We Heart Mail letter to Agus

I haven't shared any sent mails for We Heart Mail project for a while, so I decided to show you what I sent all way long to Argentina - to Agus. With a long delay, mail's theme was Sea, Summer. Luckily for me, right now summer begins in Argentina, so my letter was right in time!

I found a few vintage style postcards - black and white reprint of old photo and some colorful postcards of vintage style swimming suits wearing ladies. Letter with two foot paperclip (I find them really cute  :) ) and stickers.

Here  I packed handmade earrings for Agus' summer outfit

What is summer without flowers? Couldn't send fresh flowers, so I went for brooch with cabochon. 

As Sea is so close with blue color, I tried to pick up some little blue things. Here you can see some of them - blue thread on wood spool (love to use those vintage Soviet time thread spools for holding washi tapes), packed towel (that little square with manly man is packed towel - you need to put it into water and it repacks itself- funky thing what to take with you on beach trip!) and off course -   different blue candies (including German chocolate Schogetten, classic Latvian candy Serenade and really traditional - Gotiņa (Cow - made of condensed milk)). 

So this bright blue-purple-yellow package was sent to Argentina. I really hope Agus liked it! I am sure she has received it, so if she will post some more photos in her blog, I will let you know!  

Thanks for stepping by! I have sent out recently a few mail packages, so soon, very soon, I will post about them as well!  Keep in touch!

Happy Postcrossing Birthday!

Today is kind of little birthday for me! Today I am member of Postcrossing for 4 years! I started to send out postcards just for fun as I enjoyed receiving them from my friend trips earlier. In these 4 years this has turned into a bigger hobby and helped me to set up some new goals.

I really really want to collect a postcard from every country. I have already quite nice collection, but if you are from country I am missing or you have a friend there, please, please, send me a postcard (a regular postcard with touristic view will work perfectly! )! Last weekend I re-made list of received postcards, now you can see it here: Postcard list Those countries I have a postcard from already, are bold and if you click on the name of country, you will see album of all postcards from this country I have received! Please, note that I have added to country list special territories as well, that comes from ISO 3166 standard.
I have received question about my address, so click here to see it!

To celebrate this little milestone, here are postcards I sent out today!

How to find a pin's origin?

Am I the only one who sometimes feels in love with some pin on Pinterest so much that there is a huge urge to check out the blog or web site it came from? I believe it's not something rare as we all know how many great tips and tricks and just inspiration could be found in one simple site! However, sometimes it's not so easy because a pin has a direct link which opens only one particular photo, not the whole page it comes from. Here I have one simple tip, how to get to the page of your new favorite DIY project!
Note, this works only using Chrome browser!

So here is one pin  (on the right) with a beautiful photo of nice packing idea I wanted to look at more. 

I find it really disturbing when clicking on a pin (as in this example with packing idea) it opens a direct link of the picture which gives you no idea which page it could be from (I am talking about this).
So, when that happens, right click on the picture and choose Search Google for this image.

There will be a new tab opened for Google to search this picture. Just go through the list of pages where Google has found a particular image and I am sure you will find that template/pattern/life hack you really wanted to see!

It may not be so easy for popular images, but isn't it worth a try?

By the way, the pin I used as an example, is from this beautiful blog:  www.lily.fi

And feel free to take a look at my Pinterest page HERE  !  :)

Last weeks in a short review

What would be a real Autumn if I were not sleeping sick at home?! So fall season is here and while I am drinking a lot of herbal tea and eating oranges, I wanted to show you some of my favorite shots from past few weeks. I done a lot of great stuff, I can' t resist to tell you more!

This is my little kitten which is not so little anymore!
 (3 months ago he looked like this )

I had a super great walk in forest full of mushrooms and
I had so much fun to take a photos of them!
Latvians are truly mushrooms pickers, we love it!  :)

A few weeks ago I had a little trip with my family to National park
next to cliffs where you can hear unique echo

One more picture with my family - next to manor where my mum used to learn.
This is so beautiful - to study in hundred years old building where used to live landlords! 

Every year at Autumn I start to think that this could be
my favorite season because of all of these colors!

My duke Shadow again.
Isn' t he a beauty?

