Lightroom Lessons Learned!

Super-excited about what I learned to do in Lightroom class! New presentation for my photos from the family Cuba trip! You'll have to click the link and see a 3 slide slideshow so that they'll be big enough to see a little!

Follow this link: http://lynnehart.zenfolio.com/p893192484/h121f87b2/slideshow

Let me know what you think! It was so easy I'm giddy!

El Caribe Tropical & Grace Hill in Old North St. Louis

Thanks to Susan Werremeyer, I had the opportunity to attend and shoot a Whittaker Festival in Old North St. Louis for Grace Hill. Not only did they have El Caribe Tropical playing for a couple of hours in the park, there were all kinds of family activities, food vendors, even a fountain for the kids to play in and a fire juggler. (That was harder to get a good picture of than one would imagine) Here are some of my favorites from the night.

Training Anyone?

A photographer in Chicago that I recently started following mentioned this training session in his blog. I'm considering going and wondering if any of the local photographers, or aspiring photographers would be interested in going? Its cheap $99, plus the heck of a drive up there and back, but I am considering. Can't find anything like this here......

Matt Kloskowski is coming to Chicago for his Lightrooom 2 Live tour. This is a great opportunity to brush up on your Lightroom skills!

The kiddos in Cuba!

I am blessed with an incredibly photogenic set of future in-laws, especially the kiddos. Those shots can be found here along with a few other past shots of others.

More Maternity

It never hurts to have exceptionally gorgeous friends who are comfortable in front of a camera. Below are a couple of shots from boudoir inspired maternity sessions with my one of mine....

A more complete slideshow can be viewed by clicking here

Cuba

Recently returning from a family visit, I had a great opportunity to get some shots of Cuba. Here are a few, or click the title "cuba" above for a full slideshow. This was like some sort of photographic overload, as I shot so much and so frequently that I needed nearly a 6 week break to get around to posting these! Let me know what you think - Love and Hate letters both accepted.
Photos are from Guiness, Guanabo, and Habana Vieja, Cuba, also included are some family shots.

My future son-in-law and step-grandaughter.....

And some random tween on the beach.....

Coming Soon: More Boudoir

Stay posted folks! I have more sexy stuff coming up for you. On May 30th, a bunch of my girlfriends have agreed to do a Boudoir party, all just so that I can play and practice. They get pics, I hopefully get to use quite a few of them, everyone is happy and, er, a little wine tipsy.

Alma's shoot last week has me totally excited! This is an aspect of photography that I really expect to enjoy a ton!

Boudoir Maternity

Today I had my second maternity photo shoot. This one was a bit different than my last, with a bit more focus on boudoir flavor. Those shots, you are just not lucky enough to see! Here are a few of the public appropriate shots! You can see more (but still not all:) of this shoot on the zenfolio site if interested.

Special thanks to my extra hot friend Alma for letting me use some of the photos. She has a great idea how to work a camera and made my job as easy as it possibly could be! Thanks Alma!

Week 4 Workshop Assignments

I'll be honest kids, there was some slackin' going on with the homework this week. Alex was sworn in as a citizen, so we had a house full o party. Seems like a great photo opportunity, but our homework was mostly still life and prepared food. By the time our feast was prepared, I may have been served a PUI (photographing under the influence) for attempting a shoot, so my camera was spared the risk. That said, I'm taking cupcakes to work tomorrow, so here's something to make you bust your diet.

You can find these babies on 39th street in the Shaw neighborhood at SweetArt. Pretty cool place with all kinds of "home" made eats and no ingredients you can't pronounce.

A few more shots from Week 3 Assignment

A few more shots in the "animals" assignment, and also in the florals. I believe we were actually supposed to find live flowers, but I live in Missouri people! The trees hardly start blooming and the Botanical Gardens has limited hours - so I improvised!

Workshop - Week 3 Assignments

There was quite a bit of homework for week 3, which hasn't even happened yet! While we were having class in week two, the "random guy" below walked through our group of aspiring photographers and decided to "vogue", no idea why. Thank God I have a trigger finger, because one second later, I think his shirt went all the way up.... anyway, not part of the homework, but fun.

