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!

One last shot and I'm outta' here!

It's with sadness and joy that I post my last entry in my 365 photo blog.  It's been a wonderful experience. Have I become a better photographer than I was on 1/1/2010?  Not so sure.  But I've learned a great deal about photography and about myself.  For one thing, I've learned that I've never engaged in any art that I've found more inspiring and captivating, and I know that creating images will always be a significant part of my life.

After a few days of thought, I'll post my learnings from the year and what's next for me.  I do know that I'll keep posting when I have something worthwhile to show, just not everyday.  There may not be as many photos of my kitties or George drinking, but I know I want to keep this process in my life to some degree.

In the meantime, thanks to all of you who have followed me and given me feedback.  You've been gentle, kind and encouraging and kept me at this everyday even when I just didn't think I had it in me to post one more time.  So Happy New Year and stay tuned for future developments!

After exercise

I just finished exercising this morning and decided to take this image of me sitting on the floor. I tried a couple of different lenses, but like the effect of using a wide angle. I also like the bits of light coming into the room reflecting on the wood floor.

Bed

I don't know why, but I'm exhausted today, so all I want to do is crawl into bed.  I just got ready to climb in when I remembered that I hadn't done a photo today.  So I did a quick set up and got a shot of where I plan to be very soon.  I really didn't want to turn this into a self portrait, I just wanted to get across the idea of a comfortable bed, so I cropped most of me out of the shot and softened it a little to give it an "off to dreamland" look....

Night out - before and after

I downloaded some new software today and wanted a portrait to use to test it out, so since no one else was around I did this self portrait.  I like these two images together, even though I didn't process them the same at this point.  I'll call it "Night out - before and after".  I still haven't used my new software on the portrait, but maybe I'll play around with it tomorrow and if it's decent I'll post the results.