Her Horse

My first photo to share after leaving this blog idle for so many years. I must say, I spent quiet some time figuring out what I wanted until I found myself standing in front of a beautiful horse just inviting me to take a shot. Initially I wanted to take a picture from the front but all just looked so normal and after moving about, I got this shot. Of course in general you cant go wrong with horses and stables but I just want to remind everyone to just move around to see potential angles to make your photo unique and pleasant to look at. Don't be too bothered about a clear foreground, background and how the subject is going to come out. If you're targeting and focusing right in these kinds of photography, you are bound to have a great shot. Also, you need to concentrate on the lines. I can't stress this enough, the basic of a good photo in general are the lines. If having a store is all about location, location, location...in photography is lines, lines, lines. At least in general anyways.

I won't go too much into details on settings cause its on auto focus and on the green friendly auto mode. Message of the day, move about and don't just stand there!

"The essential joy of being with horses, is that it brings us in contact with the rare elements of grace, beauty, spirit and fire" -Sharon Ralls Lemon-

This photo was taken at Kuda Bahagia Stable, Echo Beach, Bali

Pet Photography

Almost everyone I know takes pictures of their pets and it doesn't matter what level of knowledge they have in photography most pets photos come out well. In my opinion animals are born photogenic and there are little mistakes to make. Those photos are then uploaded to your computer and you share them with your family and friends through facebook, myspace or blogs, some puts them in a frame and place it on a table somewhere in your bedroom or living room. What usually happens when you want to hang it up on the wall in a big painting size like? The usual answer I receive is that it does not look as good as when it was in the small frame. I am not talking about stretching the pixels as most digital camera today comes with 6.0 up to 12 mega-pixels. I am talking on the artistic point of view. Here is where the software photoshop comes very handy. There are lots of types of filters you can find in photoshop to make your normal photo to looking very artistic that your living room deserves.
The photo I posted is my dobermann when he was still in my care, now he is in Brazil with a great family taking good care of him. As you can see in the photo, I have added a texture that makes the photo look like a drawing or painting and it looks very lively and well when I printed it to a poster size and framed it for the wall. This is what in my opinion that gives the extra artistic look that is often not considered by many people.
For this kind of textures that you see in my photo, you can find it under the filter tool in photoshop and choose sketch to look for different kind of textures that suits well to your preference.

"No man can be condemned for owning a dog. As long as he has a dog, he has a friend; and the poorer he gets, the better friend he has." - Will Rogers

Abbey The Cat

It´s one of those days when you need to clean your room thoroughly with the windows and curtains wide open to let the sun light in and change your bed sheets when I took this photo. Abbey just love being on my way every time I have to do something. Well, luckily the lighting and the pose was great, so i grabbed my camera and took this shot. Fortunately it turned out well cause she ran away after she heard the shutter made a noise.
It is a bit tricky taking pictures of animals especially animals that are hard to train how to "stay" like a dog for example but it´s always rewarding. I did not have any special camera setting for this spontaneous shot. Frankly the setting was on automatic and this picture has been enhanced by Photoshop CS4. I played around with the dark and light curves to make the white brighter and Abbey herself slightly darker for the contrast.