Camera love

Ella spent most of the day with us yesterday and put up with having her every activity recorded on the new Fujifilm X20 with remarkable tolerance, and a minimum of protest (mostly).

First up, we cooked some "pop cakes" using her birthday pop cake maker. This was all new to me so Mr Google (and the iPad on the bench) were both very helpful. It was VERY early in the morning on a cloudy day so with Rob operating the X20 for the first time, it coped quite well with the artificial light, the strong contrast and all the reflective surfaces (and being so frightenly up close to my face this early in the morning).

Then it was time for some art work. I had monoprinting set up but I think I had more fun with it than Ella did today. I thought the camera exposed these difficult shots beautifully with no frontlighting.

We did portraits of each other. I loved Ella's of me - complete with the Judy Horacek decorated ("Woman with Altitude") apron I was wearing (and it struck me for the first time how much "Woman" looks like Julia Gillard!) and my characteristic untidy eyebrows??

We engaged in a bit of imaginary play about selling the pop cakes door to door. In the process Ella made up a story about Nellie's involvement. She wrote this completely unaided.......

Translation....... Please make sure that Ella's dog isn't at your house. Clever isn't she??

Ella's learnt to skip in the last few weeks and participated in Jump Rope For Heart at school this week. She had no trouble raising a good amount of money, including a $10 donation from her own piggy bank - which had taken her AGES to accumulate.

The X20 captured movement in low light very well I thought (on Auto too).

She got me skipping too although I don't think she was very impressed that I could only do about 4 skips in a row without losing it!

With rain threatening we took a quick trip to the National Aboretum around lunchtime.

The Australian Government funded the construction of this amazing playground for the children of Canberra as part of its centenary gift to the city. It has only been open a week or so, so we were keen to see Ella's response to it.

 She loved it (of course).

The rain came and we were forced inside. All was not lost though as a shop was found with very desirable headbands (made with real kimono silk from Japan) and some cool multi media table top devices.