Tales of the unexpected with The Boy, my pride and joy.
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The Gallery is back now that Tara is fully recovered and the theme this week is 'Morning'.
We've lapsed recently in our habit of having a nice Sunday breakfast together before going out for a few hours, but this weekend I decided to revive our little tradition. And if it needed a blog-prompt to do so, then that is not really an issue for me, it meant that I had lovely food for breakfast.
Before:
After:
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Tags: The Gallery
And so the theme on The Galllery this week is:
So with the Olympics and Wimbledon on the horizon here in the UK, and the fact that I'm a very big supporter of kids getting involved in sport for all the benefits it can bring, this week's theme is: Action.
As ever, interpret the theme any way you like. It can be sport, playtime, learning to ride a bike, you taking a fitness class (!), running, skipping, skydiving, whatever.
I've thought and I've thunked. I considered posting this picture, or even this, but they're quite fresh in my blog history and so I went against them.
Then I remembered this shot from my archives and so I'm breaking my self-imposed rule of 'no school talk on my blog'.
There's so much going on in this photo, so much action and also inaction. But more so for me is the story behind it.
The photo was taken nearly eight years ago now and all children in it are now, or soon to be, eighteen. They were my third class that I taught in Reading, and they were little buggers characters, the entire lot of them. So much so, that I couldn't get a supply teacher to cover my class at all; they made every single teacher's lives hell.
And I loved them for it.
It took me until the Christmas term to 'break them in', all gently like ponies. And I did it through love and care. Many of the class didn't have any love or positive attention in their lives, we're talking about children with extremely deprived or tumultuous backgrounds: broken homes, poverty, physical abuse, prostitution, foster care, drugs, sexual abuse, school refusers, and generally badly behaved. I went home every single night from September to December and sobbed my heart out because I felt that I didn't have the skills to care for them or educate them.
And then I spent the entirety of July crying in the evenings because I didn't want to leave them to move back home.
I didn't have lunchbreaks because I was outside running lunchtime clubs renovating the conservation club or taking them off onto the school field to run a rounders club away from the other children. If I did have a ten minute lunchbreak I was invariably called out of the staffroom within two minutes because, "We don't like dealing with the dinner ladies, they just shout at us. You do too sometimes, but at least you listen first!"
When I look at that picture I see a boy who has rebuilt his life and his family from the most horrendous thing to happen to him. I see a lad who lived in fear of his father. And I see a young man who has spent the last seven years overcoming childhood leukaemia.
When I look at that picture I see more than just action, I see survivors.
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Tags: The Gallery
It's been a few weeks since I've entered Tara's Gallery, unintentional but life has a habit of passing you by sometimes, to use the wise words of Mr. Bueller. However, when I saw that this week's theme was Easter, I couldn't very well ignore it much longer.
We went away for the weekend and so I needed to make sure that we had everything ready so that the Easter Bunny could find us and leave the necessary confectionary for The Boy. After a fraught Friday morning packing up various bits and pieces, we popped down to our local country park for my toddler group's Easter Egg hunt. The weather was perfect for wandering through the woodlands, finding shiny red eggs and avoiding bunny poop, and it refreshed us wonderfully for the drive down to west Wales.
The weekend saw us searching for numbers, as well as Easter chicks on a treasure hunt through the woodland. We went swimming in one of the best waterparks I've seen in a while, even if The Boy was 10cm too short for the waterslides. The Easter Bunny managed to find us, and then have a cuddle with Oliver Monkey in The Boy's bed. We discovered that The Boy had a penchant for vintage motorcars, saw pigs and newborn lambs, dug for buried treasure and ate more chocolate. And then we thanked the Lord for Charley Bear and Jaffa cakes when we got stuck in traffic in the pouring rain on the M4.
All in all, a fairly decent Easter weekend.
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Tags: Country Kids, Easter, photography, The Gallery, Wales
And so travelling Tara has set us the challenge of showing off our landscapes this week. Proper photography required.
This week's theme is: Landscapes.
Go and take a photo of one that inspires you, dig one out of your archives or get creative. Trees (ahem), sea shores, beach, skyline, fields, roof tops, pylons, mountains, snow whatever. Let's show what a wonderful and diverse place the world is.
