Congratulations to our winners of the monthly drawings for Master Collection!

Adobe: How long have you been using Adobe products?

Tanya Owens: I have been using Adobe products for more than a decade. I was introduced to Acrobat when I joined Chubb and Son in 1999 and I have used the software extensively since then. It is a critical tool I use professionally and privately. I was first introduced to Photoshop in graduate school in 1998. When I purchased my first scanner I was introduced to the precursor to Photoshop Elements and eventually purchased a copy of Photoshop Elements 2, which I loved because it had a familiar interface to the full blown Photoshop application. I made the transition from film to digital with the purchase of the Canon D50 DSLR for a trip to Hawaii in 2009. Subsequent classes with Canon and Tamron in 2010 convinced me that I needed to purchase Photoshop Lightroom 3 to manage my workflow and digital darkroom. I purchased Lightroom 3 in 2011 and have immediately seen an improvement in my prints.

Adobe: What are your hobbies and areas of interest?

Tanya Owens: My love is photography and I have an interest in doing mixed media art installations and fine art photography. I am taking my art to the next level which is why I invested in Photoshop Lightroom 3 and a membership in NAPP.

Adobe: How did your interaction with LevelUp for Photoshop first start, what do you think of a game approach towards improving the learning experience of Photoshop and other Adobe products?

Tanya Owens: I returned from the PDN Photoplus Photography International Convention this past October fired up and excited about photography and where I can take my art. Since I have used Photoshop CS3 at work, I know that there is much more I could do with Photoshop CS5 than I can with Photoshop Elements 9, which came bundled with my Epson V700 scanner. However, I was still intimidated by the learning curve and the price tag. I decided to download the demo version of Photoshop CS5 to take it for a spin and decide if I would take an online Photoshop class and start saving to purchase the software in 2012. It was then that I learned about the LevelUp game. The game made learning Photoshop fun and easy. It literally took away my apprehension and for the first time learning Photoshop isn’t intimidating. The design of the game is intuitive, the feedback is easy to understand and digest and the steps were easy to implement. I was amazed at how much I learned in a relative short amount of time and my confidence in Photoshop increased. As a Learning professional I am aware that leveraging a variety of modalities is critical to transferring requisite knowledge and skills to on the job performance. This game was well designed and took into consideration different learning styles.

Adobe: Describe a favorite photo you’ve shot and what grabs you about it.

Tanya Owens: My favorite photographs are the landscape photos I have taken. I am captivated by color. A few photographs come to mind, in particular the shots I took from a helicopter while flying over the Big Island in Hawaii of the volcano and lava scarred sands. The contrast of the warm turquoise sea and rich black sand is riveting. It is one of my favorite shots on my website. Other shots are the beautiful red rocks in Utah and Arizona. I was captivated with them the first time I saw them in 2007 and returned this year to photograph them with my digital camera. I particularly like the shot taken while on the Colorado River up the side of the red canyon wall where the sky looks blue black. My photos are on www.tanyaowens.com.

Adobe: Was there a defining moment when you knew that it was time to take pictures professionally?

Tanya Owens: The transition to take pictures professionally was gradual. I can recall being captivated with my mother’s Polaroid camera as a child and how magically images of me came out of it. I received my first camera when I was 6, a 126 camera where I took black and white photos of my Barbie dolls that Christmas morning. My elementary school teacher gave us a history of photography. When we made our first pinhole cameras I was enthralled. I didn’t develop film again until high school and then went to college and majored in television production. Unfortunately, my photography remained focused on family and social events; I didn’t become serious about photography as art until I took at class at the Houston Museum of Fine art in 2006. In 2007, when I did my six week road trip from Houston, TX to Seattle Washington and back (6,200 miles) everywhere I went, when I took out my camera with my 70‐ 200mm 2.8 canon L series lens people asked me if I was a professional photographer and requested my card. I didn’t have a card but was intrigued. When I went to Africa to Ghana for a pilgrimage and its 50th Jubilee I was again approached by people inquiring if I was a professional photographer. Even professional photographers from South Africa asked me if I was a professional photographer, they interviewed me and photographed me taking pictures. All of these instances and the reactions from people who look at my art online were key indicators that I should take my art to the next level and become more serious about honing my craft.

Adobe: How is your photography workflow different today than when you started out?

Tanya Owens: My workflow is drastically different. I now have my photos organized in a solid folder structure. I have my photos backed up on multiple drives and I am learning how to leverage Adobe Lightroom 3 to streamline my workflow. I am capturing metadata, learning about Exif data and plum excited about the non‐destructive editing changes I am able to do in Lightroom 3. I can’t image life as a photographer without it.

Adobe: What are your favorite features in the latest version of Photoshop?

Tanya Owens: When I took the test drive I fell in love with the new masking features, adjustments panel and auto‐blending of images. Some features are in Photoshop Elements 9, but many features are not. The upgrades in CS5 makes it quicker and more intuitive to make adjustments to images.

Adobe: What advice would you give to someone just starting out?

Tanya Owens: If you have to start with just one Adobe application as a photographer get Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 3. It allows you to effectively manage your workflow, catalogue your work and make adjustments to your images. Lightroom 3 also enables you to create print layouts to make photo packages or simply print one image. The software is a must have for photographers. If you are new to Photoshop definitely play the LevelUp game. It will help you develop basic photo enhancement skills and allow you to pull the beauty out of your photos, even over exposed images. Here is a fun point and shoot image, not my best work, but when I took the picture the sky was completely white and the colors on the giraffes were dull. After a few tweaks in Lightroom 3, look at the difference. I had forgotten how beautiful the sky was that morning in South Africa.