A water lily

Hello everybody! Remember last time when I and my friend was rowing in the lake? That time we saw a water lily and in order to get it we also broke one of the oars. When we finally got to the shore again we went home and I put the water lily in a big bowl of water. It rained that evening and when I came out the next day I took some more photos. I took just a very few (and pretty bad) photos the day we got the water lily so the day after I took some better photos.

After that day I just though that I should wait until a good time to post these photos, then I forgot about it. Now I'm here with these photos, almost a month after they where taken. It's almost like a summery memory, I guess. I really hope you like these photos. And no, it was not worth loosing an oar because of this flower, but we did so now we can at least enjoy the photos of it.

Home made buns!

Hello everyone! Is it time for another baking post, this time it's my mums home made buns. I took these photos in the last light of the day, right before sunset begun. Today has been rainy and it was cloudy, that too makes good lighting. I really liked today's lighting and wish I could have it every time.

My cold is better today and I went to school so I'm really happy about that. The only thing that could have been better today was probably the weather, it really felt like autumn. If you read my blog last year I talked about how much I wanted warm, light, summer days. I'm already beginning to miss summer.

Tigra in b&w

Hi there! It's been a lot of posts with Maja and now I really think it's Tigra's turn. These photos are from today when she was about to fall asleep in my bed. I know the photos have a bit of noise but that is because I didn't want to use flash and my lamp wasn't turned on. She was very sweet and licked me loads, she also took my pen and we played a little with it.

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! :)

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

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!

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!

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.

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?

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!

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.

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.