Family

I have been swamped this week with college, illness and the mum. The Mum is doing much much better and should hopefully be out of hospital on Monday. It was her birthday on the 17th and yet again she was stuck in bloody hospital. I recently scanned a photo of the folks wedding day to share with some of my family. The mum is the little woman holding the bouquet, not the laughing hyena that is my auntie (mad). My dad is the tall bloke holding her hand.

How could they have been so happy? I wasn't born yet.

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Now playing: Cat Power - Metal Heart
via FoxyTunes

Just a bit of colour

For the colourful theme in this weeks PhotoHunt.

Light and Dark

This week in PhotoHunt the theme is Dark.
My take on it was too darken some photographs using contrasts and other stuff that I am not sure of. The above selection are my favourite ones, with my favourites muses.

Mark from Neon Bubble saw one of the photographs on my flickr page and decided to have a whirl at adding all sorts of textures and stuff. As you can see it looks cool, a lot darker than the original, but with a vintage vibe.

  Mark's other stuff on flickr can seen here.

Twas a murky day

If you read my Llama and Blow up friends posts, you would of seen that a great time was had by all on the hen weekend! The only thing that put a dampener on it was the weather, but it did create the atmosphere for interesting shots like this one for PhotoHunt.
In a short space of time, just over a year I have took thousands of photographs and hopefully you will of seen an improvement. This photography lark has definitely infected me and that's why it makes up such a large 'piece of me' on my blog at the moment. I have had some great help and advice off some great bloggers, most of them are found on my side bar. Anything from resizing pictures, compliments, tools to use and some contrsuctive criticism, it all really helps!
Counselling studies are very intense at the moment and it has filled up my mind, so my poor brain needs to let off steam in a creative way, that's were the photography and doodling comes in.

If you have time, check the post below for info on Doodle Week!

Thirteen Favourite Shots

This week in PhotoHunt the theme is thirteen, so I went with the easy option of picking thirteen of my favourite photographs this year.

Taking photographs and blogging about them has been a huge source of fun for me. Yesterday I passed the 50'000 visitor mark and I would like to thank all the people that visit my blog and especially those that come back!

Willy gets high in Wales

Willy joined me on the latest hike mentioned here Hiking in Devil's Kitchen, he was kept in my pocket for most of the hike, as it was a bit cold.

After while Willy got a bit claustrophobic and needed to released, so I let him out to play for a bit. He even attempted a naked snow angel, but then demanded to be put back in my pocket to get warm.

The weather wasn't great, as we were quite high up, so down the mountains we had to go, read more about it by clicking here Hiking in Devil's Kitchen.

I spy...................

Well I spy with my little eye.....Willy! Can you?

Note that the mess was created in the recent great spring clean that I did, which caused me to lose more things than find! They are in a 'safe' place, just can't remember where that bloody safe place is. It was a good thing I checked the upcoming themes for PhotoHunt and threw willy into the mix.


My head is all over the place with studying at the moment so I just cant concentrate on writing anything remotely sensible on here. As we now have two weeks off from college, I will hopefully catch up with my work and then be able to post some of the stuff I have been learning.

I should be off into Liverpool getting rather squiffy on Guinness for a large part of the weekend and Monday too, as thats when it is actually St Patricks Day. I am not religious or Irish, but my grandad was Irish and called Patrick, so I like to raise a glass or ten in his honour.

Different

“I may have said the same thing before...but my explanation, I am sure, will always be different.”

Oscar Wilde.

This week the theme in PhotoHunt is different.

I am trying to do different things with my photographs, I have only had a digital camera for less than a year and still mainly use 'Auto' settings. I have lucked out on having mega cute nephews and cool places to hike.
I start to think I take a nice photograph but then I see the photographs that Thomas takes and I am green with envy. So with that in mind I have started to frame my photo's better and i am now trying to figure out contrasts and things like that. It is not bloody easy and its also rather addictive!

Update:
I suppose it would help if i said what I actually did to the photo of my nephew Connor and what it looked like before! so click the read more bit to see unmessed with image.


To be honest I cant really explain what I did to it, I just imported it to adobe lightroom, turned it to grayscale, messed with the brightness, contrasts and some other slidey things, then Voila! Thats how technical I am :)

Party!

I was good and very studious yesterday, as I was at the library all day with one of my college buddies. So between that and blowing up major crap in my room (tidying), a drink or two was needed last night.
It wasn't a party but it was much fun down the pub, but to fit this into this weeks PhotoHunt, I have posted one of last years Halloween photos. It represents how I looked when I came home in the early hours of this morning.
Now I have to get back to tidying and college stuff, after another few pints of water and some food.
I sneaked this one of me in after I published it, this is me last night when I got in and I messed about with it using lightroom, to make it less scary :)

Wooden

When I go hiking, I am always in seemingly treeless places. There are in fact quite a few trees but when your going up a mountain the trees tend to disappear.
So when it was decided that this week in PhotoHunt the theme would be Wooden, I thought what better than to post my favourite tree photos.

*Remember to click on my face to see more hiking adventures*

Free Willy!

Quite a few of you witty/mad/perverted and crazy folks have jumped on the I Love Willy bandwagon and proclaimed him to be a free willy when he is out on hikes with me. I can't tell you what my hiking buddies think of me bringing willy, because it involves a lot of swearing and exclamations of WTF!!! They don't understand the world of blog and that everything in life is bloggable. I know what your thinking, WTF! am I doing hanging around with these people for? Its a good thing they can drive and make me nice sandwiches.
Today I am off hiking again for part two of the great getting it right this time challenge. This is where we attempt to not get lost when on previous attempts we have, today's second attempt is in Wales, this one.The previous attempt, so while I am off conquering the hills you can gaze at this photo from last week.

