When I need a bit of serenity, I go for a walk:
ISO 25 f/2.2 1/1672sec 4.2mm
This photo has Luminar Look, Camden Desat, added to it and then a bit of luminance.
Your thoughts and comments are welcome below.
Cheers!
Category Archives: Animals
Horses by my House
Just a small tribute post to the horses that occupy the walking paths near my house. I’ll be honest, I’ve never enjoyed horseback riding, but I do enjoy seeing them out and about:
ISO 25 f/2.2 4.15mm 1/3497 sec
Hipstamatic
As Shot, Panorama mode
ISO 25 f/2.2 4.15mm 1/3497 sec
ISO 25 f/2.2 1/2331 sec 4.15mm
Bonus shot over on my Instagram feed:
Added to Tuesday Photo Challenge, Animals.
Your comments are always welcome below.
Cheers!
52 Week Smartphone Challenge: Week 16
This week’s theme, Shadow, is one that could be interpreted in many different ways particularly at this time. I call this photo, Stepping Into My Space:
ISO 25 f/2.2 1/1166sec 4.15mm
What’s going on in this photo? Quite a bit. I’ll divide it into pros and cons.
Pros: I’m out on my daily allowed by the government walk, and it’s a beautiful day. The other shadow is my walking partner/teenager and we are both healthy. This is a friendly dog.
Cons: This is not my dog, it’s not on a lead, and I am both allergic and scared of dogs.
For me, this photo has a bit of conflict and tension in it. The original file lent itself well to a square edit, so I went ahead and used Hipstamatic to create the image. After an initial shuffle of random filters, which the app will do for you with the touch of a button, I settled on a combination I liked and then did some additional edits to come up with this final version.
Your thoughts and comments are welcome below.
Cheers!
Wordless Wednesday: Olive Baboons
ISO 1000 f/11 1/125sec 70mm
Cheers!
Made With Luminar: Cat
I’ve taken a little detour, back to an older photo:
ISO 2000 f/14 200mm 1/6000sec
This original file was shot in December 2017 in Serengeti National Park. We sat an watched these lions for a while so I have a lot of files. Many are very similar and I have not yet edited them all. I enjoy every once in a while going back through them and picking out one to edit.
The edit:
ISO 2000 f/14 200mm 1/6000sec
I’ve used Luminar for this edit. One extra edit that I don’t often do, particularly in my nature images is use the clone and stamp brush. With that brush, I removed a branch that was between me and the female lion and showed in the original photo near her rear paw. I then added the Luminar look, Camden.
Instagram take:
The Made with Luminar Series
This image is part of a project I am calling Made with Luminar. What the images in this series have in common is the software used to edit them, Luminar 3. As with my usual blog posts particulars of the camera settings can be found in the caption below the image. I’ll then explain what other filters and edits have been applied, often mentioning what layer and therefore order that they were applied. The text of these posts includes any Luminar “Looks” that have been applied to the photo. Each look is a series of presets that are applied to the photo. Where applicable I will mention what changes I have made to any of the looks. A full explanation of looks is available here on their website, https://skylum.com/luminar/user-guides/chapter-14-working-with-luminar-looks
You can assume basic edits have been applied. My most common edits are cropping, detail enhancement, and vignette. Specific questions or thoughts on the image are welcome in the comment section below.
Cheers!
Added to Tuesday Photo Challenge, Cat.
January Squares: Lighthearted
Sometimes, you just have to take the photo:
ISO 25 f/2.2 4.15mm 1/105sec
Because, to be honest, I was a bit sad that this little warthog wasn’t going to be coming home to my garden. Fun fact, when I saw them running wild in Tanzania, they did so with their tails sticking straight up. Possibly the cutest thing ever:
ISO 25 f/2.2 4.15mm 1/105sec
To edit this square I used Luminar. It has the Metro Tokyo L2 faded look applied and a vignette.
The Instagram post is here:
Added to January Squares, Day 11. While my entry today is a square, the part where the word is supposed to end in light is exactly backwards. I actually wrote this entire post draft and then realised my mistake, but then couldn’t bring myself not to post it anyway because language mistakes like that, I make all the time.
Cheers!
