New home ready to be unveiled!

The new blog location is up and running!

Click the title link to find it.

We are moving!

I am in the process of relocating the joela photography blog to another provider, stay tuned for links and special offers when the move takes place!

Daddy and baby pics

Aren't cuddles from daddy just the best? More coming to the web gallery soon!

Supply and demand!

As we are getting used to being a family of 5 I am offering only a limited number of sessions this month, and the youngest member of our clan is likely to be tucked in the sling helping me make you smile!

Dates which I have left available are Friday 9th January 10.00-12.00, Tuesday 13th January 10-12 and Saturday 31st January 10-12. The week beginning 2nd February is open for negotiation!

If you would like to enquire about an available slot follow the title link to the main website where you can use the contact form. I will be in touch to follow up your e-mail.

Shadowing the city.

Living near 2 cities with fantastic photo opportunities virtually guarantees I will not get  out + use them, especially with 3 young children in tow.

However, despite freezing temperatures a newborn and everything else I was determined to use the time while the 2 older children are out to get out there and visit some tourist type places.

Being blessed with a settled baby AND clear blue skies when I saw the Tyne bridge casting its formidable shadow over the quayside I had to climb a very steep hillside risking designer pram damage and section stitch damage to get an unobstructed view but it was SO worth it.

3 is a magic number

Having a newborn in the house means I have an endless supply of cute photographic ideas to try out, sadly it also means I have a million reasons to end up being unable to carry them out!

Having taken almost 2 weeks to get around to shooting our Christmas card with 3 children I was glad to get another couple of shots, no matter whether they are technically good or not!

I'm very lucky in that I have 3 children who's features suit black + white processing as it cover a multitude of newborn blotchy-ness!

Location scouting with point & shoot

Today's midwife appointment gave a fantastic opportunity to scope out some lovely autumn locations near by.

This is valley view park (or at least thats how I know it, google maps can't identify it from that name!).

JD loved running around in the leaves and we will certainly be back there at the weekend with the D300 to capture some more lovely colours to add into em & jd's project 365.

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Outtakes and alternates continue...

Some more outtakes from this evening's combined Christmas portrait and project 365 sessions.



Crinkly throw from ikea, man I love that place for fabrics.

Christmas portrait outtakes

Well, the season is nearly upon us with halloween this week and bonfire night next week its basically a whistle stop tour to Christmas from here.

Having a new baby on the way before Christmas we're eager to minimise shopping effort all round so set about doing some new portraits of our own 2 today to frame and give as gifts.  

These are some of the outtakes, I think I like them better than the ones I've selected for framing! 

Inspire me!

Having made a definite effort over the last week to blow the dust off my poor neglected D300 it seemed pretty much like everything then conspired against me to prevent me taking any photographs. After my Grandad was rushed into hospital I was admitted to hospital myself then when I came home he sadly passed away. Then there's the daily chores of family life combined with preparing for a new baby, which in our case means decorating the entire house.

So it was in a very unlikely place this weekend that I found finger-itching inspiration that made me regret leaving my camera at home when I went out. I was out at the florists with my mother choosing funeral flowers for my grandad we outside next to the door I spotted a basket full of the what I thought was the most bizarre sad looking pumpkins in the world. I was inappropriately consumed with the urge to waddle home and bring back my camera and beg the florist's owners to let me photograph them. I resisted and picked out flowers helped by the fantastic store owners who offer tea and handled the whole thing with a lovely approach.

When I returned home my husband could tell I was twitching to go back, especially when I told him the basket they were sitting in was perfect newborn photo shoot size....

So we went back and bought the basket of gourds, I was totally enthralled by the colours and spent ages arranging them and getting the lighting right to show off their fantastic contrast. Then excitedly processed them in lightroom 2 ready to post.

Inside the store incidentally I discovered a wealth of fantastic seasonal 'props', lovely willow, berrys, crispy autumn-like leaves and peacock feathers so expect lots of up-coming shoots to be using such seasonal items!

Anyone who is local I can't recommend this florist enough, its the second time we've used them for a sensitive occasion when I friend suffered a miscarriage a year ago we sent a plant to offer our condolences and they met our needs perfectly.

There is more from the lovely gourd family on the 'everything else' web gallery through clicking the title link.

Abandon all technique ye who enter here....

Well, having a had a break from my camera for everyone in the family to be ill I was determined to get out & about and refresh my skills this week. Of course mostly it has been on the way to or from nursery pick ups or hospital appointments but at least my poor neglected D300 got a bit of fresh air.