Mr. TheBoyandMe and I have travelled to some rather amazing places and for that we've been lucky. I can't handle a flight longer than eight hours so I'm not talking anywhere tropical, but there are some amazing treasures around the world and we have been fortunate to experience some of these, before The Boy was born.
San Francisco Salt Ponds
The Faraglioni Rocks
Grand Canyon
Arabian Desert
California coastline
Manhattan skyline from the Empire State Building
But still one of my favourites is the one I call home:
Cardiff Bay
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Tags: nature, photography, The Gallery
"You know those quirky little stories you pass on from generation to generation? Every picture tells a little story, but some tell a really special one. I want to see THAT photo.
So this week's theme is: A Family Story.
I think the hardest part here is going to be how to narrow it down to just one photo!"
For me, the hardest part is not narrowing it down to one photo, because I'm not going to. For me, the hardest part is knowing what to write. I've spoken before of my grandparents and my parents and my present and future family. So what is left to write is about my generation; my siblings.
I'm the youngest of four children; two boys and two girls in that order. There is a gap of twelve years between my eldest brother and me, but that never made any difference. Growing up, I always had companions, friends and protectors. I was happy and loved, and loved in return. There came a tricky time when we reached adulthood, but this is not the place to discuss this. And so with that, I'm going to gloss over the stress and the arguments, the exhiled years and the fallen tears. I'm going to show you three photos which are incredibly special to me:
1977
1983
2007
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I'm going to get rollocked by at least one of them for putting the last photo up!
Tags: Family, The Gallery
I am so guilty of taking all the family photos that there will probably little documented proof I ever existed when the family looks back on our lives!
So this week's theme is: My Photography Resolution.
Because once it's in writing, you HAVE to do it, right?!
The lady's right: once it's written down then I have to do it. That's why I tend not to write to-do lists, I can't handle the pressure of seeing just how much stuff I should be doing as opposed to blogging! However, I do want to develop my range and skills in photography this year, and so I am setting myself three targets.
1. Learn how to use mobile photo editing apps
This has been a target on and off for the past year or so, but I've found it difficult to want to take photos with the iPod Touch or my HTC Desire because the quality of the cameras are shockingly awful! However, the prompt a few weeks ago has reignited my desire to conquer these beasts.
Earlier this afternoon, I was discussing with someone on twitter about the availability of the photo-editing apps for Android, and remembered about Little Photo which is actually quite nifty and offers lots of filters. These are two that I took last year:
I'm envious of the marvellous snaps on twitter from people using Instagram and have had a go at taking photos on this murky afternoon in the garden, using the filters to try and enhance the photographs. (Still awfully grainy though)
Resolution 1: Learn how to use mobile photo-editing apps, and then use them!
2. Learn how to use the manual settings on my DSLR
Both my grandfather and father were really keen photographers when they were younger (or alive in my grandad's case!) and tried to explain the mechanics of photography to me on several occasions. When I was ten, my dad bought me my first SLR, albeit second-hand and from a boot sale, and I really understood it all. Then I bought a 'point and shoot' and it all fizzled slowly out of my ear. When I met my husband, my MiL gave me her old SLR and I started up again and took some decent shots, but again it all slowly turned to mush in the light of Mr. TheBoyandMe's decent Sony Cybershot.
Then in 2004, I bought a Canon EOS 300D which I adore! And I started with good intentions, but the automatic settings are too easy to resort to. However, this afternoon I had a play with the shutter speed and came up with a slightly ok photograph, but I know that shutter speed has to be taken into account with aperture settings and oh God all manner of things which are beyond me at the moment.
Anyway, photo on the left was taken on automatic settings, one on right was manual. What do I need to do to make that less grainy?
Resolution 2: Learn how to use the manual settings on my DSLR
3. Be in more photos
This is one that I can't control and is therefore more of a prod to Mr. TBaM who reads this blog. He never takes photos, despite having a very good camera that I bought him for Christmas to replace the very good one that had died a month before. It's me that takes the photos, and as a result I'm not in the vast majority of the photos taken since The Boy's birth. And it saddens me.
