Ana's introduction to the forest

We all went to this lovely forest today, with an incredible walkway through the treetops. Ana had never been in a forest before and seemed to love it, if her squeals of delight were anything to go by.

The walkway was amazing, getting up to 20m above the ground. What was very interesting is just how much the whole trunks of the trees move in the wind.

Keeping her off the keyboard

We are trying to discourage Ana from following a computer science career by keeping her off the keyboard. This is proving more and more difficult, as she becomes more mobile. So here is the most recent approach of removing the keyboard from her grasp...

Little Poppet

As we had a request from Great-Grandpa Ben for more photos... Here's one Mr. Gavin Forrest took earlier today prior to her messy lunch of brocolli and apple (which she hated...)

The teeth have arrived

Ana used to do this regularly (chewing on people's fingers), but it now has to stop... the teeth have arrived. This was discovered by Mummy one day when she noticed what felt like a razorblade emerging from Ana's gum. Since then Ana nearly drew blood on one occassion when an unsuspecting parent got bitten, ouch! Instead of chewing on fingers she now has pears, butternut squash and baby rice - much more tasty!

Our submission for the Tate Modern

We'd like to call it Nappies Online pandering to both traditional values and the e-society in which we live.

Lara Farewell, 2007, (bamboo on plastic line with metal poles)

Art is art. You can't argue with that.

And this has to be more creative than a perfectly white room. (For that 'art' see earlier postings from the renovation...)

'Studio' lighting

Lara is exploring the option of setting up a designer jewellery business.

I have been roped in (enthusiastically) as the photographer, and have discovered that photographing jewellery well is extremely difficult! But, after a week or so of experimentation, I think we've got there -perfect white, shadowless backgrounds!

This is the third 'light box' I've made, and unlike the first two, it seems to work. I could have bought this setup for £180 or so, but instead, some nice people at Freecycle Olney provided the desk lamps, combined with a bit of white paint in an old cardboard box, supported by a spatula taped to a potato masher...

Some may call it 'bodging'. We prefer the term 'resourceful'.

For those of you who might be interested, the trick appears to be getting enough distance between the product (i.e. the earrings) and the background. This is so you can place the lights which light the background behind the product. I found you need the background to be something like 3-4 stops overexposed in order to wash it out completely. So, you need to have another light (less bright) lighting the product, so that this is correctly exposed.

The other very important thing is to get your white balance correct - otherwise you get a beautiful grey or salmon colour... Lots of people, it seem, use daylight bulbs, but there doesn't appear to be that need for that expense anymore if your camera can handle manually set white balances.