A bit of Pinterest inspiration

Found on Pinterest

I came across this little gem tonight – Pinterest. It is a place where you can ‘pin’ things that you love.  A way to store your collections of favourite little images that may inspire, teach, communicate, or whatever it is you fancy all in one tidy space.  Some people have Pin Boards for:

• party planning
• bucket list
• quotations
• cooking inspiration
• travel
• home design
• projects
• fashion
• colour collections
• photography
• clever ideas
• ……

All Pinterest accounts are public and you can wander through peoples boards and discover loads of cool things.  If you like something you can comment, pin it to one of your own boards, like it, or click on it and be taken to its original source.  It is a great way to see into a persons personality and interests. I have been playing around with my own pinterest collection…and I must say, it is rather addictive collecting beautiful things.

Here are some beaut quotes I found on a few pin boards –

I love the following poster because it is so very, very true!

Panini My Cat

Brisbane Day 2: It’s All About Me…Because I’m Worth It!

Woke up to the sound of sirens and remembered we are in the city.  It is such a weird feeling being somewhere so busy when you are used to your much quieter country town on the Sunshine Coast.  It is quite exciting and I always love experiencing different things.  Change is as good as a holiday…really. We are so high up in our apartment – floor 32 and we have amazing views.  On one side we can see Kangaroo Point and the Botanical Gardens, and on the other side we can see the Queen Street Mall and all the shops.  Both views make my heart sing.

A sunset photo taken by Kirk from our apartment balcony.

Today we hit the shops and I got some great bits and pieces for my 30th birthday party coming up in a little over a week.  I will blog about it for sure, so keep your eyes peeled. I also bought the book, ‘The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo‘ which one of my friends recommended and it is a really good read.  I was amazed to discover that the author died pretty young and they (whoever ‘they’ are) found this book and two others books he had finished, so they published them and they became best sellers all over the world!

Later that night we took to the streets…again…to get some night shots.  Now, the photos are mostly of me cause I’m worth it. Nah..Kirk is behind the lens teaching me the ropes and I’m still getting the hang of the night settings without making everything go all blurry.

We are angels! Lining up our heads with the golden bag holders in the Louis Vuitton shop front.

Still trying to get my head around the settings for night photography, so my husband took over from here.

Work it!

My turn: Kirk and a purple car.

Pretty building that I should know the name of but I don't.

Talking away while Kirk is testing the flash. Hmmm.

No words. Just that the elevator security camera guys would have been having a good laugh.

Brisbane Day 1: Lovers Lighting Lesson

For my 30th birthday my husband took me away for a few nights into the heart of beautiful Brisbane (for those subscribers who are overseas, this is in Queensland, Down Under).  He also gave me my very own DSLR and prime lens (D90 with Nikkor 24mm 2.8 for the techies) as a gift and Brissy was the perfect playground to learn all about my new toy. We spent the first night of our holiday playing silly-buggers and took way too many photos of ourselves as we played with the lighting from shop signs and fancy spot lights in the Queen Street Mall.  We got plenty of stares, but we were having a cracker of a time and it felt like we were ‘young’ again (haha!).

I learnt a fair bit about ISO, aperture and shutter speed-thinga-ma-gig, so now I can take a few pics that look pretty okay (but it takes me a few shots to get it right!).

Here are SOME of the photos we took in Queen Street Mall, just up the road from where we stayed.

Trying to be unsuccessfully secretive while a tour group are being told ghost stories on the bridge above us.

The Queen Street Mall

My dream 'Biggest Loser' outfit 😉 All the contestants seem to have one in a special glass box.

A pretty rainbow for my next lighting experiment!

While hubby is testing the camera versus the purple lights above us, I do a spot of Facebooking.

A purple light shot...and it is getting late.

We found a red light that we could use, but we were a bit over smiling now so the sillies decided to come out instead. Kirk can't seem to find any original faces poses. Ever since he has had his beard like this he is too cool to smile in photos. The beard has a purpose...to be revealed in another post, at another time.

Back at the apartment after our adventures, it is movie and Turkish pizza time with a beer and a glass of wine.

Our Own Mini Planet

From my previous post on stereographic panorama mini planet photography, my husband decided to play around a bit with a photo he had already taken of our home a few years ago.

