I’ve joined a project called “10 on 10″ – where we post 10 images on the 10th of each month. We take photographs over the course of the day, sortof like a “day in the life of” so we can look back and appreciate the little things that make up our life experience, it’s easy to miss the small details that make life so interesting each day :)

Here’s mine; Beautiful skies in the morning, teacup shopping and appreciating a friend’s necklace. Korean Bibimbap for lunch, perusing Smoult’s continental Deli, finding a cute little suitcase. Visiting a shop where doggies are tied outside awaiting their owner’s return. Treating shopping exhaustion with tea and baby daffodils. Grape snacks at home and cracking open some study materials for the evening.

That’s it for now, hope you liked them. Be sure to check out Isabel Furie’s 10 on 10 for May, it is sure to be amazing :) It is both our first times doing this project!

- Sab :)

I’ve agonised over this decision for a very long time; I finally bought the Canon 50mm f/1.4 USM lens. I just couldn’t wait until I had the money for the 50mm f/1.2 L series, which is approximately three times the cost of this lens. What bothered me most about the 50mm I owned first – the Canon 50mm f/1.8 mk II – was the inability to find focus in low light and backlit conditions but other that I’ve really enjoyed it, it was my very first lens and I’ve used it so much over the years.

I hope the f/1.4 is the small upgrade I was expecting! I know I’ll get lots of use out of it and I’ve loaned my f/1.8 lens to a close friend, so that’s not going to waste either :)

So here are some first shots with the lens (post processed in photoshop):

As I expected, the bokeh is looking a lot more creamy and from my subjective memory it looks slightly sharper than the 50mm f/1.8 mk II at comparable apertures, although quite a few pictures turned out soft. Whether this is due to handshake I am not sure, will experiment more.

Here’s the straight out of camera shot without the photoshop wizardry (a little underexposed for my taste):

These Kookaburras love to visit! They’re very cute and fluffy <3

- Sab :)

Sometimes I wonder if I’m updating too much at the expense of my university course work, but I did well in an assessment today so I gave myself the night off to edit a handful of images :) Thought I would give black and white conversions another whirl, I don’t usually do many of these!

These are from my first baby session and it was a great learning experience. Ellie was adorable and in a good mood the whole time as she’d just woken from a nap!

There were a few challenges: I’ve never worked with models I couldn’t direct before so I had to adjust my shooting style and be more patient. I have a hugely increased amount of respect for baby photographers!!

I originally wanted to shoot this outdoors, but on the day it was raining and miserable so I decided it would be a good opportunity to work with indoor light, which was quite dim and challenging to work with, less light means higher ISO, higher ISO means more noise.

Babies also move quite fast so I had to keep the shutter speed fast – does anyone recommend a minimum shutter speed for shooting babies?

Here’s that first photo in colour for those of you who are so inclined:

Thanks to Tiff for helping me organise this and Caris and Gav for allowing me to photograph Ellie!
I’m still working on the photos from this session, there are more coming :)

- Sab :)

My mind was a little blown when I found out there was a place that served food in Waldecks. I had been told that the chicken burger had a ridiculous amount of bacon in it, so T and I went to grab lunch at Lakeview Cafe inside Waldecks off Wanneroo Road, Kingsley. After surveying the many tasty options, I decided to order the chicken burger, which came with 2 tenderloins, lashings of bacon, fresh lettuce, cucumber, caramelised onion, beetroot and tomato. These are possibly the best burgers I’ve ever had, although I may have been biased as I was ravenous by the time we got there.

For those of you who are food hipsters, there’s not too much in the way of novel or gourmet food at this place, however it was good, decent food and portion sizes were more than adequate!

T ordered the beef burger which was good too, but I suspect he was jealous of my chicken burger. There’s something about those juicy, warm tenderloins that made the chicken burger super-delicious.

Here’s the view from the cafe, not quite a lake view, but pretty and serene nonetheless with lots of plant life!

I’ve got to try breakfast at this place. Did I mention they also had giant bowls of wedges?

When Chisa made her post about going down south, it reminded me that I still haven’t posted the photos I shot when I was down there in January! I went down there to get away and relax before I started a new semester of uni, seems like a distant memory now but at least my next holiday isn’t too far away!

I visited The Berry Farm in Margaret River twice whilst down in Margaret River in January and really enjoyed it. The food was fresh and serving sizes were extremely generous. I was struggling to finish my Toasted Ham and Cheese Turkish bread (which came with salad!).

Here are some shots of the tasty, large scones:

There’s beautiful scenery, both flora and fauna with a few different types of birds flitting about, especially New Holland Honeyeaters. Guard your food though, they birds are quite bold and will steal jam and cream from under your nose if you don’t watch them :)

What are your favourite places to visit down south? I’ll be going down there again at some point this year, I’m sure!

