Studying Photography

Posted on Nov 30, 2012 by Lewis & Kim Brown

I know I have been incredibly quiet on our blog so far this year, but there had been a reason for that…. I had been incredibly busy studying for an NCFE qualification in Photography. Also you may have noticed that I have been joined by another contributor who has been recently posting on the blog. It is of course my wife Kim (kimsideas) who has been blogging about her Mary Berry Baking Challenge and I hope everyone has been enjoying reading her postings and just maybe, you have been having a go yourself at baking some of her posts.

So back to my course…. The course started in September 2011 at the Adult Education centre in Brampton Road, Bexleyheath. After attending each Saturday morning for 3 hours, and quite a lot of homework, I finally completed the course in May 2012 and am very pleased to report that I did in fact manage to pass!!!

Does this mean I’m a better photographer now? Well to be honest I don’t think that’s for me to say, although I will say that my post production workflow has definitely benefited from the course.

As far as I can tell, the NCFE Photography courses are available in level 1 and level 2 only. I have completed the level 1 course and was going to start the level 2 course about now, but sadly this will now have to wait till next September now.

So what is NCFE? Well please visit the following link which explains who NCFE are and how they are recognised – http://www.ncfe.org.uk/AboutNCFE.aspx

The course covers all aspects of photography from the functions on your d-SLR camera and how it works, to image framing and composition and then moves onto the final aspect which is post production and photo editing within Adobe Photoshop.

I think some of the students on my course thought this was going to be a simple attend 3 hours a week and not much else. Nothing could be further from the truth!!! Not only did you have some projects to shoot, normally submitting 12 images per subject matter, but there was an awful lot of typing up to do by creating notes in an Evidence Folder which would demonstrate not only what you learnt, but also how you learnt it.

The very final stage of the course was the final Portfolio which had to fulfill some quite open subject matters…

I chose “Spirit of the Place” and therefore chose to photograph churches, taking 7 interior images and 7 exterior images.

: Clock Tower – St George’s Church, Bickley

: Entrance – St George’s Church, Bickley

: Gated Entrance – St Nicholas Church, Chislehurst

: Church Window – Christ Church, Chislehurst

: Follow the Path – St Nicholas Church, Chislehurst

: Side Door – St Nicholas Church, Chislehurst

: Stone Arch – St George’s Church, Bickley

: Church Corridor – Bromley Parish Church

: Organ Pipes – Bromley Parish Church

: Alter – Bromley Parish Church

: Stained Glass Window – Bromley Parish Church

: Church Interior – Bromley Parish Church

: Stone Mounted Cross – Bromley Parish Church

: Wooden Eagle Lectern – Bromley Parish Church

Although this wasn’t covered in the course, I chose to demonstrate some of the skills I had by creating HDR (High Dynamic Range) images. This consisted of taking 7 seperately exposed images all in RAW format and then combining them using Photomatix and Photoshop to create a single image.

Even if I say so myself, I think some of the results were absolutely amazing!!!! Ok it’s fair to say that i spent days on each image to try and make sure it met my perception of being “correct”. In hindsight, I probably took far too long over the editing.

Week fourteen – Mary Berry’s Very Special Scones & Special Fruit Scones

Posted on Nov 25, 2012 by kimsideas

It’s been a very busy week and an even busier weekend and I wasn’t sure I was going to get time to bake this week but I managed to find time – at the expense of the ironing…..oh well……(smile).

I thought scones would be fairly quick and easy this week and the recipes for Mary Berry’s special scones and special fruit scones were so similar, I kind of cheated and made the dough, halved it and added the fruit, so covering two recipes in one week. Otherwise, I will still be at this challenge a year from now!

Any way, the mix was straight forward, the dough was sticky, as Mary explains and it turned out very sticky. I found my fluted cutter and cut out my first batch. I placed those on my baking tray and then rolled out the second fruited batch and then into the oven they went.

Mary recommends 10-15 minutes for the bake and having made a few of her recipes, and often had to add a few minutes, I set the timer for 15 minutes…….oh silly me! Well Mary says they should be risen and golden, I think “golden” could loosely describe the colour of them! I think they might be a bit crunchy!

Week Thirteen…migraine alert….Oat Biscuits AND Dorchester Biscuits

Posted on Nov 19, 2012 by kimsideas

Wow, week thirteen came upon me so quickly and as my thumb was feeling better, I was going to tackle something more savoury, something like one of the bread recipes which can take some time-and kneading!