So while I am foot loose and fancy free in the hills , check out the others from this weeks PhotoHunt.

A few blisters popped later....

As you can see from the photos, yesterdays hike was indeed worth it! Even the pus filled blister i have just popped, hasn't diminished how beautiful it was yesterday.
I shall start from the beginning of this adventure so you can appreciate the full wonder of it, as i forget that people actually want to know where i have been and not just stare at my awesometriffic photos ( i am rather chuffed with them).
I awoke about 2 minutes before I was getting picked up and had to drag my still asleep/dead body around the house, legs half in pants, half out, whilst brushing my teeth and making coffee. My chums arrive on time, the buggers, so i open the door and use various hand gestures to communicate that i was running late.
Once i finally got my shit together, i dumped my stuff in the car boot and onto Sedbergh we went. Sedbergh is located in North Yorkshire (England) and its not the first time i have been to this particular spot. Every time we, as in Aly, Chris or me, pick a walk its normally a random thing guided by where has the best weather. This walk was a return to conquer a past failure, Sedbergh had defeated us on a previous adventure, due to bloody fog! (Previous attempt). With this in my mind, i wasn't looking forward to this walk at first.
This is the roughly the path we followed The route, sometimes we go slightly off track. It was a ten mile/16.3 km slog , graded moderate (my arse). The ascent was to the dazzling height of 2300 feet / 697 metres.
As yesterday was my first hike of 2008, you could say i was a wee bit out of shape, okay a bloody lot! Aly and Chris both have kept up with fitness like stuff, i on the other hand hibernate for winter. So while the start of the hike was great, i was even happy. The towards the middle bit where we had to ascend up the side of that bloody waterfall, I could of quite happily died. Aly and Chris wanted to kill me because I apparently had a face like a toddler about to throw an almighty wobbler. I hurt so I could feel like that if i wanted, don't get me started.
To combat the pain and well basic unfitness, I took many a photo stop. Taking photo's is a great excuse to stop and get your breath back.
Humour was restored once we reached the top and everything was downhill from there literally.

Funny notes of the day: I fell over twice, both times landing on my arse in mud. The first time was early on in the hike so my pants had dried and Chris fell over whilst laughing at me (Ha!). Unfortunately the second incident happened at the end of the walk and i had to walk through the village of Sedbergh looking like I had crapped myself.

Watch the video to see a wee bit of what it looked like on the way down, it is set to some lovely music.

PS: Willy was there but he will have his own post :)

Heavy

I have been feeling a little heavy of late, just damn lazy and this bloody weather doesn't help.
So today I am finally getting off my arse and hiking the hills once more, follow this link to see where I am going: I am going here!.

Guess who I am taking with me?
As this is a PhotoHunt post, I better add a photo. This is from last years jaunt in the lakes, click on my face below to see more wondrous hikes.

Ever had your Willy Constricted?

For this weeks PhotoHunt the theme is Narrow, which is a strange coincidence as Willy has had a Narrow Escape!
A snake somehow managed to get into my bedroom, onto the computer desk and overcome willy.He bravely fought on, but it was stiff competition.
In the end he was overcome and succumbed to the constriction. I don't think he hated it though.

Old Fashioned

Click the image to read the writing

It seems very old fashioned to have to scan your photos to get them onto the computer, but I am very glad you can. Well except for those god awful photos that people keep tagging my name on over at facebook. I will have my revenge though when i dig out my incriminating bad teenage photos.

I think writing with the old pen and ink is fast becoming old fashioned, I only use a pen now when I really have to. I have found some of my own old fashion scribblings in the oracle known as my high school leavers book.

Updated: I have scanned in some dreaded teenage pictures for you to gaze at.


Look at other Old Fashioned things in PhotoHunt.

Saturday Photo Hunt - Small

This week in PhotoHunt the theme is small, hmmmmm where shall I go with this?

Hey I am all grown up now, but I use to be small. To prove this, I have rummaged out my high school leavers book.
This is a scrap book version of one, where you stick some photos in of yourself and then your classmates write wonderful things about you, or not in some cases. There are more disturbing photos in this book that I will leave for another time.

Saturday Photo Hunt - Red

This weeks PhotoHunt theme is RED. Red is not only the colour of my hair, it is also a nickname that some of my special blog buddies call me. I have never had a nickname before, unless swear/cuss words count? I never associated myself with RED before, but I quite like the nickname and I better not dye my hair another colour.
Here are few shots of my RED hair and the process I go through to get it that colour. The one with me wearing a shower cap makes me laugh, as I also have a face mask on to absorb any stray bits of dye.

Saturday Photo Hunt - Hot

This weeks theme in PhotoHunt is Hot and well I live in Britain so thats not going to help me much at all! So I searched through my photo's for hotter times this year and found this one from Italy. It was truly hot that day and maybe not a great idea to go hill walking. I was HOT and sweaty, so I hung back a bit and took some photos.

Saturday Photo Hunt - I love my nephews

This week the PhotoHunt theme is I LOVE..... Fill in the blank yourself. So I choose my lovely nephews Ewan and Connor. When I say lovely, I really mean the devil incarnate but someone has to love them. They are off to live in Hamburg a week on Wednesday, if things go to plan and I will miss them horribly, even when they are being royal pain in the arse's.

Saturday Photo Hunt - Flexible

Hello this week in PhotoHunt the theme is flexible. I seriously wracked my brain to think of something, as me and flexible don't normally go together. Then whilst I was sorting out more of my hiking photo's to put on flickr, I found these ones. Boy did i have to be a bit more flexible to get myself and two dogs up that waterfall! Not as flexible as the guys we saw rock climbing in the cove at the end of the hike.