I managed to take a little break from my weekly Saturday rush and
I had a tea with old friend of mine - we met in my student organisation years ago
and now we both are old and can make a little talk how new people are crazy :)  

One more dedication to Latvian Autumn!

Can't resist to show you this photo. Dark Knight 

And here is the cute kitten back again...

Time after time I make some Instagram worth pictures.
 I mean-photos of my food  :)  Queen size cherry ice cream it is!

One more of cat...

Last Thursday I went to see workshop of Latvian drummer Rick Fed. He is really good
as his show together with one of old Latvian pop-stars was really good as well!  

On Friday I took photos of Jonathan Kreisberg workshop and
concert later that night. Really nice performance!

This is last photo of Shadow this time - in his new bed he made by himself
(yes, that is bath and yes, my cat loves water)

Early Saturday morning started with big cold here so I get chance to make
 some 3 or 4 photos of frost. That time of year is there!

That frosty Saturday morning I took a part of orientation contest
 where the whole team needs to find given objects and to prove that - take a picture
 of at least one team member and the object. Here you can see almost
 all my team members - great friends since university times!  

And here - a duck in Autumn!

Have fun this Autumn and see you soon!  

Photo shooting in forest

I want to show you some photos from a photo shoot I had with my friend Kika from Kristine Lamberte photography. We went to a local forest that is a little bit outside of city center and got some really nice photos. The light was stunning and if not for massive mosquito attacks, we could have taken a lot more pictures!  Enjoy!

How to take a close up photo

Lately I have seen a lot of photos which should show more details - sequin, stitch, maybe some parts of flower or child's eye. My favorite photos are this kind of photography, called macro, so I wanted to share with you simple tip, how to create a good, sharp shot of some close up things.

Those who have a simple camera or use the camera built in your phone may have seen a figure of a little flower as pictured below.

This tulip means your camera will turn to macro photography with focusing on closer elements. You may want to turn off auto focus (AF) and choose the focus distance yourself. This could be fighting for millimeters, so I suggest you to shoot in as bright conditions as possible. If you have shaking hands, a tripod or pile of books/something similar will be your friend to get sharp picture. 

Below you can see a photo taken with macro settings, but AF - as a result the focus is on the ground and behind the main object not the sprout ends witch should be in focus.

The magnolia in the photo below is shot with no macro setting so the camera has found an auto focus point as far as possible.

Sometimes you may want to get the focus on one subject very close and other elements just right after it - out of focus. That is called depth of field and in the camera settings it is the letter F with different numbers. The bigger number follows F letter, the more things will be in focus. The smaller the number the smaller will be line of focus. If you want to see sharp only one part of flower, example stigma, you can use very small F number, like F2 or even F1.8. If you want to see the whole flower sharp, use F8 or different, depending on the size of the subject.

Below I added an example of different of depths of field. First picture is taken on F2 and second - F22.

  

This is my first post about photography so if you want to clear out something mentioned here, feel free to do so in comments!

Thanks for stepping by!

We heart mail: Part 5

Haven't shared any nice letter for a while, so let's start a new week with something wonderful! Like this colorful letter I received from my We♥Mail partner Catherine from France!

This little package included everything needed to make me smile so take a look what was inside!

Cosmos seeds will bring you to the moon and back or ...  will bring some really nice flowers to your garden! 

French stamps for my philatelist's heart - very big and very beautiful stamps! Love them!

Two cute crocheted brooches. As I have grey wool coat, I know that these flowers will be attached on it to.

Catherine wrote her letter on postcards - colorful multiview card, poster type art postcard and wonderful (looks and feels like vintage?) black and white postcard with castle in the fog. Roses in background are on handmade envelope.

And last but not least with flower theme - flowers which I can iron on fabric!

Sometimes snail mails turns into little package with a lot of very cute and nice things,but not always I am sure how to use them or where to put in my extremly small apartment. So let me tell you that this letter was briliant because nothing was spare - I love postcards and stamps and they are on their way to my collection (read about it more HERE) and seeds I will use for sure, just like iron-on and brooch flowers.

Thank you Catherine very much! I love your package!  :)

To all my readers I wish to write at least one letter to some friend or just random person and make it so good that it will really bring a lot of happiness to others (and yourself)!

Have a great week!