Life/Living

I've mentioned that there's a lot going on in my life right now. So much. I win in whatever "I'm so busy!" competition you want to get into. 99% guaranteed. And one of the things which is keeping me so busy is that Steve and I are hoping to move.

And I'm excited for a new home.

But, maaaaaaaaan, I am going to miss this one!

I bought this flat a little over four years ago; I got together with Steve two weeks later. It's simultaneously something I'm very proud of having achieved on my own and closely tied up with our relationship. There's a lot of heart in this place.

It's always stressful trying to move. Trying to sell a property. The two weeks I spent marketing my last place were the longest two weeks of my life. I don't want this to drag out. I want somebody to realise how awesome a home this is now.

Writing this post is my mental "JUST DO IT!" to anybody considering buying a one bedroom flat in Aberdeen right now. You want big rooms? You want a city centre location whilst feeling like you're living in the countryside? You want sunlight and nobody overlooking your bedroom? You want a building the surveyor described as "unusually good condition for its age"? You want this flat.

And, in the mean time, I'm distracting myself from the thought of packing up boxes, moving the cats and upheaving our comfortable there's-a-pub-around-the-corner-if-we-can't-be-bothered-to-cook routine by browsing through home decor books. Expect a lot of posts about paint to follow. You can't say you haven't had fair warning.

Six and a Half Weeks

Pictures of me by Steve (Pitlochry) and Lola (Castle Fraser).

This is not my glorious return to blogging. This is just Steve telling me off for not having posted anything for six and a half weeks. Things are still crazy busy at work and at home and outwith the two and none of it is bloggable. But I'll be back. Possibly just with photos for a while. But sometime.

The author signing her book is my friend, Laura Lam. As with anything written by someone I know, I was a bit scared to read Pantomime incase I didn't like it, but it's genuinely excellent - I recommend getting your hands on a copy .

And, finally, I haven't read anything online but emails and Twitter for... eh... about six and a half weeks, also, I guess... so tell me: how are you?

Where's Sarah?!

I hate blog posts which start with an apology for not blogging. I don't believe the world is waiting with baited breath for my cat photos (although it should - they're awesome); I'm pretty sure you've struggled bravely on without my writing.

But. But. I've been chastised for vanishing without an explanation. It's been ten whole days, folks - where have I been?! At least two of you were mildly worried about me.

So, here I am: I'm alive.

I've just kind of lost my blogging mojo.

Here are some of the reasons why:

• There are big things afoot in my home life (No, I'm neither pregnant nor engaged. Nor single) and, firstly, they're stealing a lot of my attention and, secondly, I kind of feel like they're private to my loved ones and me. Not that I wouldn't tell most of you what I'm up to, but I don't need to tell the world, you know? At least, not in blog-level detail. You can work it all out from my Twitter.
• There are big things afoot at my work. All good, I think. And that's about all I can tell you without breaching my own work-life boundaries. But they're taking attention and energy I would usually give to my blog.
• As is the volunteering I've been doing.
• And the reading.
• And the cinema-going.
• And the having a social life.
• And I guess I'm not in the mood for this style of writing so much. I'm in the mood for humour. I'm in the mood for lengthy fiction. Diary-style revelations? Not so much.

So, there you go: no blog posts from me for a while.

And, in the mean time, Google has announced that they're scrapping Reader. This frustrates me. I've tried BlogLovin' and I did not love it. Reader was the feed minder for me. Which makes me wonder whether I need to spend quite so much time reading the blogs of people I don't know; whether I might not be better off moving my favourite few into a bookmarks folder and getting on with... I don't know... something more productive instead? Has anybody else reacted that way?

Well, anyway, that's enough of my wittering. Like I say, I'm on Twitter. I also have email *waves at the Contact Me link up in the right hand sidebar*. If you miss me terribly, I'm not hard to find. And no doubt I'll pop up again at some point with no apology and no explanation and carry on from where I left off as if I've never been away.

Now I'm going to go and have a cup of tea and try to get past the "what a douche I am" feeling I have for making a big, public announcement as though my blogging habits are worthy of a mention in Heat.

The 2013 List: Write a Big, Long List of Things Which Make You Happy

1. Making Steve double over with laughter while he's trying to brush his teeth.
2. The velvety fur on the back of Gizmo's neck.
3. Big, fat snowflakes dancing slowly down. 
4. That Steve always brings me a glittery meringue back from Glasgow.
5. Bright blue skies and sunny days. 
6. Gingerbread.
7. Anthropomorphising the cats.
8. A totally absorbing TV series. Most recently, Utopia.
9. Breakfasts in cafes (or pubs) with friends.
10. On that note: whenever Steve and I are getting up early to feed our friends' cat, we stop off for brunch at Giraffe on the way back home. It's a tradition I love.
11. Quiet train journeys.
12. Visiting small, pretty towns.
13. Living in a city. Near a cinema.
14. Daffodils, tulips and snowdrops. And bluebells. 
15. Especially the first flowers of spring.
16. You lot. For your comments and your emails and your lovely blogs. 
17. Slapping on a smile. You know, when everything's going wrong and you're not in the mood to schmooze but you have to be nice to clients/work contacts so you suck it up and fake it? I'm always left buzzing with energy by the time I'm done.
18. Books which keep me up at night reading one more chapter, one more chapter, one more chapter...
19. Hot chocolate with marshmallows on a cold winter's day. 
20. Sunrises which light our flat up pink.
21. Unexpected parcels.
22. Holding my hands under the hot water tap when I've just got in from the cold. 
23. Wrapping my fingers around a mug of hot tea, too.
24. Brightly coloured tights.
25. Taking a chance on a film (especially when it turns out to be good).
26. Downloading a book I'm really excited to read. Even better: downloading five.
27. Being ridiculous.
28. Taking our ugly, cosy blanket out of the tumble dryer and hugging it to my face. So warm! 
29. Twirling on slippy flooring.
30. Watching the world zip past a train window.
31. Seeing cats wiggling on their backs in the sunlight.
32. Cinema matinees.  
33. New ideas. And people to bounce them off.
34. Making plans to see friends.
35. Huge big chunks of ice in the river.
36. Rolling a foreign language around in my mouth.
37. Cherry crumble.
38. Bedtime.
39. Getting up early and walking around really quiet streets.
40. That Steve is going through an experimental cooking phase. Yum!

