Lisa Beamer...

I love creating, and photography is just one means by which I do that. While I didn't get serious about it until 2004, I've always enjoyed capturing life's details, and I have piles of albums, scrapbooks and boxes of prints to prove it. I love capturing color and texture, and I love honing in on details, which so often go overlooked as we hurry through life. My favorite things to shoot are things in nature, landscapes, architectural details, and old farm equipment. I've tried my hand at formal portraits but I much prefer the informal when it comes to photographing people. Being an avid knitter and spinner, I love merging those things with my photography as well, capturing images of both the products of those crafts -- garments, yarn -- as well as the tools and materials that go into making them.

Equipment

I've been shooting with a Canon Digital Rebel since 2004, shortly after the original one (the 300d) came out. Sadly, that gear was stolen in the blink of an eye while we were at the beach a couple years ago, and I now have a Rebel XTi, which I love, not that I wouldn't upgrade to a better body if I could justify the expense. 

I tend to be a minimalist when it comes to gear. I shoot with two lenses. My favorite lens is the Canon 50mm f/1.4 USM. It's on my Rebel 75% of the time. It's lightweight, awesome in low light, allowing me to shoot without a flash (I adore natural light) and the shallow depth of field it produces makes me giddy. My other lens is the Canon 28 - 135mm f/3.5-5.6 with image stabilizer. Love, love the image stabilizer. I keep a UV filter on each lens for protection more than anything, and I use circular polarizing filters when the situation warrants. I do my photo processing using Adobe Photoshop CS2. I might actually upgrade to CS4 one of these days, but CS2 works great for my needs at the moment. 

Personal

I live in the eastern suburbs of Pittsburgh, PA with my husband, Kevin, and our two teenagers, Christopher and Emma, who we homeschool. We also have a grown son in the Marines and a four-year-old grandson who is all kinds of cuteness. I'm a rabid knitter and spinner (of yarn, not bikes). I love to read and I'm a life-long writer, formerly doing freelance work for numerous online and print magazines. Now I primarily write for my own enjoyment, though dreams of writing that Great American Novel someday are alive and well. Last year, in an effort to counteract the effects of being in my 40s, I took up kickboxing and a few months later started American Freestyle Martial Arts classes as well. A fascination with MMA and the UFC/WEC has followed, and I may now be the only woman who orders pay-per-view fights and watches them alone, knitting, while her husband heads to the bedroom to read a book.  

To view more of my photography, please visit my pBase gallery.

If you'd like to read about my other life interests, please check out my personal blog, Inspired.