2007 October | Scraps Of Mind

Archive for October, 2007

Posted by karooch on

October 6, 2007

Words to Live by

Welcome to Scraps of Mind. I'm delighted to see you. Why not check out the site, you'll find a bunch of great scrapbooking and blogging articles, tips and tutorials on the Articles Page. And if you enjoy this or any other articles on Scraps of Mind, I'd really appreciate you giving them a thumbs up on StumbleUpon to share them with other Scrapbookers. Thanks for visiting and I look forward to seeing more of you.

There is a theory which states that if ever anybody discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable.

There is another theory which states that this has already happened.

Douglas Adams

Posted by karooch on

October 5, 2007

Five Freebies on Friday

Here we go with Freebie Friday again. Enjoy.

Remember to leave some love when you download your freebie. It costs you nothing and means a lot to the designer.

Nore’s Niceties is peppered with great freebies, I recommend you go and have a rummage there.
Check out Karie’s freebies at Punky Pixels. They’re listed in her right sidebar.
You’ll love the templates over at Simply Sarah
NBK has an absolute feast of freebies for you.
And finally some interesting doodles and paint splats from Random Pearls from a Self Confessed Dreamer. You’ll find them in her right sidebar.

Great Photography Is About 30% Camera

Guest post by Kayla Lamoreaux

I am excited to be a guest author today here on Scraps of Mind. With Karen on vacation it seems I can talk about whatever I want, right? Well I suppose since you all are used to excellent content I better be on my best behavior. I thought I would share with you a few ideas to think about the next time you pull your camera out to shoot a photo.

First things first - a great camera doesn’t guarantee a great photo. I feel so sad when I visit online photography forums and people write messages something akin to this – “I just can’t wait to get my digital SLR – then my photos will be great.” As if the secret to a great photo is hidden inside the nearest SLR. Believe me, it isn’t and I have plenty of bad photos to prove it! There are definitely some advantages to an SLR – but aside from a larger lens aperture and camera release the differences between an SLR and your point and shoot can be minimal if you learn to compose your photos artistically.

One of the most important things to look at when shooting a photo is composition. The more you practice at it, no matter what camera you use, the better and more instinctive you will become – eventually it will become second nature. There are a few things to remember – and sometimes they are best evaluated by looking at photos so I will share a few of my good and not so good shots to illustrate my point…

When shooting landscape scenes – many a photo is shot with the horizon level dead center – case in point….

Photo by Kayla Lamoreaux

In this photo I was trying to capture the lens flare and trail of our boat in the water. The problem? My horizon ended up dead center in the photo. When the horizon is dead center, the eye looks at the photo and doesn’t really know where to go – you lose the focal point!

The fix? If you want the focus on the sky (sunset shots, clouds, etc.) Move the horizon down. If you want the focus on the ground – move the horizon up. You can see in this shot I have redeemed myself somewhat (still wish it was a clearer day…) I wanted to focus on the lens flare and clouds so I moved the horizon down to draw the eye upward in the photo.

Photo by Kayla Lamoreaux

The Rule of Thirds is one of the most basic rules in photography. It is always worth a review – basically it says that we should divide our photos into thirds vertically and horizontally (think tic-tac-toe). The intersection of the two horizontal dividing lines and the two vertical lines create four points – each of which is a good location for a center of interest in a photo. For you visual people like me – here is an illustration –

Photo by Kayla Lamoreaux

You can see that the baby’s face (where I want the eye to go to the focal point) is dead-on for the rule of thirds. But what about the photos that aren’t? There is an alternative way to place your center of interest and that is by dividing the photo into four equal quadrants and then finding the center of each. Here is an example with the same photo – you can see they are similar but a little different…

Photo by Kayla Lamoreaux

Both of these composition rules give you a focal point that is dead off-center. So if the rule of thirds or quadrants seem too technical, just remember not to center your photo – and don’t be afraid of quiet space in a photo! Also, some of your cameras may have a grid option for the viewfinders so as you are composing the photo, you can put your focal point right where it needs to be….

