Laura xx

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I started this series last year but I loved it so much that I wanted to continue it this year so here we are! For most people, January is quite a down year because it is straight after christmas and the weather is cold and rainy. January been 'meh' for me, with good points and bad points. 

Starting with a good point, one of my resolutions was to meet up with my friends more which I have been doing. I spent New Year's Eve with my friend and we had photoshoot #2. It was so much fun even if we did hide upstairs for most of the evening and only go down for midnight! I went shopping with one of my friends and we also had coffee one day after school. My friendships have been something that has definitely gone through a roller coaster the past month but I won't go into that too much because it is very personal. 

I went back to school this month and dived straight into homework and tests. After a term with my teachers and settling in, I have realised that some of them really don't know what they are doing and it is really annoying me. There is only two weeks until half term though so I am looking forward to that, especially as me and my family are going to visit my extended family for a weekend. 

As for blogging, this has definitely been a highlight for me. I have been pre-planning and writing my posts so I am so happy with the quality. I have written posts for companies which I am so proud of and feel like they are the best posts I have written over the past month. Also, the response to my posts have been absolutely amazing so thank you so much! Back in November, I was feeling so bad about this blog but I feel like I have definitely bounced back in the new year and I hope this continues. I have some exciting posts coming up, in my opinion so I hope you really enjoy them. 

Most of you probably don't know this, but I play netball for a club. Before christmas. I was playing for the B team at my club but now I have moved up to the A team! I really love playing with the team as they are so nice and the games are so good to play. 

As for next month, I am not really sure what is going to happen as I haven't got much planned yet. I hope that my friendship issues solve because they are really affecting me at the moment. I also want to start working more on my resolutions!

How was your month?

Laura xx

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For christmas, I received some new bits and bobs for my camera, including a tripod and a bag, and it has really inspired me to get more into photography, and not just for my blog. I really enjoy the process of  taking a photo and editing it. Today I am working with Light, a new camera company, to show you my favourite place to take photos as part of their #VantagePoint project. 

When I first heard about this idea, I started thinking about all the crazy places I have taken photos, from speedboats to concerts. I have taken photos in loads of places but actually my favourite place to take them is my bedroom window. I know this sounds a bit weird but bare with me! I have a huge bedroom window that spans the entire width of my bedroom. The view from it is of the houses in front of me but as I live on a hill, they don't obstruct all of it. On a clear day, I can see for miles in an 180 degrees direction. 

One of the most beautiful things I see from my window is sunsets and these have to be my favourite things to take pictures of. I actually have so many I have a separate folder on my computer for all of them! Not only are they beautiful, sunsets have a big significance for me being that the end can be beautiful and how they mark a new beginning, which I talked about in this post.

However, my favourite photo I have taken is the one of "traffic trails" (I think that is the right word!). I actually shared this photo in my Autumn Photos post but I thought I would talk about in more detail and talk about the steps I took to take the photo. I spend a lot of my life on Instagram (too much of it) and I saw a photo posted by ThriftyVintageFashion of traffic trails and I absolutely loved it. It made me want to take a picture like that myself. 

Step no. 1 : Setting up the camera

Obviously the first step is to set up the camera. For me, this was pre-tripod days so I had to make do with whatever I had at hand, which turned out to be a speaker and a book. I set the portable speaker on top of a book and then the camera on top of the speaker. 

Step no. 2 : Camera settings

After extensive googling and testing it out myself, I discovered how to take photos of traffic trails. You need to change the exposure on your camera and I did this by changing into Long Shutter. What this does is increases the exposure time so that you can capture more light, I think. If the exposure number is higher, the more light is let in and vice versa. To take the photo, I set my camera to Long Shutter which meant that it did it automatically, however I could change the number and I set it to 8.

Step no. 3 : Taking the photo

Now comes the waiting! I live on a quiet road and I took the photo quite late at night so I had to wait a while for a car to appear. As soon as I saw it I pressed the 'take photo' button on my camera. It turned out like above and I was really happy with it. You could also edit the photo if you wanted! 

