Fireworks&Fireflies.

Every year, in the summer, there's fireworks being done over the sea.
Crowds of people flock to the coast to admire them from different beaches as the pretty display can be seen from pretty much everywhere. It's always good.

This year, I thought I'd bring my camera along and try and shoot some.
What a massive mess that was!
I had no tripod, which I think it should have been a must.
With no technical knowledge about ISO and such I just played around with different shutter speeds.
When it became obvious that I was gloriously messing the whole thing up I decided to have fun and make the whole picture fuzzy to create little abstract shapes.

Anyway, here's my "Fireworks Experiments"...

And these are the abstract ones.

The one made up of fireflies:

The one that looks like a lighted match:

And the one that looks like a smiley face:

A Quick Bite.

As we arrived home I said to my dad: "I think I'd like to eat some grilled vegetables...".
He disappeared into his vegetable patch, and came back 10 minutes later with these box!

He then proceeded to slice and grill some aubergines and courgettes and season them with olive oil and fresh Mint.

He then simply sliced some juicy, sweet tomatoes and seasoned them with some simple local olive oil, some origano brought to us straight from Sicily and some Pink Salt from the Himalaya Mountains which is apparently really healthy.

What a treat!

Up the Apples and Pears.

The other day while everyone was preparing the center pieces for our friend's wedding, I crept around taking photos.
The stairs and the landing of this ancient house proved too tempting with all these old wooden doors, old brass handles, old keyholes and peeling paint.
I loved it.

A Study in Black&White.

So, these are my Black&White experiments.
This Stadium, I thought, presented me with the opportunity to shoot all these lines, patterns, textures and odd shapes.
They all looked very precise and geometrical.
And then I loved shooting the more morose side of the Stadium.
The big gates, barbed wire, old megaphones and strangely pointed fences, reminded me of the sinister parades the Nazis and Fascists used to set up in the streets and in stadiums like this one.
Being quite morose and thinking of the interesting Black&White effects I could have created later, I went for it.
I still don't know how to create a good shade of B&W, or at least "my" shade of B&W. I have seen such beautifully inspiring examples of wonderful B&W creations on the Internet made by some truly talented photographers out there, that I felt completely, either dwarfed or inspired by them.
It depended on my level of concentration and self esteem!
Anyway, here's my experiments.

Haberdashery and such.

My mum's an excellent seamstress.
She's been taking me to choose her fabrics and haberdashery ever since I was little. Despite that, I cannot sew anything, even if my life depended on it!
But I still love to go along to these places and watch all the ladies there, all so careful, frowning away trying to select the best piece of material at the best price, and then later seeing them as they try to pick the best buttons to go with it.
I would have liked to take some portraits but the lens I have meant that I would have had to be quite cospicuous when taking photos and as the management kindly allowed me to shoot away I didn't really want to irritate anyone!
Next time I'll go armed with a nice zoom lens!
I loved taking photos of all the different cottons, all so colorful, displayed so nicely like rainbows. I used to love seeing them when I was little and I still do!

I gave myself this little assignment today.
Going up to the management to aks permission to take some photos, explaining that I'm teaching myself and needed a little task, was something I had never done before. Being quite shy and insicure it was an actual challange for me but I was glad I did it.
I can already see a million problems with my photos and wish I had done better but it is all excercise for me.
There's no learning without getting things wrong I say!