måndag 31 augusti 2015

Joppe

Hello readers! Today's post is a little bit later than usually and that is because I'm having a cold. I didn't post anything yesterday because I really just forgot about it, my throat hurts and I'm having a headache so it's not going to be a lot of text today.

This dog is called Joppe and is my friends grandmothers dog. We took him for a walk in the woods the other day and these are the photos from that day. I hope you like them, I think Joppe is super cute in all of them! :)







lördag 29 augusti 2015

Photo tips: More about shutter speed

Hello readers! Almost a month ago I posted a photo tips about light. That post involved three key things to the right lighting: aperture, shutter speed and ISO speed. In that post I was very short and just went over the basic facts that is needed to be able to change the lighting in your photos. Now I wanted to go back and add some information, this time about the shutter speed. I also want you to know that on all of the example photos the only thing I've changed is the shutter speed, no ISO speed, nothing. All photos are also unedited except for me putting the logo on.

Previous tips:
Photo tips: light - aperture, shutter speed and ISO speed
Photo tips: White balance (WB)

What is shutter speed?

I got over this pretty good in the previous post but in case you haven't read it I'm just going to tell you shortly but I really recommend you reading the previous post if you want to know more.

Shutter speed is how long you shutter is open. An example of how it's measured could be something like this: 1/30 (one thirtieth of a second), 1/100 (one hundredth of a second), 1/400 (one hundredth of a second). A high number like 1/1000 freezes the photo fast and gives you a sharp photo of something moving. The slower something moves, the lower shutter speed you need in order to get it sharp. Anything below 1/60 probably will get a slight blur if you don't use a stative of some kind. When your shutter is open longer it lets in more light and you photo will get lighter.

Shutter speed double

In most cases your shutter speed will most likely double when you choose a higher number. That means that the amount of light you photo gets also doubles. It is not exactly doubling but it's very close so don't think too much about numbers like 1/125 coming after 1/60. For example: 1/30, 1/60, 1/125, 1/500.

If you look at the example photos below you will probably notice that they both are pretty grainy. That is because of the high shutter speed I used. Nothing was moving in this photo, so there was no reason for me to have a high shutter speed but I wanted to show a good example.


1/2500
1/1000


1/400
1/800


 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

To freeze or not?

When you look at a moving motive you have the choice to freeze it or not. Water is something that could look very good when it isn't completly sharp because that gives you the ability to see the movement of the water. The same thing goes for a busy street where it might be nice to see the people move. On the other hand you might want to freeze a player at a sport event or something like that.

Something you have to have in mind is that if you are going to take photos in an area with bad lighting you might need to use flash or lamps if you want to use a high shutter or it might turn out very dark. The same goes for the opposite, maybe the lowers shutter speed isn't good in sharp sunlight because your photo might turn out overexposed.

If you look at my photos below you can see that there are more raindrops in the photo with the higher shutter speed. This is because in the photo with the lower shutter speed all the smaller raindrops got blurry so the camera wasn't able to catch it. The 1/2500 photo is also slightly brighter.

1/4000
1/2500


fredag 28 augusti 2015

A few plants

Good evening! I know today's post is going to be up a little later than usually but since it's Friday you might be up a little longer like me, so it won't be too much trouble. Bet some of you thought I forgot about posting today, but nope, I didn't! Or, I might have forgotten it but then I remembered again so here the post is.

I forgot about planing something to this post because I've been sitting by my new keyboard all day. My previous one broke down this summer and today I finally got a new one and I'm so excited!




torsdag 27 augusti 2015

Rain and flowers

Hi there! It's been raining for almost three days straight now but around seven the sky got clearer and the rain stopped. I was originally going to just post something else but when I saw the clear sky I changed my mind and went outside instead. It is not many flowers that still bloom very close to my house so instead of doing that I just photographed the pretty raindrops on leaves and such. But of course I also found some flowers!




onsdag 26 augusti 2015

Maja in b&w

Hello everybody! I promise these are the last photos of Maja in a while, all of you are probably tired of seeing her by now. To switch it up a little bit this time I thought of different things but ended up just making every photo black and white. I haven't done that in some time so that might be something, I really don't know about that. This weekend is also going to have the photo tips of this month, I'm probably going to tell you more about that later.






tisdag 25 augusti 2015

The countryside

Hello everyone! I really like todays photos, especially the first one. All of these photos where shot through a car window and I kept getting annoyed because the glass wasn't clean. Never did the thought that I could just lower the window occur to me, but I'm glad I didn't because maybe I would never got that last photo. It must be one of my favorite photos this year, I like it so, so much.

I have loads of photos from this trip, it's probably going to be other posts to continue it. Today was just a too lazy day for me, I'm going to edit the photos another day. Maybe even save some of them to a summer memory?




måndag 24 augusti 2015

Colorful flowers

Hi everybody! Today's photos are from last week. I remember taking them but I never looked through them afterwards. Today was a sunny day until late afternoon, then it started to rain. It's thunder and lightning outside right now and I feel like posting photos of colorful flowers and thinking about sunnier days. Tomorrow is probably going to be gray and rainy as well, but I'm going to have time to read. I'm at least looking forward to that part!





söndag 23 augusti 2015

Weekend walk

Hello everybody! I hope all of you have had a nice weekend, mine has been very good. The weather has been warm with a slight wind. I and a friend went for a walk in the heat and I brought my camera. These photos turned out good I think. A lot of the photos I took turned out overexposed because of the strong sunlight. I think the photos that actually turned out good was very good so it's a few good ones this time.