January Squares: Knowledge, A Light in the World
Work on one of my photography projects this week includes files I have from the Chester Beatty Library in Dublin. Books and manuscripts can serve several functions but one of these is a portal to the past. Take this for example:
ISO 320 f/2.2 4.15mm 1/17sec
It’s an illustration of an anteater found in a 17th Century Persian text called “History of the West Indies”. It’s adorable and the manuscript itself is beautiful, a real work of art. The gold tones in manuscripts like this have always reminded me of the way that I think of knowledge as light.
For this particular edit, I’ve increased the yellow and orange tones and added a vignette:
ISO 320 f/2.2 4.15mm 1/17sec
The original photo was taken with my iPhone and the edits are done in Luminar 3.
The Instagram version is here:
This is my entry to Day 9 of January Squares and also Tuesday Photo Challenge, Portal.
Cheers!
Made with Luminar: A Place in my Heart
It’s been almost two years since I was in Tanzania and I still find it difficult to exactly express why this trip was so important to me. Even harder is to distil that thought into a single image. I have many files from that trip that I have chosen to keep but have not been through the editing process yet. The lens artist photo challenge for this week prompted me to go through them and this is the image that floated to the top of my imagination:
ISO 400 f/18 1/200sec 73mm
The vast landscape that was teeming with life. The humor of being caught in a wildlife traffic jam. The color of the landscape itself. These are all things that appeal to me in this image. For this particular image though, it is the inquisitive zebra that is the story. My edits reflect this. The crop and placement of the vignette are the most simplistic edits I have applied to accomplish this. The other technique I used was after applying a filter that gave this photo a bit of a vintage memory look, I used a brush at 20% to remove the filter a bit on the zebras in the foreground. The final edit is this:
ISO 400 f/18 1/200sec 73mm
What do you think of this edit? Feel free to leave a comment in the comment section. Because this was also a part of my Made with Luminar series, the next part of this post will spell out some of the details of the edit.
This photo was created for and added in response to the Lens-Artists Photo Challenge, Pick a Place. The Picfair version is here.
The Made with Luminar Series
This image is part of a project I am calling Made with Luminar. What the images in this series have in common is the software used to edit them, Luminar 3. As with my usual blog posts particulars of the camera settings can be found in the caption below the image. The text of these posts include the Luminar “Looks” that have been applied to the photo. Each look is a series of presets that are applied to the photo. Where applicable I will mention what changes I have made to any of the looks. A full explanation of looks is available here on their website, https://skylum.com/luminar/user-guides/chapter-14-working-with-luminar-looks
You can assume other edits have been applied. My most common edits are cropping, detail enhancement, and vignette. Specific questions or thoughts on the image are welcome in the comment section below.
Luminar Look applied: Past Days. The texture within the look was reduced and the filter is set to 74% application. A mask was added and the filter was brushed out with a 20% opacity brush over the zebras in the foreground. A few more spots of the texture in the sky were erased.
Cheers!
What I Am Working On: Using a Brush
Among my files that I am working on this week is this one:
ISO 1000 f/11 1/25sec 55mm
This qualifies as a snapshot. I had just a moment to catch the “who me?” expression on the bird’s face just as he was standing near the warning sign. What I wanted to do was make the story more front and center. A crop was an obvious choice. I thought also I might like this in black and white. The edit is here:
ISO 1000 f/11 1/25sec 55mm
I’ll call this a black and white with a cheat. I did a layer with my initial edits like the crop and some clarity. Then I did another layer with a the black and white edits. This particular black and white is done with a yellow filter, that ended up being the interpretation that I prefered. Then I added a final layer. I took a brush to that layer, made it the size of the bird’s eye and set the opacity to 35%. I was erasing just a bit off the black and white layer, just on the eye. So the final edit has a hint of color to the bird’s eye. I use the brush fairly regularly in my editing process. I don’t always think about setting its opacity, but that is a small but impactful way to make use of the tool. My final edit was a vignette that is centered on the eye, further accenting the look the bird was giving me.
What do you think of the final image, does the story pop more? Do you like the touch of color? Feel free to comment below.
Cheers!
Added to Cee’s Black and White Photo Challenge, Signs.
Six-Word Saturday, Black Forest Mouse
ISO 2500 f/11 1/15sec 55mm
Movement on the Black Forest floor
reveals a mouse and his house.
Quick a photo before he’s gone,
woodland forager, not quite a pet.
Cheers!
Added to Six-Word Saturday and Lens-Artists Photo Challenge, Precious Pets.
Photography Journal Blog 