Weekly Photo Challenge: Favorite Place

In a way, this week’s photo challenge, should have been easy, favorite place? outside. Then I over-thought it and ended up with a muddle of ideas. But this morning, as I sat down to work on some more of my photos from Tanzania, the muddle cleared a bit:

ISO 800 185mm f/18 1/125 sec

These two male lions, probably brothers, were sitting on the side of the road. For this version of the photo, I made some simple adjustments, cropping, a bit of sharpening, and I moved the temperature slider slightly warmer. Really though, I wanted to keep the composition simple and the photo close to what I really saw. I couldn’t resist though, as it turns out, messing around some more. I was just curious about making a black and white version:

ISO 800 185mm f/18 1/125 sec

I used this tutorial to create a custom vignette in Lightroom. There are lots of ways to create your own vignettes and it’s something that I could use some more practice with. I left the lion’s eyes in color by creating two layers in Photoshop, the color layer is the version that is the first photo in this post. The black and white layer was on top, and I just added a mask and painted in the eyes of the lower layer. It took less time to do than to type out this paragraph since it was such a small area.

What do you think of my black and white version? Do you like the eyes in color like that? Does the color version appeal to you more? Feel free to leave a comment below.

Cheers!

Weekly Photo Challenge: A Face in the Crowd

This photo was taken at a hippo pool at Serengeti National Park.

ISO 2000 11mm f/14 1/1250sec

It was taken in the middle of the day so lots of contrast between the bright light and dark hippos, making a good exposure a bit of a challenge.  Here is the original photo:

ISO 2000 11mm f/14 1/1250sec

The camera handled the exposure fairly well, but I wasn’t crazy about it, even though it was a good representation of the scene.  The vegetation is a distraction, and really I wanted the photo to be more focused on the hippo faces, many of whom were looking at the camera. Cropping the photo helped with that.  From there I applied a filter that darkened the photo overall and a vignette to draw attention away from the water a bit.

Do you think this edit helped the photo be a better portrait of this crowd? Your thoughts are welcome below.

Cheers!

Weekly Photo Challenge: Beloved

There is a story behind every photograph:

ISO 1000 173mm f/16 1/200

In this case, it is a story of a young zebra napping near its mother:

ISO 1000 90mm f/16 1/200sec

Then a car starts, and nap time is over:

Getting there…

Swinging into action

What?

Almost

For this story, I have left the smaller images of the zebra composing himself in their original as-shot state. The two larger images I have edited. They have been cropped and sharpened.  This past week or so, I have been experimenting with curves in Photoshop instead of levels which is my usual go-to for white balance. Earlier in the week, I had been using curves to get a black and white image to pop a bit, so it wasn’t really a stretch to see how that might also work in a color image of a zebra.

I created the first image as a stand-alone, and I think it works on its own.  The images taken together though tell a story. To some, it may have an aww factor since it includes a young animal. To others maybe it tells the story of a mother’s care for her offspring. For me, it is also an expression of my love for wild places. On a more practical note, it is also a bit of wild for the wildcard in week 5 of my Dogwood challenge. What, if anything, does it mean to you? There are a lot of ways to correct or creatively edit white balance, do you have a favorite?  Feel free to leave a comment below.

Cheers!

Weekly Photo Challenge: Silence

When I set out to take photos, I often think first about which cameras I am going to take with me.  When the answer includes my Canon 50D, the next question is which lens to bring. For my trip to the Serengeti, the answer included my 70-200mm lens, which broadly speaking, was chosen to help me get close up photos of animals that were a bit farther away from our vehicle. However, there were times when after taking a closer shot at 300mm, I would put the lens to 70mm to get a shot of the animal in its environment. And what a beautiful environment it is. This week I was editing one of those shots:

ISO 1000 70mm f/14 1/2000

This version shows the giraffes we had been watching amble away from us in black and white.  Here is a color version:

ISO 1000 70mm f/14 1/2000

Both of these versions were edited first in Photoshop. I did my basic edits there, cropping and sharpening. Then both were sent back to Lightroom which I use for cataloging my photos. Lightroom is also a fairly powerful editing software package and I often use it on its own. For these photos though I have used the plug-in, Google Nik Collection. I’ve added the link to the free plug-in version that I used.  The top photo started in the Silver Efex Pro and the bottom in the Analog Efex Pro. The plug-in has a lot of nice preset options which I think are good starting points for further editing.

At this point, it would be fair to ask why I have chosen this image for a post called Silence. These giraffes were amazingly quiet as they made their way through the landscape. We were quiet too as we were watching. Well mostly. Our driver was cleaning the windshield. The noise of the wipers attracted the attention of the giraffes. They stopped to take stock of the situation before deciding to move on. It was a reminder to me that these animals depend on all their senses to stay alive. It was an interesting moment, and I got a few photographs as well.

What do you think of my edits? Do you have a preference for either version? At the moment I’m happy with both. The lens used here is not generally used as a landscape lens. Do you sometimes use lenses outside of there “intended” range?

Cheers!