Angela Kirby...

My love for photography began in 2004 when I enrolled in a photography course at the college I was attending. I spent countless hours shooting film and printing in the darkroom. I was hooked! It was there that I began to appreciate the art, talent, and hard work that separates an impactful photograph from a boring picture. It was and remains a humbling but liberating experience.

Every photographer sees the world differently and their work is an extension of their interpretation of it. It can be challenging to capture a moment in time with a fresh, appealing perspective. That challenge drives me to learn continuously, and the satisfaction of accomplishing it (sometimes more successfully than others!) keeps bringing me back to my camera. Photography is a venue through which I can enrich the lives of others. In my heart are two God-given desires: to photograph life in an impactful way and to share it with others. Marrying those desires keeps the joy in my work. Horses, dogs, children, and action packed sports like polo, motocross, and combat sports are currently the primary focus of my work.

Equipment
I shoot exclusively in RAW digital format with Canon cameras and lenses. Lisa and I share a minimalist preference in equipment and processing. Most of the time I hate the use of flash because I have a personal abhorrence for the type of “gaudiness” it contributes to the images. Natural, available light will always be my first preference while shooting. It just can’t be beaten, in my opinion!

My primary body is the Rebel XTi (just like Lisa’s) and my backup body is a D60. One day I plan to upgrade bodies but for now, the Rebel handles most things nicely. I own several lenses and find myself switching between them during most of my outings because one lens doesn’t “fit all”. Some get more use than others, but they all have their pros and cons and some are more useful for particular shots than others. In my bag I keep my 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L IS; 75-300mm f/4-5.6; 100mm f/2.8; 50mm f/1.4; and 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6. I do my post processing work on my Dell Intel Core 2 Duo (4GB memory) and LaCie 321 monitor (can’t rave enough about how fantastic it is). I usually start processing in Canon’s RAW Image Task software, batch process and hand edit in Picture Window Pro 4.0, and occasionally do some noise removal in Neat Image. That’s pretty much it as far as equipment goes!

Personal
I live just north of Pittsburgh in a little town called Renfrew. I’m a country girl so the area suits me. My husband and I share our lives with four awesome Italian Greyhound Rescues named Sami, Ethan, Tommy, and Ellie. They bring joy, beauty, companionship, and fun to us daily. They are as much a part of our family as the human members! Like Lisa, I have many diverse interests ranging from horses and horse sports, dogs, hiking, relaxing at home playing video games and watching movies, to playing and coaching volleyball, and training in various combat sports and martial arts like boxing, kickboxing, American Freestyle, and Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. My musical interests are just as diverse, so I consider myself to be an eclectic little melting pot of sorts. :-)

If you'd like to view more of my photography, please visit my blog, proof gallery, and portfolio at AK Photography for current projects.

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.

What We're About...

After meeting earlier this year, Angela and I quickly figured out that we had a lot in common. A lot. It was one of those serendipitous meetings that makes you realize that there has to be a bigger plan than simply finding someone new to hang out with. Our similiarities were just too uncanny.

Besides our mutual interests in kickboxing and MMA as well as eating out and playing in the great outdoors, a major common point between us was our love of photography. (We even have the same camera!) One day I asked Angela if she'd be interested in working together on a photography project. She said she would. Thus, the idea for this photoblog was born.

We're both busy people, so to make this work, the blog format is going to be loose. Each week, we'll choose a theme, and then we will take photos that represent that theme to us. We may each post only one photo per week, or we might post a dozen. We may feel like adding some words to the images...or not. We want to encourage each other, challenge ourselves, and we want this to be fun. It's likely that the blog will morph as we go along in order to allow us to meet those goals. 

We'd like to encourage you, too. If you'd like to join us, feel free to post links in the comments to your own photos that go along with our weekly themes. We'd love to see them.