Inspiration With Emily Quinton

Many of you will remember how much I was looking forward to attending a Makelight Level Two course back in September, just before my infamous accident with a dog and my knee! Sadly I was unable to make the journey from Suffolk to West Dulwich back then and thought I would have to miss out on the course. Not only did I expect to lose my course fee, but I was also very disappointed to be letting down my daughter who was going on the course with me. When I emailed Emily, who runs the Makelight courses, and explained my problem she simply suggested moving both our bookings to her next course in January – a truly lovely and reassuring response to what felt like a crisis at the time.

Hence last Friday finally saw me on a train to London, looking forward to meeting up with my eldest daughter. We started our mini break with a little shopping on Oxford Street followed by dinner and then a night at the ballet (a treat from my lovely daughter). The next morning we were up bright and early to head across London to the Makelight studio in West Dulwich.

For those of you who have not come across her yet, Emily Quinton is a photographer, instagrammer, blogger, crafter and author (as well as mother to 4 small children – how does she do it all?) who takes stunning floral images which she posts daily on her Instagram feed. Her Makelight website is full of floral inspiration and has details of all her courses. I attended a Makelight Level One a couple of years ago and have been planning to follow up with Level Two for some time now. Whilst Level One was very practical, Level Two was a relaxed day of inspirations, questions, guidance and chat shared with a lovely group of ladies all eager to benefit from Emily’s vast experience.

Emily’s studio is a delight to behold! We all felt a touch like Alice In Wonderland as we entered a room that we seen featured regularly in her photos and youtube videos – it felt quite surreal to be in a completely new place and yet to recognise everything in the room!

Having settled in and got to know each other Emily set us off taking photos so that we could make the most of the beautiful light in her studio before the January day started to draw in. She gave us permission to play around with all her props, moving things about and creating our own vignettes from her vast collection of beautiful treasures. The only person I know who has perhaps more props than Emily must be Cathy at Rambling In The Garden!

Whilst we were oohing and ahhing over all the lovely things and enjoying the beautiful spring flowers Emily took the time to talk to each of us individually to answer questions and sort out problems.

One of the big questions of the day revolved around how to use the new Olympus Pen camera.

For anyone who has not seen one of these so far, this exceedingly pretty camera has taken the blogging world by storm with at least 4 members of the course owning one. Initially I was quite sceptical that this was a camera selling on its looks, but having bought my daughter one and seeing what it is capable of I am a convert. This is an extremely lightweight small and portable camera with a great movable touch screen and an internal wi fi facility to send your photos straight to your iPhone, iPad etc. Like a DSLR it has a range of lens and camera options. Do not be misled by its portability though – this is not a point and shoot camera – you do need to learn how to use it and Emily provided a lot of guidance to the new owners.

One of my photographic goals for this year is to learn how to use a tripod when photographing my flowers. Whilst I will always take most of my photos whilst holding my camera (I love to be able to move around when taking close ups), there are times when I would like to shoot hands free. In bad light for example or when I want to take a photo that includes my hands so that I can illustrate how to do something. I have always been a bit afraid of tripods (aren’t they just for professionals?), so Emily showed me all I needed to know and had the perfect tripod for me in her studio.

Not only is this a good sturdy tripod – it also has an ingenious attachable arm which allows you to shoot straight down. I am now an excited new owner just waiting for a quiet afternoon to get my own one out of the box and play. This tripod is a Walimex WAL-6702 Pro Tripod for anyone interested in these matters.

We

We all spent a lovely few hours playing with the many props and sharing stories and experiences whilst Emily moved between us answering the long list of questions we had compiled at the start of the day.

As the light faded we returned to the table for tea and cake and yet more photographic talk. In particular we were all keen to learn about the sources Emily uses for her beautiful prints – I intend to try these out as another of my resolutions is make real life copies of many of my favourite photos – I will report back on this as the prints arrive.

I thoroughly enjoyed my day in the inspiring setting of Emily’s lovely studio. It was uplifting to meet other like minded creatives and to share experiences and problems. Emily is an excellent teacher and exceptionally generous with her wealth of knowledge – no question is out of bounds and I came away with new ideas and plans, as well as quite a shopping list!

I would like to say big thank you to Emily and all the other lovely ladies who made the day so memorable – I will include all their instagram links so that you can pop over and see what they get up too.

You can find out more about Emily on her website or at Facebook, Instagram & Twitter.

