self-timed selfie of the day

And I'm back!  Back after two perfect weeks on holiday in the sunshine. Mostly the sunshine anyway.  The lovely man and I have been lucky enough to spend a fortnight in the Caribbean, staying briefly at Fort Lauderdale in the USA before heading to the Bahamas, and the Cayman Islands.  Finally a quick jaunt in Miami put the finishing touch to our Grand Holiday.

We really did have a wonderful time, and I have lots of pictures to share over the coming weeks, as I'm hoping to blog more regularly.  Something I found though was that as part of a couple, its very easy to end up without pictures of the two of you together.  In fact on the third day of our adventure, we were very adventurously relaxing on a beach - a very adventurous beach with adventurous sun loungers - and I noted out loud: "We've now been here for three days and I don't have a single picture of us!". Every scrapbooker's nightmare.

The advantage of noting things out loud is that other people can hear you, and in fact a nice American lady did hear me and appeared over the top of my sun lounger and offered to take a photo of us.  It was a very kind offer, and we dutifully trooped off across the sand for our picture.  I was glad to have it but unfortunately, there are two problems.  Firstly, my camera is chunky being a dSLR, and permanently set to manual and needs careful focusing, which means it's not easy to hand over to passing holidaymakers.  Secondly, I am intolerably vain and selfish and I like to be the one to take the photos exactly the way I want them.  Even when I'm in them. 

This was the auspicious beginning of selfie-of-the-day. Using the man as a focus point, I could set up the self timer and make the 10-second dash to be in the picture too. That way, I get to take the picture I want and be in it, and everybody (but mainly me) is happy.  As I said: vain and selfish.

And he not only put up with it very well indeed, but we were able to take many such pictures during the fortnight.  The only problem is, he waits until the last minute... and then points.  

Just to clarify, he's not pointing at anything.

He thinks he's funny.

Unfortunately, I think he's funny too...

 So I have the most ridiculous collection of holiday snaps of him being daft, and me being oblivious.  Or me doing mock-angry. Or me just giggling.  Yes, it's a ridiculous collection, but it's also a rather lovely collection full of personality and laughter and there's no way I'm getting rid of the silly ones!

As long as he understood that we were going to do the self-timer as many times as it takes to get the proper photo too...

The photo above is a particularly ludicrous example.  While swimming in the sea early one evening, I thought a selfie-of-the-day in the sea might be  good idea.  With the camera propped on the sand above the tide line, I asked the man to stand in the water.  The beach drops off and gets deep pretty quickly, and I estimated the distance I thought I could cover during the self-timer if I ran down the beach and swam to where he was.  With this all sorted, I turned to sort out the camera, set it up, and pushed the shutter to start the 10 second dash.

As you can see, I didn't make it.  I was surprised by quite how wildly I had over-estimated my ability to get to the point where he was standing.

It was quite some time before I clocked what had happened.  When I wasn't looking he swam backwards, further out to sea, and then waited for me to make a numpty of myself as I attempted to complete two thirds of a triathlon inside ten seconds.

Epic fail :D

Still, if you can't beat them, join them! In the picture above, I though it might look a bit Indiana Jones down in the tunnels of the Pirate Museum.  Although in fact it looks less Indiana and more Intoxicated.  Even though we weren't.

More than anything though, I'm grateful that he has the patience to let me play with my camera, and the good humour to make it fun!  I've come back with a whole clutch of photos that I love and some fantastic memories.

I hope you all had a lovely half term!

Kisses xxx

P.S. While it would be lovely to travel around on half term all the time *sigh* I fully intend to look on the bright side.  Now that it's November, one can legitimately start embracing the festive season and I'm excited to get underway with plans for a Londony Christmas.

P.P.S. I will do a post soon about how I set up the camera on the ground for the self-timed floor-level shots!  But I give you fair warning to expect the lowest of low-tech.