Serengeti Morning

I was working on some of my Tanzania photos this past week as part of a project I’m putting together with my oldest child. One of our safari drives in the Serengeti was an early morning one that allowed me to take a few sunrise photos. I’ve never really taken a lot of sunrise photos and I think that shows when you compare them with other types of photos that I have taken. This file below though is one that I just revisited and reprocessed that I was pretty happy with:

ISO 2500 f/14 1/60sec 22mm

To me, one of the biggest challenges of sunrise photos is that the real thing is pretty spectacular and that can be hard to capture in camera. I’ll keep working at it though! This particular file was taken in December 2017 with a Canon 50D and a wide-angle lens. Another photo that I processed this week with the same set-up and for this same process I posted here.

Added to Lens Artist Photo Challenge, Morning. This made for a great challenge topic for me this week.

Cheers!

Wordless Wednesday: Serengeti

ISO 25 f/2.2 1/2198 4.2mm

ISO 25 f/2.2 1/2198 4.2mm

Added also to Cee’s Black & White Photo Challenge, Fences and Gates.

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:

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.

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!

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: 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!