The Instagram accounts of the other ladies are: thevintagehousethatcould, live_and_bloom, hellopartyinsta, eyre_apparent, xxbirdhouse, lou_weezie1, wanderforawhile, everandava1 and my own lovely daughter butterfly.becca. Mine is peoniesandposies and is always available on my sidebar. I try to post there daily and include a little update on what I am up to.

Are you on Instagram – if you are please do leave your link below so that we can see what you are up to there! If not why don’t you pop over to Instagram, set yourself up an account and join in the fun. Posting photos is quick and easy and can be done straight from your phone. It really is a very supportive and welcoming community and a great way to enjoy lots of floral inspiration (as well as anything else you might be interested in).

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January 14, 2016
11 Comments
by Julie

Flowers

A Day With Emily Quinton

Recently I had the pleasure of spending a full day concentrating on improving my camera skills at a Makelight Workshop run by the talented Emily Quinton who writes the Start Up Wife. I have already posted my flower shots from the day and you can see them here.

The beauty of this workshop was that whilst its main purpose was to help the participants take better photos, it was also a day designed specifically for bloggers. Emily covered three main areas relevant to blogging:

Using social media and taking better photos with an iPhone (or similar),
Using natural light and camera settings to take better photos with a DSLR,
Using props to style an image.

As well as lots of teaching and discussion time, Emily built in plenty of opportunities to practice taking our own photos using her personal selection of props.

In these photos you can see some of the ladies working with their cameras and Emily’s props. The whole studio was full of vignettes like these.

Whilst not taken from the best angle, the two pictures above show how you can use props to create different backgrounds even if you are always shooting in the same spot. Emily explained how she uses wrapping paper, white art boards, painted boards and pieces of wood to create different backdrops for her daily flower photos. Although they are all shot in the same place using the best light available in her home, it appears that she is shooting in lots of different locations.

Emily uses a variety of styled props to create her pictures – all within a very distinct pastel colour range. On Saturday she provided us with a selection of wrapping papers, materials, china cups, buttons, chocolate eggs, cards, paper pom poms and, of course, fresh flowers.

It is surprising how much you can make of a few small flowers with the addition of some appealing props.

After lunch we moved on to the mechanics of taking photographs on a DSLR. Although I am getting much better I have only been using my camera (a Canon EOS 500D) since May last year, so I still have a long way to go before I will feel completely confident with the settings. I was relieved to find that Emily tends to use Aperture Priority (Av) as her favoured camera setting. I can use manual, but find I get better shots in Av. Emily also spoke about the advantages of shooting in good natural light.

What I realised I had not been doing was really manipulating my f-stops. I found that by keeping my f-stops right down (2.6 in the photo above) I could get a much more focused shot with a nice blurred background. The photo above was just a practice shot I took of a bottle on the table whilst Emily was talking about camera settings. I was pleased with clarity of the bottle and the very blurred background.

Many of you will have heard of the expression depth of field in photography. A photo with a blurry background such as my photo of the bottle is said to have a shallow depth of field as you cannot see the details beyond the object that is in focus.

As all cameras are different Emily had to work hard to get everyone practicing on the same settings.

Emily also discussed focus and how important it is to consider your point of focus every time you take a picture. In the photo above you can see that I have chosen the focus point to be the cups and straws – everything else is slightly and intentionally blurred.

In this photo I have focused on the foreground, so some of the hydrangea petals and the cards are sharp with the background details blurred.

If you want to take a photo with all the shot in focus you need to capture a deeper depth of field using different settings.

Finally Beth, another blogger who writes Beth At The Summer House, had baked this beautiful cake for us all to enjoy at the end of the day. This is a shot full of props – wrapping paper, a wooden crate and a vintage cake stand. I was particularly pleased with the focus on the individual berries and this is probably my favourite shot of the day.

At the end of the day I came away with greater confidence in my ability to manipulate my camera settings, inspiration to use Instagram and Pinterest more and lots of ideas of things I could use to add interest to my photographs. I was also inspired to start to make better use of my iPhone camera.

So thank you to Emily and all the other lovely blogging ladies who helped to make it such a fun and interesting day. I am hoping to attend a Makelight higher level workshop in the autumn.

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March 18, 2014
20 Comments
by Julie

Monday Flowers

In A Vase On Monday – Sweet Pea Success & A Winner

Welcome to this weeks In A Vase On Monday when I am linking up with Cathy at Rambling In The Garden to join in with her challenge to find something from the garden to put in a vase for the house every week of the year.