So, Mr. TBaM stop letting this happen…
…and take some photos please?
Resolution 3: Be in more photos
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Tags: Family, photography, The Gallery
And so to this week's Gallery theme.
Which is simply: Eyes
And because the theme is simple, I'm going to choose a simple photo and let it (mostly) speak for itself. I will just say though that I see a wealth of family members in The Boy's eyes. Sometimes they are big and green-ish like his father's, sometimes they are old and blue like my father's. That was disconcerting when I was breast-feeding!
His heritage, and his future, is in his eyes everytime I look at him.
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Tags: photography, The Boy, The Gallery
Tara has set us a real challenge this week:
This week's theme is: Phone Photos.
The only rule is you have to have taken it on your phone. Doesn't matter what app you use. Camera phones have moved on so much and I've seen some quite stunning photos from these little in-your-pocket devices! So there is never any excuse for now snapping whenever you're out and about.
And while Tara has waxed lyrical about the wonders of Instagram and the camera on her iPhone, I have an HTC Desire. The interface of the phone is amazing. The camera? Horrendous. Really, really awful! Plus, the Android apps for the photography are naff. (Although if someone can point me in the direction of a decent one, I'd appreciate it)
However saying all that, I will share with you some of my favourite photos that I've taken on my rubbish camera-phone. They are unedited because the brief says it has to be done on your phone and I can't find a good app to do that, so here are the raw images:
He's just woken up from a nap and decided that I'd put something I shouldn't have in the laundry basket. Within the next thirty seconds after this photo being taken, he almost fell in!
Look at those knees!
Discovering his shadow for the first time.
One of my favourite camera-phone shots ever: bedhead!
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Tags: photography, The Gallery
Due to the fact that it's a rather festive time of the year, Tara has got all Christmassy:
So, in keeping with the time of year and all that, this week's theme is: Christmas of Yesteryear.
This is a chance for you to dig into your dusty old albums and air those embarrassing old photos!
It can be last Christmas, one from your childhood, one before children, one from your mum's childhood even.
I knew the picture to use straight away.
Flashback 32 years and this photograph was taken at my second Christmas. Like my dress and socks? Can you tell I was a child of the '70s?
In my childhood home, we had a landing halfway up the stairs which over the years served many purposes. At one point, it was even my elder sister's bedroom when she was a young girl, and the house was still in flats. After this it housed a cupboard with a mirror-tiled wall behind it. This was the natural place for our Christmas tree every year because the fairy lights twinkled off the mirror and it looked completely magical.
I was captivated with it from the first time I saw it, and then as I grew up I would sit on the stairs and stare at it for hours over the Christmas period. Losing myself in the lights and the ornaments, my imagination would run riot and I'd create different worlds.
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Tags: childhood, Christmas, The Gallery
This week's theme is quite simple:
My awesome photo
I'm late to The Gallery this week because I've been cogitating on the theme. I've got lots of photos that I really love and so picking one is really hard. However, as I opened up a browser this morning, one image caught me eye:
Visitors to my blog will recognise this as my header image, The Boy sat on a shingle beach playing with some pebbles. It was taken by me last year on holiday in Dorset and is one of my favourite pictures of him. I love the way that he stands out against the neutral tones of the shingle and the big pile of stones in front of him. I want to stroke his hair in the photo and I love the way that he is knelt down in the way that toddlers do, with his little Doodles: his first pair of shoes. And yes, I loved those dungarees as well!
It was our first holiday with The Boy, we had gone to Dorset with my parents for a week's holiday staying in a cottage on the coastline of Lyme Bay. It was a fab holiday and we had a great time in one of my favourite places in the world. The beach was a two hundred yard walk along the coast and down through the sand-dunes amongst sea cabbages and abandoned bonfires.
What you can't see in that photo though is that he's sat at the start of the 26 mile Chesil Beach, and far away in the background is Portland Bill with the most amazing storm brewing. Here's the photo in all its glory:
What do you think?
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Tags: beach, blog, Dorset, The Boy, The Gallery
