Merry Christmas 2010

I don't usually decorate my house a lot during Christmas, however I do enjoy when I see a beautiful Christmas tree, as you can imagine, I enjoy taking pictures of it.

We had our Christmas dinner yesterday at my brother in law's house and their Christmas tree was gorgeous so I took a lot of pictures of it and I want to share them with you here.

The tree:



The presents:



The decoration:









I hope you all had a Merry Christmas and hope you have a wonderful new year!

Photography class: Assignment 1 - Playing with light

As I mentioned before, I am taking a digital photography class and I want to share with you all the homework I have to do.

My first homework was to play with light when taking a picture, to be more specific I had to:

• Select an object, any object.
• Use a lamp to provide the light.
• Put the object and the camera in a fixed position.
• Use the automatic setting of the camera without using the camera flash.
• Take pictures of the object lighting it with the lamp from all possible angles.

I took a lot of pictures of several different objects, I couldn't find the right one until I tried with a small wood sculpture of an old man, it was perfect because it is very expressive.

Here it is the first set of pictures I took:

This assignment was very interesting, I was able to see how the light affects the object and how you can create look different photos of the exact same object, making some of them better than the others just by position the light in the right place.

The light can make the same object look very different, sometimes it looks like if the object was moved, you can control how much of your background would be displayed, all of this affecting the composition of your photo, so you definitely want to play with light.

At the end I did another round putting getting a bit closer to the old man and moving him a little bit:

As you can see, the light can affect how the dimensions of your object are displayed, depending on the position of the light the object can look flat, but by moving the light you can show the tridimensionality of the object by playing with the shadows.

Your photos can become more expressive when positioning the light in the right place, play with it, experience it yourself. If you do, please share your results with us!

It is never too late!!

Back in 2004 and 2005 I was living in Madrid Spain for a few months, I had the chance to go to several different cities in Europe, which allowed me take a lot of pictures of a lot of beautiful places. I wasn't always happy with the pictures I took so back then I thought "when I am back in Costa Rica I'll take a photography class", it was one of those things that I really wanted to do.

Some of the cities I visited were Rome, Florence and Venice, I fell in love with Italy, so back then I also thought "I want to learn Italian, I'll take a course when I am back in Costa Rica", well we are now in 2010 (five years later that you might think is a lot of time) and I can now say that I am learning Italian and taking my photography class, finally!.

I started the Italian course in January and the photography class this month, even though it took me five years to actually start taking these classes I am very excited that I am finally doing it.

So you might be wondering what's up with this story, well my dream is to be able to go to Italy with my husband for a few weeks to practice my Italian and to take great pictures of the awesome cities Italy has. If that is not possible, well I still want to take great pictures of anywhere and anything and to speak Italian fluently with whomever speaks Italian to me :) At the end, what I am trying to say is that it is never too late and you are never too old to do the things you want to do, just make the decision and do them, you won't regret it!

On another topic, I would like to share with you my experience in the photography class, so I am going to document all the different homework that I have to do for my photography class here in my blog, pretty much explaining what the assignment was, what I came up with and what I learned from it, because who knows it might be helpful information for somebody else, so wait for my first assignment.

Here it is a picture of Venice I took in 2005, it has some HDR post-processing:

Moving to the world of DSLR cameras

I am moving to the world of DSLR cameras and interchangeable lenses, I got the new Nikon D3100, 3 Nikon lenses and an external flash, a pretty good setting a friend said. I haven't been able to play much with these new toys yet, but I am been experimenting a little taking photos of Sam. Here are some:

The camera or the photographer?

A while ago I read an article called 15 Incredible iPhone Dog Photographs where the writer wants to show what the IPhone camera is capable of. However for me it was more like showing how sometimes a good photo is not necessarily one that is taken with the best camera.

After reading this article I posted it in Facebook and a friend of mine commented that many times she get comments like "Oh, you take great photos. I need a better camera.", which implies that it's the camera quality/cost that makes the photos good. And she says "it's not - it's the photographer!" and I couldn't agree more.

I know that with a camera like the IPhone camera you have to overcome certain obstacles like the light for example or the lack of zoom capabilities, however you can still compose really good photos.

I have had my IPhone for quite a while now and I've taken a lot of pictures with it because I have it with me all the time and the fact that I can share my photos almost instantly with friends is Facebook is really motivating for me. However, I have never share my IPhone photos anywhere else, not in my Flickr account because Flickr is for my "pretty" and "pro" pictures, but after reading this article and my friend's comment, I thought why I am doing this, why I am not sharing these pictures in Flickr, I should review my IPhone photos and see if I have been actually taking good pictures with my IPhone too. So I started doing it and one of these days I downloaded the photos to my laptop and started reviewing them and improving them and finally posted my first 5 in my Flickr account.

I am not saying they are good, but I like them and I want to share them and get "photography" comments on them, see what happens! I am going to share some of them with you here!

This one I took it from a plane when coming from Houston to Costa Rica, the sunset was great and I wanted to have it. It is too bad I got the window reflection in it and that I don't know Photoshop that much to fix it but I still like it:


This one is my dog Sam, almost 90% of pictures I take with my IPhone are of him. Here he is seated on his Grandpa's chair, he likes to get on it because he can see through the window:


This is from a Gandhi concert that we attended to last week, it was awesome but I was dumb enough to not take my camera, thank God I had my IPhone with me:


This is from the same concert, before Gandhi started playing, the stage, cool tools!!


If you want to comment on the photos just click on them and comment on Flickr or add comments here as well, all comments are welcome!

I am going to be posting my IPhone photos on a specific set in Flickr called IPhone in case you want to keep track of my progress.

Another thing important I learn is always take the picture, don't worry about the camera, just take it!

Gandhi - The Band

I haven't been a big fan of national music, but my husband Carlos is a big fan of Gandhi, so he took me to one of their concerts at Jazz Cafe a while ago, I must say that I really liked it. I liked the music and loved Luis' way of dancing and the way he gets into the "signing zone" so deep that is contagious.

We went to another concert yesterday at Jazz Cafe Escazu where they were going to release their new video for the song "Estrellame". The concert was amazing, they started with some acoustic songs and then the usual rock songs, so good! Federico is amazing with the guitar, it is simply an awesome show to watch and listen.



I wish they get more attention from other people in the world, because they are a worldwide class band that deserves all the fame they can get. They are really good and I am proud they are Costarican.

If you have a chance to listen to them, take it, specially if it is live! You will enjoy it!

For now, I share with you here their new video, enjoy!!



If you want to get more information about the band go to grupogandhi.com