World Photo Day : The Gallery

Whitby Abbey

Perched on a cliff top overlooking Whitby, these gothic ruins are breathtakingly eerie and wonderful in equal measures. I've always loved taking photos here.

We spent a couple of hours, snapping the amazing ruins until out batteries died before heading down to the town for seaside fish and chips. We had a wonderful day full of fresh air and a stiff sea breeze.

On the way home we stopped off in the stunning Robin Hood Bay, just in time to join the nightly village ghost walk.

A perfect day.

For The Gallery.

KatchUp Review

Over the last couple of weeks I've been trying out a new private photo sharing platform called KatchUp. I have to say that I wasn't sure that I had the need for a new platform. I'd been happily plodding along, randomly sharing the photos that I wanted to share directly with my nearest and dearest via the usual email / dropbox route.

Then a couple of days ago I was looking for a pic of one of the kids. I knew in my mind exactly which photo I was looking for but faced with the 20,000+ uncatalogued images on my external hard-drive KatchUp suddenly revealed itself as an oasis in my historical, digital, photographic, mess. Here's why.

I'm an avid snapper but I used to be 100% reliant on my SLR, until the iPhone came along. A phone in my pocket made every aspect of my day a photo opportunity and with that came more photographs, a lot more.

I stopped printing and creating albums, which makes me sad because the kids LOVE to sit and look through old photographs. I was snapping more, building up this ever increasing snapshot of life but it was simply being hoarded away on my Mac, hidden like some secret past that no one would ever get to see.

I often thought about sitting down and sifting through the thousands of images I'd amassed (usually when I was looking for something particular) but the job before me was simply too vast and not thinking about it was preferable to trying to sort through the mess.

Then I was asked to trial KatchUp.

In principle, I think it's great. A perfect way to privately, share your day to day moments with your far flung family without flooding your social media channels. But I don't have far flung family. The people I want to share my memories with are under my roof.

Then, as I was uploading a set of images from a summer day out, I realised that KatchUp was the perfect way to simply catalogue my images and in a way that was just as accessible for the rest of my family as it was for me.

How KatchUp Works

A free account gives you an ample 1GB of storage which is more than enough to get you started. There's also a paid Premium account that I'll cover later.

The user interface is beautifully, uncluttered and easy to navigate making it a dream to use.

Once registered, you land on a clean, simple timeline that's ready for you pics and vids, or moments, as KatchUp calls them to be uploaded.

That's actually all the explanation that's needed!

Your 'moments' display as coloured dots on the dateline and you simply click to view all of the individual photographs within that moment.

I'm totally converted and I'll be spending the next couple of weeks populating the moments that have been important to me over the last couple of years.

The KatchUp Premium account gives you 10GB of storage for just £2.99 per month. I have a 50% discount code for my readers. Use the code KMUMTIPS0814 when registering (or in your account settings if you're already a member and would like to upgrade) and you will receive an email at the end of August inviting you to upgrade to Premium membership for £1.50. 

It's also worth checking out the #AugustKatchUp page because if you sign up during August you could win some great prizes including a family holiday to Portugal, a camera or and iPad mini.

www.katchup.com

*Disclosure

I have been given a free, 12 month, Premium KatchUp membership and payment for reviewing the service. The words and opinions stated here are my own.

Silent Sunday January 12th 2014

Silent Sunday : Thank you Jay, I wouldn't have been able to take this amazing pic without the skills you taught me at your brilliant photography workshop. Love you long time x

Inspirational Photography Workshop with Jay Mountford

Learning

I love learning. Really love it. I read and dig, always wanting to know more, always wanting to master something or uncover that amazing tip that I always needed to know. It's been the driving force behind Cybher, it's exciting learning new things but I miss out on the thrill of getting stuck into the workshops as I'm running around like a crazed event organiser.

I made a pact with myself to make 2014 different and last week my resolution got an early kick off in the form of a day long photography workshop hosted by the awesome, inspirational, Jay Mountford.

Location

For added pleasure the workshop was based at Home Barn, Little Marlow's eclectic, vintage haven. I LOVE Home Barn and despite them being a couple of hours away from me, I do have a client situated less then five minutes away from them so I do get to have a regular barn fix!

