Happy Thanksgiving!

Wish I was there! **Missing Mom's roast turkey and cornbread stuffing**

Thanksgiving...A time to give thanks for all the past years blessings...A time to reflect...A time to share with family and friends. Thanksgiving is my favourite holiday because that's when our family comes together from across the miles and busy life styles, usually meeting at Mom's house. The house is full of laughter and hugs and the smell of roast turkey with cornbread stuffing. 

Since I've moved to England I really miss Thanksgiving back home. I do try to keep up the turkey and cornbread dressing tradition on this side of the pond, but it is proving to be more and more difficult. It's just not the same without the rest of the family. And now that Alyssa has moved out and has a busy life of her own it is quite lonesome this Thanksgiving. Missing Sarah like mad too.... Missing my Mom and Dad as well... I'll be running up a phone bill later!

Happy Thanksgiving everyone! May your day be filled with family and friends, hugs and kisses, laughter and happy tears, love and friendship....and most of all, joy and happiness. 

Oh and don't forget the chess set! (David, Mark and cousin Stephen know what I'm talking about.)  ;-)

XOXOX

With Love,

Tammy

Beyond the Lens - Autumn Colours

Written by Tamara Kwan of TammyLynn Photography

Featured on I am Gloucestershire 365's website under FYI Daily Blog on Thursday, 11 November 2010

What a beautiful time of year. I just love all the autumn colours. The other day we went walking in the Chalford Valley over by Cowcombe Hill. Over between the railway line and the canal we spotted this little robin. I just managed to change my camera settings and capture this photo of him before he flew away. Well you know robins, he didn’t fly far, but he didn’t pose so nicely out in the open again for me either.

I find wildlife photography quite difficult. I’m just not fast enough and I don’t have a long enough lens. Lucky I’d borrowed a friend’s 70-200 2.8 L lens this day. Also lucky I’d shot in raw. The camera’s auto white balance got it all wrong and the photo came out a bit blue. So I changed it from Auto white balance to Daylight and that made a world of difference.

For those keeping score I shot in Aperture Priority with an ISO of 250; 1/125^th of a second exposure at f2.8. Sadly I had forgotten to change the Exposure compensation from -0.3 back to 0 so my image was a bit under exposed. RAW to the rescue! After I changed the white balance to Daylight I upped the exposure to brighten the image. I also added a little fill light at this time, along with nudging the Clarity and Vibrance bars. A few tweaks of the curves in photoshop, a quick high pass filter to sharpen and I’m done. Well nearly, I decided it looked a bit like a post card and the blank space was crying out for some words. I am missing my family and friends back in the States so I chose to write “Gloucestershire, wish you were here!” I think I just might print a few post cards and send them across the big pond.