Happy Weekend...

Not a lot to say today...just thought I would try to post at least one photo for the week...

Hope you guys have a lovely weekend!!

Photo:
Qasr Al Sarab Resort Entrance
Located in Abu Dhabi/Liwa

Learning my "Lens"

One of the things that I love most about photography is that you can give 10 people a camera and an object and no two pictures of it will come out the same. This fascinates me...and the more I learn about photography, the more I love the ways in which we can use our own "lenses" to show life, people, the earth, buildings, etc.

I've recently hired a photographer, whose work I am enamored with, to teach me the technical aspects of photography, i.e. f stops, shutter speeds, white lighting, d lighting and the like.

However, what I'm trying to teach myself is how to find my own "lens"...the view of the world that I give that distinctly makes a photograph a "Tiffany Allen" photograph.

Frequently "lenses" are not that recognizable....and I find, for me...that there are few exceptions to this in the photographic world.

Anson Adams does this well. His is a recognizable "lens" for sure. Helmut Newton has a famous "lens" for fashion...Annie Liebovitz a famous "lens" for portraits...

mine? Well...I haven't exactly figured out the specs of my "lens" yet...but I know one thing for sure....it will be abstractly pointed at a building. I absolutely want to become a well known (heck I can say "famous" can't I?) architectural photographer. I just can't get enough buildings...their details, their surroundings, their context, their use, their shadows, their art, their place in the world...in nature....in our lives.

Here are a few of my new favorites...don't pick too hard on the skies (I'm still learning how to fix a "boring sky" in Photoshop) but I'm enjoying SO much the process of learning my lens.

My glowing father

K, so enough intense emotions and love-sickness....back to the pictures.

I've decided to hire a photographer to pretty much take me under his wing and teach me the trick of the trade. Until we start our classes, however, I've been youtubing photoshop tips alot...there's SO much you can learn from youtube!

I drug out my hard drive and started rummaging through old pictures that I wanted to do something with, but never did...and I found some that I took at Christmas while home with my family. My heart got stuck when I saw this one of my dad sitting in the "Game Room" at our family home in Texas...its just so "authentically" him...

So I pulled him into Photoshop for some color re-working and I found this "distort" tool that is called "diffuse glow". I like diffusing things...and we all love things that glow, so I applied it to this picture and I love it!

This one's for you, Daddy!

(Did I mention being homesick?)