Key West sunset

Since Key West is known for it's beautiful sunsets (and crazy crowds cheering them on), I thought this would be a good post from our trip.  We bought a new camera and after taking it on this trip I'm impressed with the sharpness and good low light capabilities it has.

New camera.....old subject

We bought a new point and shoot camera for Valentine's Day and played around with it yesterday.  It's a Fujifilm X10 and so far it's been a pretty impressive little camera.  Just took a few shots around the house for a test drive and since it's been a very long time since I've posted a photo of one of my cats, I thought this one of Hobbes deserved a post.  Not a great image, but I'm heading out to Key West for a few days and am not taking my laptop, so I don't know if I'll have another chance to post this week.  Hopefully next week I'll have some nice shots from our trip.

White anemone

This is the color version of the photo I'll probably use for my next lighting class.  I was attempting to use fairly soft light, but in this version of the photo, I amped up the contrast a little bit.  I particularly liked the patina on the julep cup.

Tulip

I've just started working on my lighting assignment for my next class, and I'm continuing to stick with my genre of "all things organic".  I'll probably work with flowers most of the time, but I also may expand my definition of organic if I get bored.  This image isn't for the assignment....I didn't have enough time to get into it today....I just did some test shots...but I like photographing tulips, so I thought I'd post it.  I processed it in color and B&W, and I think I actually like the color shot for a change.

Lions

I'm taking advantage of not having a lighting assignment this week to edit some more of my photos from our trip to Africa.  Here are my favorite two from today.  A majestic male lion and a gorgeous female.

Boxwood

Haven't been able to do much editing lately, but this is the image for my lighting class this week.  Our assignment was to create a photograph where the lighting difference from the light side of the image (lighted by the "key" light) is a 2:1 ratio of the light from the secondary "fill" light.  It's a number that is measured by the camera's light meter and it was in interesting exercise to get the proportions just right.  Can you see the difference?

Lily

The assignment for my lighting class this week was to create an image using side light and rim light, using either hard or soft light and choosing a high key or low key exposure.  For my subject I chose this small lily.  I enjoyed playing with the lighting configuration, especially since I'm still new to using studio type lighting, and getting the right mixture of the side light and rim light was a good challenge.  I loved learning about rim lighting (creating light that comes from the back side angle of the subject to provide a small outline of lighting on the far side of the shadow created by the side light).  Before I got this last image, I had been photographing in my new basement "studio" for almost 4 pleasurable hours.  We convert all of our images to B&W for this class, but I also liked the color photo, so I'm posting both.