A mini planet of our very own 🙂

Mini World Globes: Photography

I did not take these pictures – but watch this space!  Click on the images to be taken to its original source.

Since planet Pluto got the boot from our Solar System list, people have been busy creating their own little planets. This style of photography has been called many things (Wee Planet Making, Panorama Planets, etc) but whatever you call it the main focus of this photographic awesomeness is Stereographic Projection which is a process that is used to make up a sphere from a 360 x 180 panorama photograph.  It is very tricky to master, but once you have it the results are incredible.

You Have Been Tilt-Shifted.

Tilt-Shift Photography – what do you think?  I think it is adorable!  It reminds me of an excursion I went on in primary school where we visited a town made out of miniature models.  I used the entire disposable camera film that my parents gave me for the trip on these mini-marvells.

Tilt-shift also reminds me of what God must see from above 🙂  We are so small and busy and all over the place….like little ants.  So many people wandering all over the landscape, how cool to spot yourself in one of these pics.

I remember talking to my class about one of the reasons God came as Jesus to be with us.  It went something like this – “Imagine you are God and all the people in the world are ants.  You are above them, looking down at what the little ants are up to.  You can see they are so focussed on what they are doing, and busying themselves with providing themselves with what they need.  As God, you can also see what lies ahead of them – dangers and obstacles.  You can see that some of the ants are making wrong choices and heading in the direction of danger or hard times.  You care so much about these ants (cause you made them) and you don’t want one single ant to get hurt, so you begin calling down to them!  They can’t hear you, as they are too busy doing their own thing,and they never look upwards at you.  Even if they could hear your voice, they wouldn’t be able to understand you.  So the ONLY way you can save them and tell them how the choices they are making in their ant-life are causing or going to cause them harm, you decide to become a tiny, little ant – just like them.  You go down as an ant, they see you (cause you look like them), they can hear you (cause you are speaking ‘ant’).  You begin to teach them the right way and hope that when you go, they will remember you.”

Somehow, when I look at tilt-shift photographs, it reminds me of this story.

The Floodshine Coast

Welcome to the Rainshine Coast…oh, I mean the Floodshine Coast.

The beauty about living in Queensland is that during summer it is hot one day and humid the next (as my Irish-born dad would happily say).

The weird thing is that since the beginning of December 2010 it has been raining continually with an odd sunny day scattered here and there to remind us what we are missing out on – our usual sunshiny way.

Honestly, I love rain.  I enjoy the cool, cosy, indoor, lazy, movie feel that rain gives off.  I prefer the dark sky instead of the bright one.  I go for the doona and all-day pyjama show rather than hitting the beach and sweating it up with the sand.  So why do I live on the Sunshine Coast I hear you ask?  I don’t know.  I just do, and I do love this beautiful part of the world.

Today was quite weird. We woke up to the sounds of morning thunder and lightning (in the morning, I had just gotten out of bed, the sun had hardly risen) and this was weird because it is not usually normal to have a thunder-storm in the a.m.  In Queensland you usually have a stinker of a hot day and spend most of the time trying to escape the humidity (ahhh…..freezing air-con and my doona ;)) to then be greeted by a lightning show as the sun sets.  Perfect. But because of today’s unusual behaviour, we are now successfully flooding.  My husband and I jumped in the car, during torrential rain as you do, and went for a bit of sight-seeing.  The Maroochy River was overflowing and water was spilling into people’s farms and homes and many roads are now closed.

We have had now had over 1 month of dodgy weather….but on the positive side, we are not in a drought and can have longer showers now that our tank is full 🙂  Thank you Lord!

‘Always be joyful. Keep on praying. No matter what happens, always be thankful, for this is God’s will for you who belong to Christ Jesus.’ – 1 Thessalonians 5:16-18

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And a bit of a glimpse for my next blog entry as I am pretty sure it will still be raining: ‘Can any of the foreign gods send us rain? Does it fall from the sky by itself? No, it comes from you, the Lord our God! Only you can do such things. So we will wait for you to help us.’ – Jeremiah 14:22

 

(Photography by my husband)

 

What do you like to do when it is raining?