Pleats and Bows

Dress Paprika / Jewellery Temporary:Secretary / Nail Colour: Rimmel

I have seen lots of cool black pleated skirts lately and I want every single one of them! I'm always buying black skirts in all sorts of styles, they go with everything! This dress is from Paprika and it is also available in cream and white. I like the girly details (pleats and a bow). I thought I'd choose black as it's probably the easiest colour to wear during winter. The dress arrived a couple of days after I ordered it (with a voucher), such quick delivery. When I first tried it on, I felt a bit "Morticia" in it. Especially when I had my hair down at the time! I tried it on again but with lighter make up and hair in ponytail. Once I start wearing dark colours, I find it difficult to wear brighter colour again! Will try stay out of that rut. It will make a nice change to wear darker colours now anyway, I keep standing out like a sore thumb with the autumn florals and bright fabric that I've been wearing recently

I have had some emails and tweets enquiring about what camera I use, what lens I use, and how I get my photos looking bright during a dark day without using flash. I use different equipment for different things (namely blog, webshop, and landscape) but I do usually take a lot of outfit photos all in one go mid week, I pick a day that is bright. I'm not sure how I go about doing a tutorial as I'm not a professional. Far from it! I know how things work but I don't know how to explain them, technical things like aperture/f.stop, depth of field, all the different lenses, shooting format, etc. At uni, we had a few photography modules but I wasn't interested at the time, I didn't think it was something that would benefit me (after all, how would I ever afford a DSLR after uni! I was getting on just fine with my little silver point and shoot) Everything I've learned with DSLR is typically either self taught - by that, I mean turning all the buttons and pressing *everything* until I get it right!

Basically, in brief: For the blog, we both shoot with Nikon D90 or D40 and generally use a 50mm lens for overcloud. This is because you can set a lower f/stop and this will let more light in to the lens - which gives you brighter images. Our preference is to shoot in RAW format, which allows you do adjust the exposure, white balance and brightness with more versatility. For instance, on a gloomy day (overcloud), if you shoot in RAW, you can correct the white balance and exposure afterwards. Pop over to Gem's blog because she is a professional photographer, she knows what she is talking about (unlike me!) and this tutorial that Gem posted is really useful.