait is to overexpose the backgound so it’s flat and white. This is something I’ve never achieved due to not having enough lights! Of course, I now have more lights than I have space for…

The experiment

Clare — Thu, 03 May 2012 10:42:33 +0000

Click the photo to see more at Flickr…

Deadly….

Clare — Tue, 01 May 2012 20:30:55 +0000

I think I accidently took some awesome art nudes today. Nothing explicit, but I’m not going to start editing now (21:27pm) as I might never get to bed, plus I slept awfully last night and would like a good 8 hours tonight.

In other news, I’m thinking of doing a 7 deadly sins theme for a week of self-portraits for my 365#2 project, but I’m trying to work out how to do it without being really cheesy! I might even consider trying the 7 virtues too……. First time I will have done a really HIGH EFFORT set of self portraits since:

Levitation

…which was about a whole year ago!

HTML, Filezilla and trying to be independent!

Clare — Wed, 18 Apr 2012 20:18:13 +0000

So I’m obviously in the middle of updating my website and blog!

I started off well yesterday but I now feel like I’m battling with my limited knowledge and skills in web design. My husband helped me set up my site initially, and I rely on a style sheet (not for my blog, but for the rest of the site), some basic html and then upload using filezilla.

The problem is when you’ve been staring at the screen for this long, you forget what is what. I have spent ages trying to update some images on my site which still refuse to play ball! I can’t work out what I’ve done wrong!

Square eyes!

This is a picture from my 365 self portraits…unfortunately due to antibiotics, anti-inflamatories and strong painkillers, I am not drinking wine tonight! Boo!

White site, white hat

Clare — Wed, 18 Apr 2012 16:18:03 +0000

The hat is for a fancy dress party (theme of cocktails, I’m a White Russian!)- I LOVE this hat!

New look

Clare — Wed, 18 Apr 2012 15:38:18 +0000

So, I’ve clearly had a bit of a mix-about and updated this site a bit. I was finding the old header and black background quite opressive!

So of course, once I’d altered the blog page I then had to change around the colours on the rest of the ClareDowlingPhotography website- which I spent a large chunk of Tuesday night editing the css which was interesting as I have never worked with style sheets before, and this was the first time I had ever braved editing one! Disturbingly I actually was successful in changing the colours around and I hope it gives the site a cleaner look… what do you think?

Surprise win!

Clare — Sun, 15 Apr 2012 20:58:11 +0000

In other news, I was very pleased to find out that I won a photography competition a few weeks ago. Although small and local, it was an honour, and I’m very pleased with myself!

It was the Peter Allen Environment Photo competition for District 105D of Lions International (some fundraising work I am involved in). We had to sum up the environmental significance of our image in just 40 words.

The winning image:

Despite being great at adapting, starlings have declined by 2/3 since the 1970′s due to habitat loss. Survival rate for chicks is just 15%.

Still feeling inspired!

Clare — Sun, 15 Apr 2012 20:53:29 +0000

Sometimes it’s hard not to rifle through the internet and feel “down” about one’s “talents”. Inspiration in any form usually comes with a tinge of jealousy, without which the admiration might not feel real.

I’ve been indulging in one of my favourite past-times, making new Flickr contacts by trawling through the recently uploaded photographs in the groups I am a member of. My favourite places to find enw “friends” are:

I, Me, Mine and Self Portraits

Today my new contacts are inFocus:

Camilla<3

and Kattra

So I suppose I should add some photos of my own, seeing as it is my blog….

It’s been a bit of a time. I broke my shoulder 6 weeks ago which has stopped me doing many things I enjoy- including (temporarily) taking pictures on the SLR (couldn’t lift it), and editing photos amongst other things. I then had my problem wisdom tooth out this week too so it’s been pretty stressful!

Some self portraits from my project:

Some other images from my project: