Under sail

A view up the sails on a beautiful day on the water.  Our sails were actually a clean, beautiful white, but I decided to play around with some textures to change the tonal quality of the image.  I particularly like the sun peaking around the mast.  Since I have tons of photos to edit from my trip (and still have many from Africa last September), I'll probably be posting existing photos that I'm working on over the next few weeks.

Moses II

Here is another shot of Moses that is similar to one I posted a couple of weeks ago.  The big difference is this is my photo, and the one I posted before was actually shot by my good friend and fellow photographer, Larry Tyler.  We were together when we were taking all of these images and shared our SD cards with one another.  Today when I was downloading all my photos from the trip to my computer, I realized that I had inadvertently posted the one Larry shot rather than my own.  I greatly apologize, Larry, I didn't realize my error until now, and would never lay claim to another person's work.  However, I am happy to have been able to feature Larry's great photo on my blog.  Anyway, here is a slightly different version of Moses.  I like Larry's image better since you can see Moses' eyes in his photo and in mine his eye is covered by the smoke.  Just wanted to set the record straight!

Women of Dominica

Some women sitting together at a house on the beach in Dominica. Used some textures and desaturated color to enhance the ambiance of timelessness and earthiness I sensed in this scene.


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Location:Roseau, Dominca

Fun times....good laughs

Great friends, sweet lobsters, and chilled rose....who cares if it rains?


Living the good life......


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Location:St. Bart's

A good omen

On the morning of the last day we sailed, we were treated with this sight while we had our coffee.




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Location:Deshaies, Guadeloupe

Moses

Very spotty wi-fi.....my last post failed, so I'll try again. We're in Dominica and went for a great hike yesterday to see an amazing waterfall. At the trailhead there was a "rastarant" owned by this beautiful Rastafarian man, Moses, and his family. My favorite shot of the day.



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Location:Victoria St,Roseau,Dominica

Final lighting class entry - "Subject" returns!

Last night was, sadly, my last night in my Lighting class.  I will have to miss the last two weeks since I'll be away on vacation.  I've learned much more than I ever thought I would and have made some new friends.  I'll really miss the experience.  Also, we had an excellent teacher and he has a great website http://billluskphotography.com and I'd encourage you to check out his work.

The assignment for this photo was to create an image where the source of the light was shown in the image.  For those of you who followed my 365 blog, you'll know my husband George started referring to himself as "Subject" since he was in so many photos.  I haven't featured him in the blog this year yet, but here he is with me in this image of us having dinner in our dining room.  This shot was lit with only candles and the chandelier.

Test blog

I'm testing this with my iPad to make sure I can post when I'm on vacation over the next couple of weeks. Let's see if it works.

Another gorilla photo that I happen to have on my iPad.

Large set lighting

This past week our lighting assignment was to create and light a setting that is large in relationship to the subject.  We were also asked to do this twice, each time with different lighting to change the quality of the image.  I did another self-portrait, because I'm tired of doing objects and I have no one else to photograph during the day.  We also had to stay in our "genre", so I continued the theme of a woman dressing for a formal evening out (like the photo I posted of the woman with the earring).  This shot involved 4 separate lights on top of the lamps and ambient lighting in the rooms, along with a reflector and a cutter. I wasn't too happy about either shot, but of the two I shot, I liked this one better, so I thought I'd post it.  We don't have to show these until next week, so I may reshoot this assignment doing something else.  I usually like my reshoots better.  Anyway, here's the post for the week.

Work boots in the light

Another lighting assignment.  This one was to create an image where it is clear that the is coming from  a single direction.  I finally spent some quality time with a book and my flash to learn how to do use my flash, so I used one flash set high and angled to hit just before the boots to cast hard shadows on the concrete floor to emulate a the sun coming in at a low angle.  I added a 25w bulb reflected off a white board to provide a little fill light on the right.

I particularly like the textures in this shot.

Baby gorilla

Since we just ended a class and are starting a new one tonight, I didn't have any lighting assignments for this week.  Instead, I've been back to editing my photos from Africa and have been working primarily on the shots of the gorillas we trekked to see in the rain forests of Rwanda.  One of my favorite sights was this tiny (6 weeks old or so) gorilla baby looking up at me.  To get a feel for how small she was and how big her mother is, check out mom's fingers in the upper left hand side of the image.  Such a precious bundle....hopefully increasing the numbers of this remarkable, but very endangered, species.