Those are the steps of how I took my picture and I hope you learnt something! Light are working on a fancy new camera that is as strong as a DSLR but almost the size of a phone that is being released later this year and I am definitely excited to see what it is like!

Where is your favourite place to take a photo?

Laura xx

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Disclaimer: Although this is written in collaboration with Light, all of these opinions and thoughts are my own. I am not being payed to write this post.

Hello I am back! I took a short unanticipated break from this blog for just over two weeks. School work has been really tough lately and I have had quite a few assessments to do and I couldn't mange blogging as well. As well as school, my views were going down and this made me feel really bad even though views shouldn't matter. I am really sorry for the break even though I am still on social media. I am going to be taking another break until the 13th December when I will be back with 12 Days of Blogmas!! 

So many things have happened this month and last month so let's just get started! 

Can someone please tell me how it is November! October has gone by so quickly, it is crazy. I didn't do much in October as I was settling into school and dealing with the school work. In September, I mentioned that I was looking for guest posts and this month I had two of them which I loved! The topics were so good and you can read them here and here. I hope you enjoyed them as much as I did. Thank you so much Katy and B1tsandbeautyy for writing them.

Guess who is back with another Autumn post! If you read my why I love Autumn post, you will know that Autumn is my favourite season. I also love taking photos and kind of recently bought a new camera. I have been experimenting with it and am pretty proud of the photos I have taken so I decided to share them with you. 

I have always wondered how people take a pictures of the traffic trails of car lights and I was messing around with some of the settings on my camera when I discovered how to do it. Before the end of the year, I want to go to a really busy road and do it there and see what it looks like with loads of cars instead of one. If you would like to know how I did this please let me know! 

A couple of months ago, I wrote a post called How I edit my blog photos and you seemed to really like it so i am back with another photo editing post, this time with my instagram photos. I really enjoy taking photos for Instagram even though I forget to post often. 

The first thing I do is take the photo. Depending on where I am, I either use my camera, the Canon SX410 IS, which you can buy here, or my phone which is a Samsung Galaxy S4 mini. The difference of the quality is below. Most of the time, I use my phone. 

September has been a slightly tough month for me but I had a feeling it would be. I went back to school so I have been very busy doing homework. Unfortunately this has meant that I haven;t had time to blog as much as I want to let alone any time to comment on anyone's posts. I have been struggling to write 2 posts weekly that are a quality I am proud of so sorry. For example, the reason that this post is late is because I was busy with extra curricular stuff. 

I have been loving writing these posts and I am now so in the routine of them. The whole process of reflecting on a month and then moving on from it is really therapeutic and I get so excited to write them. I hope you have been enjoying them! 

This month has been quite hectic but also quite rewarding (I don't know if that is the right word). As I went on holiday on the 14th, the first two weeks of August was spent packing and scheduling blog posts, all of which I was really proud of and you can read them here, here and here. Those weeks were so busy that I didn't get to meet up with my friends which was a shame because I really wanted to see them.

Hi I am back! I spent the last 10ish days in Spain and had a lovely time. In case you missed it, I did upload a few posts whilst I was away were: What is in my handluggage, Liebster Award #2 and a guest post titled The Truth about being homeless. I really hope you enjoyed the posts and thank you so much for the lovely comments I have been receiving, they make my day. 

All of these photos were taken with my new camera which is the Canon Powershot SX410 IS, would you like to see a post on it? 

I was thinking about doing this post in the same format as my Wales Photo Diary, but decided that it would be too long so I split the photos into 2 collages. I hope you like this format! I am also in the process of making a spain video diary (like my wales one which is here) so I will let you know when that is up! 

Yesterday I arrived back home from my weekend away in Wales with my family. It was really nice to get away and relax and I had a good time, even though it was cold and rainy. I took quite a few pictures (over 200 oops) so I am going to share some of them with you.