Portraits

Portraits don’t always have to be formal and posed. I’d call this a portrait shot of my daughter showing off her face-pulling skills. There is one technical thing to note here, which will help all your portraits a lot – notice how everything in the background is really blurry. There isn’t much background in this shot (and that’s another good thing in a portrait) but if you look at the curtain in the left, the check pattern is almost hidden. The fact that the only thing in sharp focus is the subject of the portrait really makes it stand out. This picture also works because the subject is really in contrast with the background, but also has a couple of highlights that are brought out (her eyes go really well with our kitchen wall!). Your camera will have a “Portrait” mode which will automatically try and open the aperture really wide, to get that nice “crisp subject, blurry background” look – and try zooming your lens to something like 50mm.


Then there are more “classic” portraits like this one. While this wasn’t staged, I had a fairly good idea of what I wanted on the day – a really nice picture of my daughter with her Sido (grandfather). Something that *really* helps with all photography is good lighting, and if you can’t afford vast sums for both a professional light rig and a team of monkeys to lug it around for you, then natural light is your best friend. Direct sunlight coming from the side will often give your subject a lovely dark / light contrast, as in this picture.


If you look at a lot of “professional” pictures of babies, you’ll notice they are very often wrapped in a plain, white blanket (preferably natural fibres with a good texture). This makes the whole picture really cosy. You can also try taking a picture of them “along their length” making sure you focus on their face or other interesting feature (toes are a favourite).


Composition & The Rule of Thirds

I’ve added in some rough lines dividing this image into thirds, to show you something about composition called the “rule of thirds”. If you imagine the frame of any imagedivided into thirds, you get four points around the centre that make excellent points of interest. This particular one isn’t perfectly on those points, but is near enough that the whole thing feels “balanced”.

One of the great things about modern high resolution cameras, is that you can crop an image quite a lot and still have something that looks great. Don’t be afraid of shooting “more than you need” and then composing the image later in your computer (or even on the camera if it has that feature). This is something I did a lot in the darkroom years ago, and it isn’t cheating!


Forget the Rules

You can, of course, forrget all the rules (although it does help if you know them before you break them). Personally I love this picture even though it was an accident, the composition is weird and the colours are all wrong, and no-one else seems to like it much. For me, there’s something about her perfect little hand and the fact that you can just make out she’s having a nap in her favourite chair.

We’re not exactly sure where we’ll be living, I’ve got a couple of interviews lined up, but we’ll probably be staying with my parents in Somerset until we have something sorted out.

We’ll be moving fairly quickly – before the end of the month – since Laura is pregnant she won’t be able to fly safely for much longer.  Personally I think anything past 30 weeks is getting a bit close and we’ll be around 28.

Our landladies have been absolutely great after an initial freak-out that we were breaking our contract.  They’ve found another tenant for the flat who wants to move in quite soon, which has meant we’ve actualy ended up with a bit of a refund, *and* they even bought our cot and pram (which, I’m pretty certain, they have absolutely no use for).  They’ve been great, and although I doubt they read this blog, I’d like to say a big thank you anyway.

All in all, we’ve had nice little adventure in coming here – Singapore is a great place to live if you like hot weather, incredibly clean and green surroundings, and a fantastic melting pot of peoples and cultures. See you all in the UK sometime soon!

Click here to view the embedded video.

We had some wonderful news yesterday, following a trip to the Obstetricians and a scan that we were hugely looking forward to. It appears that we are having a little baby girl!!! The doctor was about 80% certain: baby wouldn’t fully uncross her legs (she’s a lady of course!) but nevertheless doc seemed pretty confident. In any case this will be verified at our detailed 20 week scan (when all the organs and body parts are checked) on the 28th of November. Now we can properly decide on a name and buy a few lovely things for our little one! Girls names are far easier too.

Pete brilliantly took a video of the scan yesterday, so that we could have a record. You may be able to hear our doctor’s voice in the background, as well as mine. Her name is Dr. Evelina Wong, and in addition to being highly professional, she’s a really lovely, softly-spoken lady, with a very kind disposition. I’m so glad we came across her.. Nice for baby when she first emerges into the world to see a friendly, smiling face..

So here is the video of our little one at 4 months (thanks Pete!). Hope you enjoy it as much as we did! – Laura x x x

I guess quite a few people who read this might already know that, but for those who don’t I thought I’d share the news :) We’re really excited about our family growing, and its a daily joy counting the days and gradually watching Laura’s tummy grow! 

Laura’s about 14 weeks pregnant now and baby is 13 weeks old (did you know that there’s some confusion about exactly how you count that? Different places use different systems) and we’re due middle of April 2009. About 6 months to go!

Given that this blog is about living in Singapore, I’ll write about what the pre-natal care has been like so far, so there’ll be more posts on the subject soon.

In the meanwhile, here are some pics (taken last week) of our baby. We still don’t know the sex, that we’ll find out when we have our detailed scan at 20 weeks. Exciting!