As for my technique, well it got abandoned. Being 33 weeks pregnant I can no longer bend down to get my son's face in the shot and if I kneel down I'd better be sure he will stay in that position because I'm basically going to be there until a crane comes to pick me up! The shots I was most pleased with today came from abandoning all hope of 'proper' photographic technique, these came as a combination from peeping over brightly painted playground toys and allowing the camera to hang at navel level and shooting on continuous.

Wave of light

Last year we took part in the wave of light for babyloss awareness and lit a candle for our angel and friends and those angels who lost their fight on the unit I worked on.

This year I have realised virtually everyone I speak to has been affected by miscarriage, still birth or the loss of a child in some way so that's why I couldn't light just one or two candles this year because I realise now I would need an awful lot for all the angels who have touched my heart in the last year.

Using a mirror in this shot really is just to illustrate that we often feel like we are the only ones who have suffered loss but if we look up and look around we will find there are lots of people around us who have suffered as well and they can help us through, or at least cry with us and share precious memories.

Little Miss E

I did a shoot for this little lady when she was a newborn, now she's over a year old! How time flies.

She's still as photogenic as ever, there will be more on my website when I workout what's preventing it updating!

Little Miss C

I was lucky enought to re-visit a client from a newborn shoot this week, here is Little Miss C, still as gorgeous as ever!

The joela photography website has also undergone on update to the galleries and information to make it easier to use.

Birthday present

Original
Tink present

A quick free lightroom preset to download, add some fairy sparkles in photoshop and your little one will be tinkerbell! Click the title link to be taken to the free download.

New website up and running

Finally after a week of grappling with FTP uploading, flash templates etc the new joela photography website is up and running. The trail logo will be disappearing sometime in the next 24 hours and I might even remember to add key terms for web searches at some point as well.

Why not click on the title link to check it out & leave a bit of C&C?!

Quick tutorial - rounded corners in photoshop

Rounded corners can give a lovely vintage feel and be a good compliment to this type of processing, and there's an easy way achieve them...

Select the rounded rectangle tool, check that the 'paths' option is selected on the top bar and select the area of your image you want to apply the corners to.

Now open the paths palette and click on the dotted circle icon at the bottom, this will turn the shape you have drawn into a selection.

Copy the selection and paste into a new document with a transparent background colour.

You're done!

Obviously this image has been further processed, I will be posting further tutorials on adding borders and vintage processing in upcoming posts.

A break from lightrooom

As most (if not all) of the free downloads I have offered have been related to lightroom I thought it was about time I included one for our friend photoshop.

A friend asked for a Christmas card template but didn't really think anyone would appreciate that quite yet so went on to develop this thank you card. The text is customisable, as is the image and colours used. As this was put together in CS3 I can't guarantee it will work will earlier versions, enjoy! For the free download click the title link.

And sometimes its not...

After a horrible shock when I picked up my D300 yesterday and the AF had stopped working I had renewed motivation to go out & shoot, of course I have 2 children so what I did (after changing lenses in dis-belief a few times and fiddling enough to get it working) is stay in & shoot of course...

This was one of the resulting shots, the others were of flowers that I got for my birthday this week. This was shot with my 50mm f1.8 lens, my favorite lens of all time but doesn't quite do its capabilities justice. As I was infact shooting the real-life 5 year old daughter and not a stuffed version she moved all the time so rather than shoot at f1.8 like I'd like to I shot at f4 to give me a slightly deeper DoF and some error room for the endless 5 year old shuffle.

To edit this shot was all about layers. I liked the original so to preserve it exported from lightroom as a TIFF to PS and used adjustment layers to make sure I didn't do anything I couldn't get rid of.

First layer: sharpening. Duplicate the background layer + run high pass filter at 2 pixels. Then add an inverted layer mask and paint in the sharpening to the areas of the image you want it (white a soft white brush). In this case I painted in over the feather. Then switch the blending mode to hard light or soft light, whatever your preference.

Second layer: black + white conversion. In this image to enhance the contrast I lightened the yellows and darkened the reds, but only very slightly.

When I was happy with these the image was flattened and the background duplicated again. The duplicate layer I set to a blending mode of colour dodge which vastly enhances the highlight areas of the image, too much in fact. I added an inverted layer mask and using a soft white brush set to 35% opacity and 40% flow painted in the highlights I wanted to emphasise.

So all in all for a fairly simple black and white image it took much longer to edit than a standard portrait!

Sometimes its best to leave alone...

Editing is all about flattering your subject, sometimes you can spend hours adjusting colour balance, removing blemishes making eye sparkle, converting to black & white, using textures, frames and adding fantasy effect. And sometimes the best editing is none at all.

This little one had such a perfect pose that the best way to flatter her is to leave portrait exactly as it is. No editing required.