Category: Personal

LE Week One – a self-portrait and a mission statement

This week, Lighting Essentials asks us to do some self-reflecting about photography: What do you want to do photographically? Tell us with a single paragraph what you want to be able to do with your images. Tell us what you do without telling us you are a photographer. Accompany that message with a single image taken around your home. Inside or out, make a photograph that adds insight into the mission statement you will be writing. Here is my submission: I want to help people to see the beauty in themselves, particularly if they normally have a hard time seeing it.  I want to create images that perfectly capture who someone is and how they were feeling at that precise moment, to capture their very essence on film.  I want to delight and inspire. unguarded self-portrait
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by Amber Categories: Photo 11, Self-Portraits

Shooting for LE and MCP

This morning, I worked on my assignments for Lighting Essentials and MCP Actions' separate 52 Week projects.  They just so happen to be the same this week - shooting something around the house.  LE asks us to use our immediate environment to elaborate on a mission statement.  I'll have that up later this week.  But I wanted to post a few outtakes up here. self-portrait I was experimenting this morning with a concept I've had in mind for a while.  The great portrait artists all manage to capture this brilliant depth in their images - a feeling that the subject is very intimately involved with the viewer.  When you're looking at a page of images, that doesn't seem difficult to accomplish.  But it really, really is. So my idea with this was to speak to my camera.  Yes, I literally spoke aloud about photography, about trying to be "cool", whatever else came out of my mouth.  I was hoping that by speaking intensely about things I am passionate about or scared about, etc. I could show some of that on my face, in a totally unstaged way.  I've been thinking this might be a good way to get that depth in my portraits.  I imagine it would be easier to do with two people than me trying to time it right.  To not get photos with my mouth open, I still had to stop every now and then to let the shutter click.  I have just three of these (two here plus my submission) but they seem genuine to me - this is how I think I look. self-portrait self-portrait And then there are these.  I do enjoy the gigantic windows in my apartment, except when I'm trying to sleep in. self-portrait self-portrait with george - happy couple self-portrait - blurry girl
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by Amber Categories: Self-Portraits

Photo 11: The course to beat all courses

I've decided that 2011 is the year of schoolin'.  There are so many good articles to read, DIY ideas to try and interesting and important photographers to study.  So many business practices to implement, marketing ideas to work on, writing skills to hone.  I keep a huge database of ideas and things in my Gmail folder (as discussed here) but far too often they are bookmarked and forgotten.  2011 is the year to get serious about all of that.  Plus, there's nothing being taught at my community college I can't learn better by tailoring the subject to my needs.  Plus, my husband is knee-deep in grad school and isn't going to be around to entertain me anyway.  Plus plus plus.  2011 is the year to learn, to grow exponentially. With all that in mind, I'd like to present Photo 11, a composite course in photography, Photoshop, business and lots of other stuff.  I invite you to join me, even if not everything I am doing relates to your work or business.  If you're interested in following along, just leave a note here at the bottom of this post and I'll get things together.  In the meantime, you can see the schedule of assignments and due dates here. The course will run on a monthly schedule, with the following themes for the first, second, third and fourth Sundays of the month:
  • First Sunday (starting 1/30): Shooting
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by Amber Categories: Photo 11