August

Despite being the same length, August doesn’t seem to have slipped by quite as quickly as July did. I managed to get the same amount of posts out in August as I did in July, which I’m pretty pleased with due to a bunch more social engagements in the former. I joked at the start of last month’s review that summer was over and we were well on the way to autumn and Christmas. I was only joking at the time, but it may have been a touch prophetic; the weather hasn’t been anywhere near so nice in August, and as I type this we’ve had a day of heavy rain.

But anyway, this isn’t a weather review, it’s a look back at August on Creative Splurges. I published three posts in August, not quite as many as I’d like but a perfectly respectable score regardless. I largely continued my wildlife theme I seem to be sticking to, with two out of the three posts being animals related, albeit one just my cats.

That is what I started the month with: a short post called Freddie in Closeup, one of the sorts of posts that just happens whilst I’m at home working on my computer. I haven’t really used my macro lens a huge amount lately so it felt good to get some really nice, clean cat portrait images with it. Usually when I shoot stuff of my cats at home they feign co-operation but then sit somewhere poorly lit or with a cluttered untidy background, but Freddie has proven himself to be quite an agreeable kitten, and so he was quite content to sit on the windowsill with a nice green background behind him whilst I took his picture.

The next post of the month was something quite a bit different. Lego Timelapses was a rare video post, something not seen since my 100th post celebration over two years ago. Even so, the content of the video was something even rarer: a couple of timelapses of me building Lego models. It contained two videos of two builds, both done using my Triggertrap adapter for my iPhone. The second video was getting pretty close to being stop motion animation, something else I’d love to experiment with (although I suspect it’s already been done far better than I could ever hope to achieve). The post, much like 100th Post before it, didn’t get a lot of views on either the post or the video, showing that video posts on this blog really rarely get well received. In fact I’ve already put off another video post I’ve been meaning to write for a while because I’m not sure it’s worth the effort, when a post with photos in it will go down much better.

The last post of the month was Cornish Seal Sanctuary, one of a multitude of posts from my last couple of summer holidays in 2012 and 2013 that I’ve left in my archive and am gradually working my way through. I’ve still plenty of images from my Cornwall holiday in 2013 and thousands from Tenerife in 2012 I’ve still to edit my way through, but it’s nice to have something to dip into when I’ve not got anything else on my plate. Cornish Seal Sanctuary contained a menagerie of animals, from aquatic to farmyard, and gave me a chance to shoot simp closeups as well as action. The light was a bit of a challenge at times as it was pretty grey and flat for a lot of our visit but using monochrome managed to bring out a lot of the details. I wasn’t initially feeling that positive when I started editing them but I ultimately ended up pretty pleased with the results. And that was August.

So what’s on the cards for September? I expect to be doing a lot of shooting in September. I’ve got my summer holiday coming up this month, some ideas of shots I want to experiment with at home, and there’s another trip to London Fashion Weekend in my future too. So when I say I’ll be shooting a lot in September, I mean really a lot – thousands of images, quite probably, because I can get pretty shutter happy when I get going. However if my last couple of summer holidays are anything to go by, don’t expect those to be edited any time soon.

Thanks as always for reading.
Rob