Lady with earring

Another assignment for my lighting class.  This is the last class in the intermediate course, and I've decided to stick it with it another 6 weeks for the advanced course.  I took the first class hoping I'd learn to use my nifty flash attachment, but so far we haven't even talked about flash.  He promises in the final class we'll finally learn about it.

Our final assignment was to create a photo (or series of photos) that bring together the body of work we've done in the past two classes.  We were also asked to choose an adjective to evoke a certain feeling.  The choices were "scary" "lighthearted" "emptiness" "desire" and "strength".

Here is one of the shots of a series I'm hoping to get done by Tuesday.  I've ruled out "scary" and "lighthearted" but haven't decided whether I'll head toward "emptiness", "desire" or even possibly "strength"....

One thing I've decided is a self-portrait with studio lighting (and no assistants) is pure torture.  I took over 100 shots yesterday and today and only have 5 that work at all.  Not my favorite assignment.  If I decide to do more portraits, I'm finding a model!

Still life in morning sunlight

This week our lighting assignment was to photograph a subject using a combination of ambient light and "built" lighting.  I did the assignment yesterday afternoon using this subject and lighting the dark corner to balance with the existing light in my dining room.  This morning I went in to clean up and saw the lovely natural light coming through the windows and casting prisms throughout the room through the crystals of the chandelier.  I decided to take a quick shot with this lovely light (but no "built" aka "studio" light).  I liked this shot better than any I took yesterday and I liked the color better than the black and white.  I edited it with a great deal of clarity and saturation, so it took on a "painterly" quality that seems to fit the subject.

New lighting assignment

The assignment for my lighting class this week was using "cutters".  Cutters allow the photographer to establish different lighting zones in the image so that you can light each one separately.  In this image I'm using one cutter to block the light from my background, and another one to cast a window shadow on the background.  I used my key light to highlight the still life.  Another light was used through the window cutter to light the background, and a third light was used to create the reflections on the necklace.

The idea for this photo is a late night after a dressy party out.  The moon is casting a shadow on the wall behind the clutter of cast off shoes, jewelry and a left over rose.  I'm not over the moon about the image, but I loved doing the assignment!

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.

Cheetahs

I just finished editing some photos from our trip to Tanzania and Rwanda in September and liked these two cheetah images.  I've also started my new photography class on lighting and have been doing lots of photography, but nothing I'm thrilled about posting.  Right now we're trying to learn how to produce soft and hard light with specular and diffused highlights.  A good exercise and I've learned a lot, but the images I produced were more technical than "post-worthy".

I'm also putting together some of my Africa photos on SmugMug, so if you want to check out those, go to http://debwarrenphotography.smugmug.com.  I'm just setting up the site and there are only two galleries at this point, so hopefully soon I'll have more to see.

Kiawah Sunset

I just finished editing this photo of the sun setting at Kiawah and thought I'd share it.

Beginning of a new year

I've decided to do a "loose" 52 week photography blog as a follow up to the 365 day blog I did in 2010.  After experiencing what it was like to do the 365 blog, I've decided to be a little kinder and gentler to myself this time.  This is my first post of a 52 week blog for 2012, and already I've been a little "loose" since technically the photo should have been posted by last night at midnight.  Oh well.  My "rules" this year are also a little loose.  Since I have more than 1000 photos still left to edit from our Africa trip this year, I've decided that I will post any photo that I'm currently (or recently) working on, even if I didn't take the photo during the week.  My goal is to have a higher quality of work to post in lieu of the discipline of taking a new photo every week.  I still want to use this blog to get the camera in my hand often, but I also know that doing good editing is also an important part of the process and I want to balance the two.  I'm also getting ready to start a new photography class tomorrow night for the next 4 weeks, so I know I'll be grabbing my camera a lot during the remainder of January.

I imagine I'll be posting a lot of my photos from Africa since I'll be editing those over the next couple of months, but this first posting represents some photos I took in Kiawah in late December.  I've been experimenting with low saturated, high exposure shots lately, and these two represent that type of photography.  I'm still all over the board on developing my own style, so experimentation continues to be part of my development.

Here's to 2012!