It was fun having a professional photographing our trees. Richard photos showed us aspects of our trees we haven’t noticed before. When you’re living so intimately with something it can be easy to overlook certain details.

Our camera does have a remote control but I have no idea how to use it. So I was pleased when Richard took a group photo of our family. After seeing this photo I’ll have to make more of an effort to learn how to use my camera properly.

These first two photos in the newsletter were taken by Richard who kindly said we may use the photos.

When Martin interviewed us he used a digital voice recorder. The beauty of this was we were able to have a normal conversation, which Martin then created into an article for the Smart Farmer Magazine.
It’s always enjoyable to read a person who writes well.

I would love to have a digital voice recorder that would work with my Dictation software. We could use the recorder while we are out and about.

During spring Pete decided to do a photo shoot. So I put on my favourite dress, and we spent an hour or so doing photos.

Pete and I never took many photos and it wasn’t until we had the children that we owned our own digital camera. Digital cameras are great, because you are not limited to the number of photos you can take. Our theory is if you take enough photos you’ll end up with a few good ones. The downside is I am a bit of a hoarder, and I am reluctant to delete ones that seem okay, which means we are fast running out of disk space.

We have been slowly learning, different techniques while photographing. It is surprising how nice the lighting can be on overcast day. Very early mornings is good lighting as well, fortunately we not usually up that early. We have had some days where the lighting at sunset was just spectacular. I’ve have a lot of trouble trying to catch the ambience in photos.

One of the things that Pete knew that I didn’t, was about checking the background before you actually took the photo. So some of my very early photos are cluttered with items.

I like the look of the trees, with the morning due or just after a light shower. The bark becomes a beautiful chocolatey colour which contrasts lovely with a green lawn. Pete likes to take photos of the trees at night with a flash, this gives each tree a very dramatic effect against the night sky.

For Pete’s last birthday he bought himself a tripod. We’ve been able to get much crisper photos now. Pete has also done a series of photos of the children playing in the people trees using the tripod. I am planning to turn this series into a type of animation.

Not really sure what method I will use to achieve the end film, but it should be fun trying out the different methods. I’ve played around with morphing software, and photo editing software so somewhere between the two we should get an okay film. I also should have a little play around in film software.

I quite like the idea of buying a camcorder, when we do I will have to buy more expensive tripod so we can do sweeps and pans of the garden.