But come Saturday morning, i was struck with the worst migraine I have ever had, nausea, sickness, banging head, and no tablets would touch it- I was put back to bed and Saturday was a complete washout. I felt a little better on Sunday and went shopping, taking it easy as I could feel the headache still there….sigh.

Anyway, I didn’t want to miss a week, so decided on the oats biscuits recipe and then decided I liked the Dorchester biscuit recipe too so decided to do another ” 2 for 1″ recipe weeks.

The oats biscuits , Mary claims are a relative of the digestive biscuit, kind of but I think they are more along the lines of hob-nobs and Mary, I rolled, and re-rolled, but I couldn’t get 16 biscuits out of my mix! I managed 12 and I think I got a pretty even bake so I was happy with them.

The Dorchester biscuit, I had never heard of but it was a savoury kind of biscuit so I went with it, made the mix and Mary then recommends that you roll “walnut” sized balls, and slightly press them down, sprinkle some crushed nuts on the top and you should get about 30 out of your batch? Really? I think my idea of walnut size and Mary’s are quite different!

Any way, the Dorchester biscuit is a strange entity, it kind of thinks it’s a cheese straw but with added nuts, but I thought although unusual, they were rather scrummy!

Week Twelve – Marbled Chocolate Ring Cake

Posted on Nov 11, 2012 by kimsideas

Week twelve and I feel like I have settled into this challenge now and look forward to what to make next. This week was a special week for me as I passed my Social Care with Children & Families Diploma, and with a Distinction too! Woohooo! So I was looking for this week’s inspiration with the view of a celebration and this fitted the moment, and I could do it in my mixer, as my thumb is on the road to recovery but not up to any hand mixing yet.

Mary Berry’s recipe called for a ring mould tin and to line this. Not as easy as it sounds so I thought I would look online to see if there any any hints and tips. Unfortunately I found nothing, zip, nada…….so decided to give it a go myself. It didn’t look pretty but it did the job!

The mix was pretty straightforward, just throw pretty much everything in a bowl and mix- my kind of cooking! Then add half this mixture in various places in the tin, add the cocoa/water mix to the rest of the mix , and then add to the tin. This should give it it’s marbled effect. Then into the oven for 40 minutes or so.

40 minutes later and the buzzer pinged, I looked at it but it was a bit underdone so I added another 5 minutes to the timer. Then it was done , time for a little cooling and then to tip it out. The paper lining worked well and came off easily and then the cake was left to cool.

The topping is pretty much dark chocolate, mixed with some butter and melted, then poured on the top. Mine covered the whole cake but didn’t look as smooth as Mary’s photo in the bible. This topping then needed to cool before the final drizzle of milk chocolate to finish it off.

I am pleased with the final result and can’t wait to cut into it to see how well the marbled sponge came out. Oh, and my certificate is in the photo – to prove that I did it and I can now add the following letters after my name – S.A.C. Dip……. very posh so……

signing off for week twelve’s efforts

Kim, S.A.C. Dip.

Week Eleven – Gingerbread Traybake

Posted on Nov 4, 2012 by kimsideas

My hubby actually asked last week if Mary Berry’s Bible had any gingerbread recipes in it as he fancied some gingerbread……well when I looked, there are several gingerbread recipes so I read each one carefully as my thumb is still out of action and I needed a recipe that I could manage with one hand.

So, most of this recipe involved weighing most of the ingredients into a large saucepan, heating gently, to melt them all together, adding the flour and spices and finally beating in four eggs and some milk. The last part was bit tricky but I managed it without needing hubby’s help and only dropped one egg on the floor and the dogs thought their luck had changed!

This recipe calls for quite a lot of each ingredient and I found at the end of the mix that the tray I used, (the size that Mary Berry recommends in her recipe) there was too much to fit in this so I dug out a smaller round tin and lined that and ended up with a tray bake AND a round bake too………

The gingerbread seemed easy enough to make, loads of treacle in it though so it’s going to be very sweet. It baked well and was ready at the recommended time. I took both tins out and let them stand for a while before turning them out onto the cooling rack.

Once they were both totally cool, I made the topping, Mary recommends using icing sugar, a small amount of water and some finely chopped crystallised ginger. This is when my hubby made me laugh, he asked what the topping was made of and when I told him about the crystallised ginger, he said “BLEUGHHHHHH!!” I was highly amused that he asked me to make a GINGERBREAD cake but didn’t want TINY amounts of GINGER on the topping……..MEN!!!!!