The 2013 List is a collection of suggestions for making this year more enjoyable. It was created by Elise and me. To view the full list and track my progress click here. To track Elise's progress click here.

Basic Camera, Brilliant Pictures: Location, Location, Location

This week, you're going to need to rope in a little bit of help - or be brave and use a tripod to take self-portraits!

I can't claim that portraits are my strong point, but this year I've been making a real effort to practise them (finally; I made the same resolution last year... and the year before). But one of the first steps towards getting good at portrait photography is learning to spot a good background.

Most of us walk around our home towns ignoring what's around us. A door is just a door. A wall is just a wall. They're plain and not very interesting, right?

Riiiight... but plain and not very interesting makes for good portrait backgrounds. I mean, there are plenty of other techniques you can learn for positioning people and we'll touch on some of them later, but they all involve working with a simple background which doesn't draw attention away from your subject's face.

Photo of me by Lola

Before I send you off to seek out portrait backgrounds of your own, here are four ways to make your people shots a bit less... awful...

1. If it bends, bend it. Many people, faced with a camera, will freeze in place; they look stiff and awkward in the final shot. Get them to lean against something, place their hands on their hips, turn one shoulder towards you, spin on the spot - anything to get them out of that stiff, unnatural pose and put a little shape into their body (see the before and after examples below).
2. Step back. If you're too close to your subject, your camera lens will distort the image and they'll end up looking like they've got a big, flat, round face. Stand a couple of metres away and you'll get a much more flattering shot. Zoom in, if need be.
3. Keep them out of direct sunlight.
4. If you're taking a group shot, tell everyone to, "Squeeze a little closer together than you feel entirely comfortable with." It makes all the difference.

Now: go! Go and find backgrounds for your portraits!

365: 67-73

This is the "I'm siiiiiiiiick!" edition. I'm quite proud of having kept the 365 up whilst feeling so sorry for myself. I was too tired to dust that chicken on Tuesday, though...

The 2013 List: Give Up Your Biggest Vice for a Week

This one was a bit of an accident: I was away last weekend and I've been wiped out with bronchitis all week. I either didn't have the time to pick up my laptop or I haven't had the energy.

And so: I've just gone a full week without blogging (those were scheduled posts); reading any blogs (I'm not ignoring you); responding to any comments (sorry); or actioning any emails (even - eek! - a few important ones).

I watched a lot of Murder, She Wrote and some classic movies, read a couple of books, slept a lot, and hung out with the cats. Lovely.

I coughed and coughed and coughed and coughed, and I felt a bit anxious about neglecting my inbox. But the world hasn't fallen apart without me - at least, I don't think so; I'm going to go and check once I've finished writing this - and being away from all the internet hullaboo...? It's been kind of nice.


The 2013 List is a collection of suggestions for making this year more enjoyable. It was created by Elise and me. To view the full list and track my progress click here. To track Elise's progress click here.

Basic Camera, Brilliant Pictures: Finding the Interesting Angle

This week, we're going to practise finding the best angle for still life photography.

If you're not used to thinking about how you frame your subject, the tendency is to take all your photos from your natural eye level (or, in these digital days, from chest level), but often there's a better option.

Children and pets, for example, are often best photographed from their eye level rather than yours. Crouch down and snap away.

Parties and other indoor scenes are often best photographed from higher up. Climb on a table or chair (with the usual health and safety provisos) and get a wide shot of the room.

And this week, we're going to consider different angles for still life photography.

The first time I saw this project suggested - it was in a photography book but I can't remember which one - a teacher would get his or her students to go into the bathroom and take 100 shots of the room. I've also seen it done with somebody taking 100 shots of a single fork - all of them a little different from the last.

Because not all of us (*ahem*) have clean enough bathrooms to share with the world, I'm going to leave the subject up to you. Pick a room, or an object, or perhaps a person to photograph and take 100 - okay, okay, fifty - different pictures of it/them. Move the object/person around; shoot from above and below and in front and behind; tilt your camera; focus on details; step back and fit it all in.

Don't worry about getting fifty brilliant shots (some of mine had a cat licking his own butt in the background); just focus on getting fifty different ones.

Once you've got your shots, go back through them and see which ones you like best - ask yourself why that particular angle is more appealing than the rest. Is it more dramatic? Calming? Colourful? Detailed? Simple?

Here's what feels to me like the most obvious shot of my deer figurine. There's nothing wrong with this angle, but it's not the only option:

What about photographing it from below?

Above?

Behind?

Maybe not - it feels like it's going to turn into a questionable booty shaking music video. I'm not too keen on this headless stick figure, either:

But I do quite like the shadows running away from the legs in this shot:

And this one feels kind of noble:

What are you going to photograph?

What I Was Doing Last March