The last thing I want to touch on today is the importance of color value contrast in a photo. This is why many a good photographer captures their best photos early in the morning or later in the afternoon in the hours just before sunset. The sun casts a golden light over everything that is really beautiful. Another great time to shoot is after a rainstorm in the early or evening hours – the water in the air picks up more blues and greens, making landscapes seem more vivid.

I learned this lesson the hard way a few weeks ago while on an airboat trip – I was surrounded by thousands of American Avocet birds – and because the water was gray, the mountains in the distance were brown and the sky was hazy – my photos are really dull. (Getting on an airboat in the wildlife management area was a treat – and I didn’t get to pick my time of day – so I really shouldn’t complain – but knowing the photo that could have been…)

Photo by Kayla Lamoreaux

Here is the same type of bird – in the early morning hours – from left to right you have a marbled avocet, American avocets, and an American pelican. The vividness of the colors in this photo really gives it more impact. This is why the school photographers tell us to have our children wear vivid colors on school picture day – it really does help to make the photo look better!

Photo by Kayla Lamoreaux

I hope these tips have been helpful. I want to thank Karen for letting me guest write. If you would like more photography tips and tutorials, check out my blog at The Legacy Lady

Scraps of Mind would like to sincerely thank Kayla for this Guest Post. Kayla writes The Legacy Lady blog where she shares her great photography tips and her passion for leaving a scrapbooking legacy.

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Posted by karooch on

October 3, 2007

One Minute Painting

Have you ever wanted to be an artist of the painting kind?
My friend Doreen found this video on YouTube. This guy is amazing. He makes it look like nothing but I know if I tried it, it would look nothing like this.
Maybe there’s some techniques here we could pinch to create our scrapbook backgrounds. Especially ones created on a canvas,

Next stop: Florence

Florence is such a beautiful city I just couldn’t wait to get back. I was here for a single day two years ago and that just whetted my appetite for more. Magnificent Renaissance sculptures adorn the city, taking art out of the galleries and into everyday life.

Neither Yvonne nor myself are big fans of large hotel chains and we always try to stay somewhere a little ‘different’ if we can. So the opportunity to stay in a Florentine Convent (Francescane Missionarie di Maria) was too good an opportunity to pass up. It’s a beautiful tranquil haven just a short walk from the Piazza del Duomo in the centre of Florence. The only downside is the slightly Cinderella-esque curfew of 11.30pm. But we can deal with that OK, if only for the pleasure of staying in this 15th Century Florentine Palace.

As soon as we arrived in Florence our first port of call was Vivoli’s Gelateria- this place serves Frank Sinatra’s favourite ice cream, which he had shipped to him wherever he was staying. In a country which makes the best ice cream, Vivoli’s is something special. As you can see, when arriving in a city steeped in history and surrounded with amazing architecture and art, we maintain a focus on the key priorities of life.

This time I actually got to go into the Ufizzi and the Accademia which I didn’t have time to do on my last visit. I love the art of the Renaissance and the feast of it that is available in these galleries is total sensory overload. And I have to say that the David di Michelangiolo in the Accademia has a radiance about it that the brilliant reproduction standing in the Piazza della Signoria does not seem to capture. There is something special about the ‘real thing’ that creates an atmosphere (even when surrounded by dozens of tourists). Although the abnormal size of his hands really freaks me out.

And of course, maintaining a sense of perspective, there’s the shopping. We hit the San Lorenzo Markets big time and enjoyed a shopping frenzy; returning to the Convent exhausted but satisfactorily laden with shopping bags, our minds racing as we worked out how we could fit all our stash in our luggage. In my experience, there is always a way.

Florence is a centre for beautiful paper but sadly (or should that be ‘fortunately’?) I’ve seen no evidence of Scrapbooking here. Ah well.

