Shilouette

I have nothing to say today. I feel like being challenged. This is too easy in photography, but I challenged myself in Photoshop with layers and such. I had fun!

something different

So I'm starving to be creative. I had an idea. Something sparked my imagination and I just went with it. Some face paint, 2 boys and a shower curtain.
It's pretty dark, but it works. It's what I wanted to accomplish.



A little later on, they were swimming in the pool. You would think I would process the photos to look like they were having fun, but the paint and plastic had me in a dark place.


Once again, I painted Kane's face, but this time I used white paint as well. Don't worry, it's certified face paint. Got out my strobe and black backdrop and fired a few more.

Day 2 of Capoeira

Heather (in green) giving me a big ole smile! Way to go Heather girl!
They are practicing martello (forgive me for I cannot spell the Portuguese names).

Mia Lua.




And Kane stretching, doing frog legs........ supposed to be flat, but he's so rusty that he can't go very far. Poor boy, he must be hurting so badly in this shot.



Mangueira and Sergio.

Capoeira and Maculele

Contra Mestre Mangueira



Kane hasn't been going to capoeira recently. In fact he hasn't gone in over 2 years. I miss him doing it as he is really good at it. He first started when he was just 6 years old and quickly absorbed everything he learned and not only did he enjoy capoeira, he felt it. One could see the electricity of capoeira running through this child. It was mind blowing. You can tell I'm a very proud mother. Can you blame me? When we decided to move, selling our house and buying a new and bigger one a hour away, he had to stop capoeira. Homework got in the way and the long drive wasn't really working out for us. Last summer, we wanted to have him attend, but his instructor (seen in the photographs) broke his leg and was out of commission for months. It's a new year and a new summer and yesterday, I decided it was time to get Kane back into the capoeira groove. Yay!
Today, he is sore, but he's going back. He is now attending the adult classes and they work you hard. If he thinks he's in pain today.......... wait till tomorrow!!! LOL!!! By the end of the week, I think I will see that electricity back in him. He will be breathing it, living it and loving it once more. It doesn't take very long....

Although he is attending capoiera classes once more, in these photos, Kane is learning the maculele. A dance performed to music using sticks. Although a lot of the male students don't care for it, it is still a big part of the Brazilian capoeira culture.
You can read more about maculele here.

When does it end?

My latest venture and craze is HDR, ie. high dynamic range. You can read up on HDR by following THIS link.

I bought a program called PHOTOMATIX PRO
This program allows me to convert either a single RAW file or a bracketed image into HDR.
I was a bit confused and excited about this new program and just jumped in head first not caring how it was going to look. But the more I play, the more I learn and the more I like my final images. I am beginning to be able to control the amount of effects on the image. Some call for less play while others want lots. In order, here are images from the first 24 hours of owning this amazing program.


Kevin Talma and his kids chilling out on the beach with Dereck, Kane and Bob (the dog) on Long Beach, Barbados early one April morning.

Bathsheba rocks.
An old building that sits on top of a rock at Bathsheba. It was built initially as a men's changing room. It never had a roof till an American soap opera decided to use it in one of their episodes and so a roof was added.

Dereck standing outside Earthworks in the middle of Barbados. Earthworks is a local pottery place that also sells sweet treats, batik, locally made clothing and other local art in Barbados.

Smoking

No, I don't smoke, never have, never will, but I lit some incense and photographed the smoke. I read an article on photographing smoke in Popular Photography magazine as I subscribe to it. There are also a lot of smoke photos on flickr that inspired me and I tried and my first attempt failed miserably. Someone told me to light the smoke from the side. I did that, but my light was too far away from the smoke, so I finally brought it really close.......... like inches from the smoke and used the borrowed macro to shoot these. To get the colour smoke shots, I inverted the original shots in Photoshop and then played with the hue/saturation and colour balance. The fun part is in Photoshop.

macro

Trying........... and trying hard to "see". I must admit that macro isn't my favourite and nor are flowers and animals, birds etc. Way outside of my comfort zone.
But here goes...............


Orchids. Taken outside under natural light using a borrowed (thanks Michelle!) 50mm 2.8 macro lens.

Then I let my kitchen faucet drip so I could capture the water dripping out. Some like the one with the counter visible in the background and others don't . I personally, prefer the darker background with the single drip where you can't see any distracting background stuff. But I do prefer the drip of the other photo. Thanks for looking.