Camera bag stuffed with every single bit of kit that I own, I was ready to learn, to master and to be awesome.

My Camera & I

Now, I've been an avid snapper since I can remember and I've had the ISO, Aperture, Shutter Speed, magic triangle thing explained to me on far too many occasions but it never stuck. My manual pics were more luck than judgement but as Jay explained, I picked up my camera and my, oh, my... look what happened.

The penny dropped!

This was the very first photograph that I took following my total 'Eureka, I know what I'm doing' moment. Boy was I happy?!

Following my realisation of the magic triangle thing, another moment of total clarity awaited me, in the form of a 50mm f/1.4 lens from Lens Fettish. It was an OMG moment of the highest order. Why didn't I know about this stuff before? Did you know that the standard kit lenses that come with your DSLR are pants? I didn't but I'm telling you now that you need to ditch them and get your hands on something decent. It's life changing.

My Photographs
The next couple of hours were spent in dark corners of the barn subjected to 'difficult lighting situations'  and tricky objects.  I'm over the moon with my photographs. Seriously over the moon and back again. 

I also learnt that Tara Cain has quite fabulous hair!

My parter in crime, Claire having a moment with her lens

The whole day was amazing and enlightening and my Top 10 Learnings for the day are...

1. I should have done a workshop like this a long time ago
2. Jay Mountford is a brilliant teacher and photographer (though to be fair I did know this already, I'm saying it here because sometimes you just need to be told that stuff)
3. I should have just bought that 50mm f/1.4 lens when I fell in love with it and then I wouldn't have had to wait two days post workshop for it to arrive.. sigh
4. Kit lenses on your camera are crap
5. I don't get out of the office and away from my mac nearly enough
6. I don't spend a day offline nearly enough
7. I can take good photographs
8. Lens Fettish may well be my new fave site
9. My friends are a unique and interesting bunch
10. Lizzie's husband Ed doesn't like The Smiths (not really sure what I can say about that)
11. Just outside of the top 10 but also important. Lenses are more important than new tables

I seriously cannot recommend Jay's workshop enough. I came away inspired and totally buzzing. She's given me back the hunger and excitement that my evil iPhone took away. Yes it's handy but it makes you really lazy, so no more iPhone camera for me and that's a promise. That can only be positive right?

Keep an eye on Jay's site for forthcoming workshop information and in addition she will be running a session (or two) at Cybher 14.

Who has some good camera bag suggestions? Looks like I'll be needing a new one.

Thanks to Jay, Lizzie and the guys at Home Barn for an amazing day. x

I'll leave you with evidence of my Eureka moment, as captured by Home Barn!

I gets The Magic Triangle thing!

My Awesome Camera Cozy

Thank you to everyone that shared my post last week. Your generous tweeting led me to find the rather wonderful @missybsleeping and now, less than a week later, I'm the proud owner of my very own Doggy Camera Cozy!

Only now Biba wants one too!

Silent Sunday #December 9

Silent Sunday 

Loving the Polaroid Z2300 Camera

I've just fallen head over heels with this new Polaroid Z2300 camera. It's a good job it's my birthday soon. Nudge, hint...

Iconic Polaroid styling but packed with all the features you would expect from a modern 10MP digital camera but with the added awesomeness that it prints smudge-proof photos onto sticky back paper. 

Love, Love, Love it.

The Cybher InstaGallery

If you are coming to Cybher and you love Instagram then the Cybher Instagallery is where it's at.

I've witnessed all of your photographic talent for myself over the last couple of years and this is your chance to shine.

There is limited space available, so if you'd like to be involved you need to complete the application form over on the Cybher blog.

Featured IGers will be asked to prepare a board of their favourite images. It's up to you how you do this as long as your mini exhibition is within the specified space guidelines. Theme it, don't theme it... I will obviously be going with London Underground tunnels but it's your thing and all I ask is that you give it some love.

The selection process is in place to make sure the Instagallery has a good mix of styles, themes and exhibitors, so if you have some pics that fall into the Cybher Geek, Chic and Inspire themes do fill in that form.

Mr Hermit Crab : The Gallery

Mr Hermit Crab for this week's Gallery.

Do stop by The Gallery Linky over on Tara's blog to enjoy some of the other photographs posted this week and if you are feeling inspired, why not join in too?