It’s been great to spend some quality time in Florence. Such a marvellous city and so steeped in beauty at every turn. Of course there’s the Art; absolutely everywhere you look. But let’s not forget the delicious Tuscan food. So delicious. And somehow I’ve found my clothes seem to be getting smaller. I think it must be the Italian air.

My ScrapBlogging Journey - Part 2

Part 1 / Part 2 / Part 3 / Part 4

The Travel Bug, which led to…

When I graduated from University in 1994 I treated Seona and Mum to a trip to Europe as a Graduation present. It was fitting I think, since my graduation was definitely a team effort.

It was a fabulous trip, introducing us to Amsterdam, Paris, Venice, a return to Malta as well as an exploration of Southern England and Ireland. And guess what? I took photos!

However I hadn’t discovered scrapbooking yet so I just popped them into an album with photo pockets and kept it on the bookshelf. And even that was a major achievement for me.

But that trip really whetted my appetite for travel, especially European travel. I had traveled in South East Asia when I was married and had taken Seona to California and Florida (yes, we’re Disney groupies…including EuroDisney), which were great trips. But for me, Europe was where it was at. And I went back there every chance I could get. Hmm shame I’ve chosen to live on the opposite side of the planet.

A quick trip back to Ireland in 1997 was followed by an eight week Celtic Adventure in 2000 with Seona and our good friends Thatch and Jools, exploring the wilds of England, Scotland, the Orkneys, Ireland and a little bit of Wales.

Then in 2003 I went on a driving tour around regional France with a girlfriend who lived in London. It was a great trip and I really enjoyed seeing the ‘real’ France. When I came home I had a travel diary which I had written on my Palm PDA and printed out. I bought my first digital camera for the trip, so I had a CD of all the photos I had taken and I had a plastic bag containing all the ticket stubs, pamphlets etc I had gathered along the way.

…my Introduction to Scrapbooking

It really bugged me that I couldn’t see all three components of my holiday memories together and really get into the feeling of the trip again. A couple of years previously I had been to a Creative Memories class but I hadn’t found it at all that inspiring so I certainly did not consider scrapbooking as the way to revive my holiday mojo. But whilst at a friend’s house one day, I glanced at a scrapbook magazine that she had bought (mainly for the free DVD it came with). And I was amazed at how excited I felt looking at the layouts displayed.

This would really be a great way to pull together all my holiday memories into one place that I could browse through and relive those great times. But could I do it? I was convinced that I was not remotely creative so how could I produce layouts that would inspire me like the ones I was seeing in the magazine?

Scrapbooking, digital scrapbooking, hybrid scrapbooking Well nothing venture, nothing gain. I bought some cardstock, a glue stick, and a paper cutter and started printing out my photos and putting together my first scrapbook album. I used my travel diary as the framework and copied chunks of it to provide the journaling for the photos. My embellishments were very simple and largely consisted of different arrangements of matts and cardstock strips behind the photos and a row of gold fleur de lys that I stamped on each page.

But I was so pleased with how the final album turned out! I couldn’t believe I had managed to produce something like that by myself. When I look at that album now (and I still do browse through it regularly) I still feel good about it, even though I have come a long way in my scrapbooking style since then.

I started a Life Chronicles album of Seona’s life. So much more interesting than just a bunch of photos in a photo album. That’s when I realised how photo poor I was. That’s when it hit me that all those years had slipped by and there was no record of the fun and the joy and the great times there had been. Both my parents have passed on and I mourn the lack of photos I have of them to evoke all those wonderful family memories. Memories slip away so very easily without those triggers to spark them and keep them alive.

Needless to say I photograph everything that stands still these days and several things that don’t. I try to scrap as much of life as I can because I know that when Seona looks back at life after I am gone she will hunger for the triggers for all those memories.

Part 3 of the story to be continued.

Part 1 / Part 2 / Part 3 / Part 4

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