Too much of a good thing. Or maybe not

Last Sunday and Monday worked out as pretty busy two days for me, wellness and fitness-wise.
On Sunday, there was a four hours "introduction seminar" to Chi kung and Tai Chi Chuan in Antigua sports center. I go to Chi kung lessons with Annalisa Paloschi (below) and I used to go to Daniele Scilingo's (above) lessons, and it's the same center that organized this seminar. So it was not exactly all new for me, but let me tell you, four hours is a killer. In a good way of course, but it still is. I don't know about other students, but for me personally the pain was mostly in the back of the legs and the shoulders.

dunes - flying sand and drawing zumba logo

Timur prefers dunes to ocean. He doesn't mind one hour walk each way to get to the large, steep, completely plant-free dunes - just to jump or run off them. And now the biggest crowds of visitors are gone, there is a good chance to have an undisturbed sand to walk on, which makes for nice picture

portrait - conversion to monochrome

although I prefer color photographs to monochrome, monochrome has its points. When I look at those two portraits of Natalia Bull, I find it hard to choose which one I prefer - it really depends on the purpose. Color one has more information in it and would look great in a color layout, monochrome is probably more suitable for printing out and hanging on a wall.

I don't have full photoshop, but photoshop elements once again proved to be an adequate tool for the purpose. To get the soft skin tones, I had a lot of red and very little of green and blue in the mix during the conversion. If it was a freckly child portrait and I wanted to emphasize the freckles, I would have done the opposite - lots of green, less red.

One consequence of this conversion if that lips were de-emphasized. There was a thin layer of pale gloss on them, and contrast with skin is even lower in monochrome. Funnily enough, fire-engine red lipstick would would go as pale, so if we repeat the session at some point and want a higher contrast, we'd need a colder tone with less red - plum shade will work.

Toning was done with gradient map layer.

Natalia Bull is zumba instructor, and we had a lot more colorful zumba session with her as well - you can find it here

isolation on white

after going through all the pics from zumba mastercalss with Naomi Mokoena I figured that this one might just be isolate-able. I caught a lucky break there - the tips of the hair were against a relatively light background, and Naomi is dark-haired, otherwise it won't work at all. I did have to spend some time with selection tools and eraser, but not excessive one

However, my predictable conclusion was that maybe I don't want to do that again :) shots for isolation are best done on plain background and with good light to start with. Then it's doable in a couple of clicks, like here. But it was a nice challenge and it worked reasonably well

I can't really explain why the reflection, except the angle was such (Naomi was on podium) that the soles of her trainers are flat and horizontal - necessary condition for half-convincing reflection.

zumba masterclass

some pictures from zumba masterclass yesterday in Chilford Hall with Naomi Mokoena (lady in grey above with her back to the camera) hosted by Natalia Bull (heading the dancing line in the next picture). Participants enjoyed it :)

It was interesting to see how my old cannon 5d will perform in these rather extreme conditions - the hall is quite large with high ceiling (bounced flash useless) and lit with not very bright (to put it mildly) and mixed light. I had to push ISO up to the maximum in some cases (1600, may the god of photography forgive me), and have the diaphragm open to the maximum (also not ideal on my lens, but lesser crime in comparison with that ISO). Pictures came out extremely noisy and colors are off and seem unfixable, short of converting to black and white (mixed light!). Pics had to be reduced dramatically and are only good for the web, but I like them anyway.

I still have, oh, I dunno, half a thousand of them to look through :)

zumba demo in Saffron Walden - ahead only

There was zumba demonstration on Saffron Walden market square. It was by my zumba instructor Luisa Curbelo (lady in blue belly dancing scarf), and she was joined by another instructor, Natalia Bull (one in bright yellow trousers).

It was sort of chilly today, but the workout is so energetic, everybody who took part looked hot, not cold.

A few very young girls joined, (one in pink tutu!), which looked very sweet, but I didn't take any pictures, so as not to upset parents by accident.

I must say I myself find zumba excellent fun- considering I never liked really liked fitness, it's saying something I guess.

All the dancing, skipping and jumping was done on the big white letters on the road spelling "ahead only", which seems oddly appropriate