For the last 8 weeks, I have been busy as a bee, shooting and editing photos for critique as part of the Finding the Light workshop. It has been an amazing experience and along the way, I have learned to work confidently with natural light at any time of day and been re-inspired to shoot portraits. I have gone back to basics, experimented with my camera settings and learned how to shoot with appropriate exposure so my photos look right straight out of the camera. I’ve also come to appreciate the precision that spot metering on my new camera allows, as well as rediscovering the joy of my Canon 85mm f/1.8 lens – it’s no L series, but it’s not bad :)

I’ve also learned about perserverance and dedication. There were certainly times when I had uni tests or assignments due, stress levels were skyrocketing, and I couldn’t face the thought of having to find time to do the assignments but somehow, I found a way to complete every single one (except I just have one more to go…). Another thing that made life interesting was trying to find people to be in my photos every week! Thank you to my models <3

Below, I’ve put in below a selection of the assignments I’ve turned in over the course:

Thank you so much Detra for teaching me so much about working with natural light. I’ve learned so much also from the posts and comments from Detra, Gail, Jenny B and the rest of the girls on the forum. I definitely felt like the Finding The Light forum was a safe environment to give and receive constructive criticism and feedback which has ultimately improved my work.

I look forward to participating again in the next Finding the Light workshop as Alumni. It was a significant investment of time and a modest investment of money, however I got so much out of trying to read and understand the materials provided, participating on the forum, experimenting with the camera and making my own notes; it was well worth it!!

- Sabrina :)

Drove down the Bunbury last weekend and paid a visit to The Happy Wife. It was around 10:30am on a Saturday morning but there were still a couple of tables free, so we grabbed a scenic spot at the waterfront between two families with children. Payment and ordering at the counter was easy, staff were friendly and food did not take long to arrive.

A ordered their breakfast parfait – she visits this place quite often and said she loved everything on the menu that she had tried so far.

K ordered the homemade crumpets. I forgot to ask her how the meal was but I didn’t hear any complaints and it looked delicious! I almost ordered this myself.

Finally here’s what I ordered, the Eggs Florentine. One poached egg was perfect whilst the other was slightly overdone, not runny but still soft. The spinach was well wilted and the bread was spread liberally with butter and toasted so it had a salty moreishness to it.

My only disappointment was that they had nudie juices available, but no freshly squeezed juices, which is what I tend to order with my breakfasts. This is not too bad as breakfast disappointments go; given that the food is excellent, staff friendly and view is amazing so I was pretty happy with my experience there.

Here’s the view from our table:

Would highly recommend a visit to this place if you’re passing through Bunbury – they serve breakfast all day!

I asked Lee whether the slice of apple atop the cake was dried apple.

Lee said that she thought it was fresh apple that had wilted.

As most of my friends know, I’m currently obsessed with Vietnamese food. On recommendation from a Vietnamese person, I visited Phong Vinh on William St, Northbridge. My friend was running late, so I sat in the restaurant for 20 minutes waiting which the staff did not seem to mind. The service was friendly and when we finally got to order, the food and drinks came very quickly.

We started with the stuffed chicken wings (one each) which were nice and crispy on the outside. They were $8, which seemed pricey but there was a decent amount of meat and other things in there so I didn’t mind the cost once I had consumed them, they were surprisingly filling. I’m getting hungry thinking about them now.

As a main, I ordered the Raw Beef Hofan soup, which I had no complaints with flavour-wise. The only thing that bothered me was the beef in the soup which was full of tough sinewy bits, which made it very difficult to eat :( I liked the soup otherwise, there was lots of bean sprouts, mint etc so if I ate there again, I would try a different dish.

My friend ordered the dry egg noodle with crispy chicken, which she ate most of and she took the rest away to eat for lunch the next day.

We both ordered drinks that I didn’t take photos of because they arrived last and I was too hungry. I ordered the young coconut juice, which always tastes the same wherever I go – it tastes like the canned stuff you can buy from chinese supermarkets ;) My friend had a jackfruit shake and she seemed to enjoy that!

What is your favourite place for Vietnamese food and what’s your favourite dish there? :)

Here are some shots from a studio shoot I did in January with Aly and Min! They’re cosplaying Masato and Ren respectively from the new UtaPri-Debut game.

This isn’t even half of the photos – I will be posting more of them in larger size later on, I’ll see if Aly or Min want to upload some of them first. Min already has one of my photos up on her deviant art here that she edited for Valentine’s Day, so check that out if you’re curious.

I haven’t been posting much recently (or finished editing my other shoots) because my current term has a crazy amount of readings to get through and ongoing formative assessments so I’m trying to stay as up-to-date with that as possible. In addition, I have to make time for a photography lighting workshop I am doing by correspondence, with weekly assignments for critique for the next 2 months. It will be good to hear some outside feedback to improve my work and inject some new ideas into my lighting style!