Hello Autumn!

As much as I love sunny days, I'm so glad autumn is here. I mean, we are one season away from Christmas, and that in itself is very exciting. I love the whole Atmosphere autumn has. The dark nights, cold days, rain, woolly jumpers, and boots. I love the feeling you get after coming home from school, drenched from the rain, jump into a onsie and have a hot chocolate while curled up on the sofa.

Autumn also means Halloween, pumpkin carving, candles that smell like apple and cinnamon (I have one lit now), blankets, the change of colour in the leaves, switching out your wardrobe for sweaters, walks with cold air, beautiful sunsets and sunrises that we get to see (why does the sun rise at 4am in summer?!), and of course the fab photos that can be taken!

I can't wait to start posting autumnal inspired bakes, Coffee cake, spiced apple upside down cake, and a whole load more! I'm hosting a Macmillan coffee morning and will of course blog about that!

What are you most looking forward to this fall, as we say goodbye summer, and hello autumn!

 

Leave a comment below, or tweet me @ellaunderhill your favourite things about autumn!

Blog Photography and Tips!

Hello!
Today I thought I'd take advantage of another snow day and write a blogpost. I was originally planning to get this posted in a few weeks as I did not know when I'd have time to take any photos for it, but along came more snow so I have time today (woo! Give the snow a pat on the back;) ) Any way, I'm going to take photos of how I take photos for you! I hope you enjoy!

I'm not a professional photographer, but I enjoy photography a lot and I'm sure that my photos have improved since I started my old blog year and a bit ago.

I always think the quality of photos is important. This doesn't mean you need a camera, while you might find it useful it really isn't essential. Most phones have good cameras these days, and I often will use my iPhone for photos mainly when I'm baking.

This is my Nikon D5000, the larger lens is the lens it came with, the 18-55mm and the smaller lens is one from another camera that used to belong to my Granddad, the 35-70mm. 

This is an Olympus SP-720UZ. It's a bridge camera and the first camera I got when I started getting into photography a couple of years ago.

If you're wondering which iPhone I have, it's the 5C.

The first thing is finding somewhere to take your photos, I take mine around my room, as you can probably tell, I love fairy lights and I love having them in the background of my photos because i think it adds a bit more interest to them.

I think when you're taking photos, you should try a few different angles and backgrounds because if you don't try then you'll never know whether there's an angle that looks amazing will you?

what's annoying is when it's too sunny and the photo is either bright white sunlight or really dark in the foreground and really bright in the background! I often have to close my blinds while taking photos on a sunny day! 

As you can see, the Olympus and the Nikon pick up light and colours differently and have different depths of fields.

Having more than one product in a photo and then trying different angles and compositions is something I do very often!

changing the composition makes a bigger difference than you think to the same products!

If you have a camera that has manual focus, I suggest you use that, it allows you to have more control over where the main focus of the image is, which can always be something that annoys me with auto focus, it doesn't always focus the way you want it to!

with a 35-70mm lens you can capture an image this close at the distance above!

Make sure you take each image a few times, refocusing each time, we all know how annoying it is to take a photo and be really happy with it until you see it properly and realise it's not in focus! It happens to me all the time, especially if i take the photo on my shelf, I'm not very tall so half the time i end up on my tip-toes trying to take a photo and lets say they don't always turn out successfully...

My last tip is lighting. Try to use natural lighting and no flash, this will make the colours show more true to life and they'll be good quality! It's best to take photos at the brightest time of day, around midday! I took mine at about 2.30/3pm (I was going to take them earlier but i got a bit distracted with lunch and tv) so it was bit later and I didn't edit any of them if you were wondering! Also, if you're thinking of editing, try to keep it to a minimum because it can decrease the quality of the photo a lot!

Couldn't not show you the snow we had today, it nearly goes up to my knees!!

I hope you found this post interesting or useful, if you want to ask me any questions, leave a comment or look how to contact me in the 'Contact us' page!

I hope you've had a good week so far, nearly the weekend!
Lots of love,
Emma xxx