As I have only just returned from my trip away to Lancashire with my mother, today has been spent unpacking and catching up on jobs so there was very little time for vase making. Had my day been more leisurely there are plenty of contenders this week – beautiful white and lilac lavender, the white pom poms of viburnum opulus sterile, stunning purple globes of allium Purple Sensation, the first bearded iris and, perhaps most exciting of all, Lily of the Valley. I say most exciting not because I prefer it to the other beautiful May flowers, but because I have been trying for 5 years to get it to establish in my garden and this year it finally looks as though it is starting to spread! As time was so short however, I headed to the greenhouse and cut a big bunch of sweet peas – what a treat!

I cut my first small bunch just before I went away and they have really come on in the last week – there will be a bunch in the kitchen now on a daily basis.

These are the Winter Sunshine seeds that I set off in late September last year. As they are both early to flower and growing under cover I can have lovely sweet peas that are not covered in the pollen beetles that plague my outdoor flowers.

I only took a couple of photos today as time was short, but I will make sure to take plenty more and name the varieties for you very soon.

Now on to the Giveaway I announced last week. Thank you so much to all who entered – I am very grateful to you all for following and really wish you could all be winners! I am pleased to announce that Elizabeth Davey is this weeks winner – please email me with your address details Elizabeth and I will get the book in the post to you. Thank you so much for all your lovely comments – I only had very limited internet access last week, so I will be responding to everyone over the next couple of days.

Last week was quite an exciting week for me. Not only did I manage to meet up with Sarah from Simply By Arrangement, I was also featured on the Makelight blog, had my first Cutting Garden post published on the Sarah Raven blog and had my photo featured as part of the #inspiredbypetals Instagram gallery hosted by Jannel Ford – such a lot to be celebrated in just one week!

I have long been a Bronte fan and am enjoying reading a book of their letters at the moment. Despite spending my childhood living very close to Haworth where they lived I had never visited the Parsonage that was their home. This year is the 200th anniversary of the birth of Charlotte Bronte and I was both delighted and intrigued to see photos appearing on FaceBook and Instagram of lovely floral arrangements in the rooms of the Parsonage. These were created by a group of ladies attending a course held in the Old School Rooms organised by Simply By Arrangement. Do take a look at their lovely website which is full of inspiration and if you live in the Yorkshire/Lancashire area they organise a variety of interesting floral courses. I contacted Sarah and arranged to meet her after paying a visit to the Parsonage. We spent a lovely couple of hours sitting in her sunny garden getting to know each other over tea and cake – I am keeping my fingers crossed that she will be able to visit me sometime soon so that we can carry on with our flowery chat.

I mentioned a few weeks ago that I would be writing a monthly guest blog post on the Sarah Raven blog Garlic and Sapphire. My first post was about my Cutting Garden in May if you would like to take a look. I am much more restricted by the length of my posts on that blog than I am here, but hope to keep you up to date with the monthly changes in my cutting garden over there.

I have mentioned Emily Quinton and her Makelight photography courses many times before. I love what Emily does and really enjoy being part of her Makelight Community – a very supportive group of ladies all interested in improving their photography. Imagine both my surprise and delight when a member of Emily’s team got in touch and said they would like to run a feature about me on their blog. They are concentrating on all things floral this month so felt that what I do was a great fit. You can have a look here.

As if all that was not enough on Friday I noticed that my photo had been included in a grid on Instagram. I follow a beautiful feed by @jannelford and often tag my images to appear in her #inspiredbypetals gallery. I included an image of lilac last week and was delighted when she featured it on her feed as part of a weekly grid of her favourite images. If you are not on Instagram I highly recommend that you set up an account and join in the fun. Do let me know in the comments below if you are on Instagram – leave your link and we can all take a look at your gallery. For anyone unfamiliar with my Instagram feed you can have a look here.

Well that was a lot of links for one night!! After all that excitement it is back to the weeding for me! Also I need to do battle with the rooks – I have come home to find that they have been busy pulling out all the seedlings I planted before I went away as well as pulling up my first radishes. I will be going out with some big nets in the morning to try and cover everything up for a few weeks.

I hope you have a lovely week ahead of you and please do pop over to Cathy’s blog to see what she and the others have made this week.

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May 16, 2016
15 Comments
by Julie

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