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:

View this post on Instagram

Hanging out with Mom. #caturday #lion #safari #tanzania #serengetinationalpark

A post shared by Amy Maranto (@marantophotography) on Jan 31, 2020 at 10:58pm PST

 

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.

See the World, Take a Nap

I traveled pretty far to get this shot:

ISO 1,000 190mm f/14 1/400sec

Shot while on safari in Serengeti  National Park, I could tell you some dramatic tail (see what I did there?) of how we snuck up on this guy, but it would be a lie.  We drove as near as we could get while still staying on the road and then I took this photo, he didn’t even stir.  When I went to edit this photo this week, I wanted to express a dream-like feel in the image. I started with a crop, but made sure to keep the little lizard in the frame. It’s a small, easy to miss detail, but I liked it. One of the edits I did was to add a LUT called Beijing to this photo. It is basically a pre-set series of edits, and it helped create this look:

ISO 1,000 190mm f/14 1/400sec

LUTs are something I don’t know a whole lot about, so in the future I will be researching them a bit more.  First I might take a nap though…

Your thoughts on the photo and its edit are welcome below.

Cheers!

Added to Lens Artists Photo Challenge, My Travels.

Picfair version is here.

 

Early Morning Serengeti, Young Male Lion

ISO 2000 160mm f/14 1/80sec

Cheers!

Added to Live Laugh RV, Favorite Zoos, and Travel With Intent, Six-Word Saturday.

Picfair version is here.

 

Weekly Photo Challenge: All-Time Favorites

I was sorry to hear that the weekly photo challenge I have been participating in for years is being discontinued as of this week. As a final challenge, they have set the theme as all-time favorites. I went through my archives and found three photos.  I start with this one:

ISO 800 195mm f/6.3 1/250

This was originally published in 2015, it’s one of a series of images that tell the story of a robin’s nest we had outside of our home. The theme for that week’s challenge was intricate, and my post was featured on Freshly Pressed.

The next photo I chose was this one:

ISO 400 50mm 0ev f/4 1/100

This photo was part of a project for a Photoshop class I was taking at the time. The journey of how the photo came to be was the subject of several blog posts but perspective which was published in 2014 was the post that wrapped the story up and included the image above.

The third photo was taken in late 2017 and published here in March under the challenge theme of favorite place:

ISO 800 185mm f/18 1/125sec

I was incredibly lucky to have stumbled across this scene. It was also part of a trip of a lifetime for me to Tanzania.

While I am disappointed that this particular weekly photo challenge is at an end, I’ll take it as a challenge and opportunity to try new things on this blog. While I am not sure exactly what this will mean, I do intend to continue to generally write in a format that includes notes on how photos were taken and processed. For all my readers, I would like to thank you for visiting my blog and a special thank you to folks who have taken the time to comment.

Cheers!

 

Travel Theme: Peaceful

This weekend I made a short visit to the St. Louis Zoo.  I had my 50mm lens on my camera when I saw this very peaceful looking lion:

ISO 250 50mm 0ev f/5.6 1/160

And right there you see the limitation of a 50mm lens.  I can’t get any closer to the subject, so that is as good of a shot as I am going to get.  So I switched to my 28-135mm lens for these next two shots:

ISO 400 135mm 0ev f/7.1 1/60

How peaceful looking is that? but remember to stay alert around wildlife because I took this picture 15 seconds later:

ISO 400 135mm 0ev f/7.1 1/80

Hello there, not asleep!

For the two shots taken with my 28-135mm lens I did have to increase the ISO and decrease the shutter speed to get the depth of field that I wanted.  I don’t find the rock outcropping that she is sleeping on to be distracting, so I wanted to keep it in focus.

My blogging friend Rosemarie wrote about the St. Louis Zoo recently and also took some great photos.

This post was written in part as for the weekly travel-theme challenge that is hosted on the blog, Where’s my backpack? this week featuring peaceful as its theme.

Thoughts? Comments? feel free to leave them below!

Cheers!

The Lion Will Eat You Now

ISO 320 132mm f5.6 1/100

I mean, he looked like he meant business.  He was tracking this kid who at the particular moment I got this shot was walking behind me.  This is the kind of shot that makes me wish I had a longer lens.  But since I don’t, I should have also noticed the tree in the picture which is kind of distracting and maybe picked a slightly different place to stand.  Weird, I didn’t see the tree at all until I got the photos on the computer.

Cheers!