One constant has remained for every trip to Anguilla – – Saturdays are for Smokey’s. I remember our first trip to the island in 2007. I heard there was live music at Smokey’s for lunch on Saturday, so I was determined to make it there on our first full day on the island. We walked there from the CuisinArt (you could do that back then – the beach was wider). I remember being seated at the table just inside the easternmost door, looking out over the water. I had the jerk chicken (which I’ve had every time since), and heard The Musical Brothers performing, doing Christmas songs. I had found…
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We travel over Thanksgiving and every year give thanks for all we have. We find ourselves doing the same at the year’s end. We are thankful for the wonderful people we have met and the great adventures we have had together. Join us for our New Year’s Eve countdown of our top ten irie moments of 2014! #10 Learning New Things: Travel Photography Class with Kevin Miyazaki In June, we took a class in travel photography from well-known travel photographer, Kevin Miyazaki. We were given assignments with two days to complete them before the next assignment came out. I spent a lot of time shooting in my own home town…
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We took the film on the road and the results are back. We took the film cameras to Anguilla, the Canon 1V and the Mamiya Pro TL. We took a variety of film stocks, Fuji 400H, Kodak Portra 400, Porta 160, and Ektar 100. We experimented and burned a lot of film. Many lessons were learned. Here are my impressions of our efforts and the results. 1. Digital has ruined me for film – shooting the same scene again and again. I am so accustomed to shooting RAW and shooting multiple images to try to nail the shot that I wasted a lot of film. For example, I had the…
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I had a lot of trouble deciding what to pack for this trip. I knew I wanted to shoot some film. In fact, I was more excited to shoot film than digital. This would be our fourth trip to Anguilla in seven years, and in my mind, I kept thinking, “done that.” I wanted a new challenge, to see Anguilla differently, so I decided to take my film on the road. With that decided, I still had a tough time deciding what cameras to bring. I knew that the Canon 1v used the same lenses as my digital SLR, so I wasn’t really adding much in terms of weight/space requirements.…
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Tests shots were finished. It was time to take my film project on the road and put it into action. In July, I took my film cameras to Bastille Days here in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. When people think of Milwaukee or Wisconsin, they generally think of beer, brats or cheese. If they think about the ethnic origins of the area, they generally think of the Germans or Polish settlers to the area. Often overlooked is the fact that the first explorers were French. The first European known to explore the area was Jean Nicolet, followed by Father Jacques Marquette, a Jesuit missionary, and Louis Joliet, a fur trader, exploring and mapping the waterways through…
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Receiving the e-mail from Richard Photo Lab that “Your Order is Ready!” is pretty exciting. It was like Christmas morning, wondering what presents await. Yesterday, I received my negatives and prints I ordered from the first rolls. I wasn’t planning to order prints every time, but I wanted to see how they would look, and I’m glad I did. There is something really special about holding a printed image, and it was even more beautiful than the scans! I see photographers post it again and again, but it bears repeating. Print your images! Rarely do people look through their hard drives when reminiscing, but there is a simple joy…
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A few weeks ago, I started a film project. It has been years since I shot film, and I wanted to experiment with some different films and techniques. Plus, back then, I was pretty much an “Auto” mode kind of girl. I really didn’t know what my camera could do, so the thought of returning to film with a lot more photography knowledge was kind of exciting. First, I had to get back in the swing of things and try to get a reproducible technique, and then experiment with new ideas. The first experiment uses three cameras, two film and one digital to see how the different cameras treated the…
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After our trip every year, I look back and try to work on something for next year – – developing better technique, buying better gear, trying new things. This year, I’m trying an old thing – – film. My first “real” camera was a Canon Elan II, a gift from my husband when our children were young. I moved up to a Canon Elan 7n, and resisted moving to digital. I finally took the plunge into digital in 2007 with the purchase of a Canon 40D. Luckily, all of these cameras, and my current camera, a Canon 5D Mark II, use the same lenses, so I was able to move…