I know I didn't post anything yesterday but I thought of it, it just never happened. At noon I was in the stable, then I got home and accidentally fell asleep (oops!) until dinner. After dinner I read a bit and then I watched Homeland and went to bed. Everything would probably been better if I hadn't fell asleep, so I'm going to say that was the reason I didn't post yesterday.





fredag 21 augusti 2015

Dark chocolate cupcakes with cherry frosting

Hello there! Some days ago I decided to make a cupcake I previously couldn't find in any book. The result was this dark chocolate cupcake with cherry frosting. I think the end result turned out really delicious and now I'm sharing the recipe with all of you :)

Dark chocolate muffins (12st)

 Ingredients
125g unsalted butter
100g dark chocolate
a pinch of salt
2 eggs
1½ cup flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
½ cup sugar

Do this
1. Preheat your oven to 175°C.
2. Using a saucepan, melt your butter and dark chocolate and stir slowly. When both ingredients are fully mixed and melted you can take your saucepan of the heat and let it cool.
3. Mix salt, flour and baking soda in a bowl.
4. Beat the egg and sugar until they are white and fluffy in another bowl.
5. Mix the beaten eggs and sugar with the dry ingredients.
6. Add the chocolate and butter mix, stir until everything is well mixed and put the mixture into cupcake tins.
7. Bake for 20min and then let them cool while you make the frosting.

Cherry frosting

Ingredients
150g butter
100g cherry jam
2 cups icing sugar
1-2 drops cherry essence (optional but adds more taste)

Do this 
1. Beat the butter until it's smooth.
2. Add cherry essence and half of the icing sugar, then mix well.
3. Add in the rest of the icing sugar and the jam, mix well.
4. If your frosting is too hard, add a teaspoon of milk, if not you are done.





 

torsdag 20 augusti 2015

Walking by the river

Hi everyone! I and a friend walked by the river and I had my camera with me so I took some photos. Last year I posted many photos from the river and I was looking for new things to capture there. It wasn't a lot of new things there but I can't remember previously sharing photos with these three things before so that's going to be today's post.

I hope you enjoyed my book review yesterday. You probably know it already but I really enjoy writing them. I'm also working on a new thing, I'm not going to really say what that is right now but I think some of you might like it. Something I can say is that I'm terrible at doing it, you will probably see in some days :)




onsdag 19 augusti 2015

Book review: Vanished

Title: Vanished
Author: Joseph Finder
Genre: Thriller
Year published: 2010
Pages: ca 480
A place to buy it: If you are in Sweden you can click here to buy the book of Adlibris and if that's not the case you can click here to buy if from Amazon.
Other: First book in a series featuring Nick Heller.
Previous book review: The Collectors 

A missing brother

The book takes a fast start when our main character Nick Heller is interrupted when he is in the middle of work. Nick's nephew Gabe calls to ask for help in order to find his missing father. As the good man Nick is he finish work and starts digging into the mysterious disappearance or maybe even kidnapping of his brother Roger Heller.

Nick starts to unravel something big and in the process of doing that he also get into fights and give the bad guys what they deserve. He is able to dig in this case because of his job at the prestigious company Stoddard Associates, some good friends and because other people owed him a favor. Nick also realize that his brother has quite a few skeletons in the closet.

Slow thriller with too much filler

This book wasn't really in my taste. It started out in a good tempo but when the tempo felt the same throughout the whole book I got kind of bored. Yes it was a thriller but I think it was way too slow. Fights where filled with too much of Nick's thoughts and that made the part that is supposed to be well, thrilling, less exciting because everything happened so slowly.

A lot of things and facts where bombarding me from the first chapter to the last. Many names and places, companies and places. It was too much for me to remember. I get that it's supposed to be a mess but not much got cleared up for me in the end. When the big reveal and the story was "cleared up" I didn't really get what had happened. All the fillers made me loose track of what was important to remember and what wasn't.

Final thoughts

If you are looking for a action-filled thriller this is not going to be the book for you. On the other hand, if you are looking for more of a faster drama I think you could appreciate the book. To me, this book wasn't making me turn the pages. I kept on reading because of the hope that it might get better towards the end, but it didn't. It's not a terrible book, but it's not the thriller that you stay up all night to read because you just can't stop turning the pages. It's probably a 3/5 I would say.

tisdag 18 augusti 2015

Cute Maja!

Hi readers! It was a while since I posted anything with Maja. Everyone is probably tired of seeing her all the time, but I think she is so adorable and cute. I can't get enough of her :) I started taking photos when I saw her laying under a rosebush but when I got closer she stood up and walked towards me instead. You can see that in the three first photos. The last photo is when I walked back to our house and she followed me. Something made some kind of sound so she turned around to see where the noise came from.

Book review is coming up tomorrow or the day after tomorrow depending on if I get done writing it today or not. I liked this book and have already started on my next book. The books I ordered from Adlibris have not arrived yet, but when they do I'll probably post about it on Instagram. Hopefully the books are going to arrive towards the end of this week.





måndag 17 augusti 2015

Water in nature

Hello everybody! Today's post is going to have photos from a lovely little waterfall close to my house. It's at the foot of a hill and it's lots of trees that grow around it. I found it because of the sound it made, my original idea was to just get to the top of the hill because of the view. The view wasn't that great, trees and houses where in my way. I only got one fairly good shot, so I decided to include that here too.

Today was first day of school and it's been so hot. I brought a jacket with me and mediately regretted it. I almost missed my train home so I ran as fast as I could with my jacket on. My face got really sweaty and when I got home my makeup looked terrible. Now I'm on my room, drinking sparkling water with ice and wishing that it was lemonade - it's good that it isn't because I've spilled the water over myself twice now. I hope all of you had a good day. I usually don't blog this early but I feel like I have to because I'm going to fall asleep.