This week's assignment was a little harder to pull off due to variety of requirements. For example, there are requirements for several "vista" shots, specifically not cityscape, but landscape, which meant a roadtrip on Sunday.

An easier part of the assignment was several animal shots, focusing on beauty or humor. Beauty (below, aka Tonta the cat) and Humor (aka Loba the dog) live with me so that was easy enough.

There were also a variety of "architectural" requirements. Not sure some of these shattered barns count as architecture, but they were present during my vista/roadtrip session so I went with it.

Architectural abstracts must have been the most challenging, since I live in the literal, and am challenged by all that is not. I did my best to take photos of stuff on buidlings in a way that one could not tell what the heck it was. How did I do?

Studio Altius Workshop, Week 2 Assignment

I started a six week Beginners Digital Photography series at the beginning of March. Each week, we have a set of assignments to exercise what we have learned. Here are some of my first week’s shots. Hopefully by week six we’ll see marked improvement! I leave for vacation the very next day and hope to really get some great shots while I’m out of the country!

Week 2 Assignment gave us a variety of requirements to practice various aspects of manual photography. I'm a fan of a low depth of field, which would be the first couple of shots.

Of course, grapes are very close to my heart, they make my favorite thing. Wine.

The pitiful look is due to the peice of chicken on top of my lens, and partially because she isn't allowed to have it until I say "OK". This explains why she gets so excited anytime I touch my camera...

Downtown St. Louis in a place Alex wouldn't let me go alone!

Can you name this guard rail?

Probably only if you read ahead. ;)

Random assignment requiring variety of angles of a single item.
I liked the reflection of this one.

Kelly Manno Workshop

So this spring, before some travelling I decided to get some education on photography. Lucky me, right after this decision, alot of interesting local things popped up. I was thinking I'd have to spend big bucks and vacation time to travel.

Sunday launched the spring training with a workshop from Kelly Manno. It was great! I'd tell you about it, but I wrote Kelly a letter and she posted it, so you can read it on her site. :)

http://kellymanno.blogspot.com/2009_03_01_archive.html

During the workshop we got to do a shoot. Most of my pictures turned out horribly as I wasn't so great at not tripping over other photographers and generally to short to run around the back... especially with my 50mm lens! So, here are a few of the best!

Waiting for Baby Beatrice

Nearly missed the opportunity to shoot my friend Amy and her daughter while she was still pregnant. That darn three week flu overtook me and arrived on the day we were planning to get together. Lucky enough we planned a girls brunch a few days before she arrived, and I was able to spend some time before brunch with Amy and her daughter Camille.

This has probably been my most challenging self-assignment so far. Between Camille, Amy, the cat Euclid, and the family dog, it was a bit of a juggle to get good shots. Definately a skill I need to work on. I was so distracted with that, and trying out a new lens on my camera that I didn't realize until later that I had shot the whole dern thing in auto. So much for practicing my skills!
I've signed up for a 6 week class starting next month, so I'm hoping for clearer sharper more creative shots in the future! Here are some of the better shots from our "waiting for baby Beatrice" session. Perhaps we'll have the opportunity to do a Baby Beatrice shoot soon!

Puerto Rico, yo nunca dejare de amarte!

A quick follow up from our New Year's trip from Puerto Rico, and a few of the best shots. Still have a ton of editing to do whenever I get the chance. We stayed in a great place right on the beach with only 9 rooms, but spent most of our time in search of deserted beaches. The city was packed with visitors for the new year, so we steered away from the crowds.


We found a bike path along the ocean and wore ourselves out for 3 hours, finding this shot before we turned around.

These next two were in the city near our small hotel in the Condado area of San Juan


We ultimately found 3 or four secluded beaches, no buildings, no people. this was the first, midpoint in the sweaty windy bike ride. We washed down the ride with a bottle of water and kept going to the end of the trail, only to return for a sunset dinner and extremely cold beer! Experimenting with self portraits, very interesting.....especially with no remote!