2018-07-23: Monochrome Monday
A giraffe reaching for a choice morsel, high up in an acacia tree.
Because of an abundant wet season, there was a lot of food (and relatively speaking) a lot of water on offer in the desert while I was there last April.
2018-06-11: Monochrome Monday
A young rhino grazing peacefully in the early evening on Ongava Game Reserve in Namibia. May it have the opportunity to live in peace, free from the harm of poaching.
2018-05-27: Painterly Effects Project – Elephants
Anyone that has read this blog more than once or twice is familiar with my love of elephants. So it should come as no surprise that I have created a painterly effects project using elephant images.
I’ve really enjoyed working with elephant images this week, as the large, recognizable shape has allowed me to work with some very abstract settings, without compromising the ability to know what it is you are looking at.
I hope you enjoy my images for the week, and wishing you the best for a positive and happy week ahead.
2018-05-23: Wordless Wednesday
2018-05-20: Painterly Effects Project – Namibia
I was inspired this week to explore images from Namibia with my painterly effects project for the month. In the brief time I have spent there, I have found it to be a magical place. The light is beautiful and the landscapes are at times surreal. From the air, the vast open spaces seem lifeless, but on the ground, it is a completely different story.
I hope you enjoy my selections for the week.
2018-05-06: Topic of the month – Painterly Effects
To some, using software to make a photo look as if it were sketched or painted may seem like an abomination. Photographers often go to great lengths (sometimes at great expense) to create sharp and crisp images that show the viewer exactly what the scene looked like. But what about those times when that beautifully crisp, perfectly exposed image doesn’t convey the feeling of the moment? Or, heaven forbid, what if you goof up on the exposure, or mess up the focus a bit, but the moment was great and you still want to do something with the image? These are just some of the reasons for exploring painterly effects with photography. I’ve edited photos in the past for all those reasons and while I don’t post them too often, I do have a gallery of my favourite Artistic Impressions or Photo Art images.
This week, I was inspired by a vintage style travel poster I have had hanging up for around the last 12 years or so. I see it every time I walk towards my sitting room; this week I was struck by the interest in creating a photo series inspired by it, whereas most of the time I just look at it and think “I really want to go to the Serengeti someday”.
I decided to do a series of Big 5 animals; I can imagine these in a vintage travel brochure advertising visiting the “Dark Continent” to see the wild and ferocious Big 5. I edited all of them using the Topaz Simplify filter through the Topaz Studio program.
I hope you enjoy!
2018-05-03: WPC – Unlikely
The photo challenge topic of the weekly is unlikely. The first thing that popped into mind for me was encountering people I’d met before while traveling in Namibia last April.
My first trip to Namibia was in 2015, with a two night stop in Sossusvlei, and then a two night stop at Damaraland Camp. At the Damaraland Camp, we had a wonderful guide named Chris. He was an incredibly thoughtful and knowledgable guide and he took great care to show us the best of the area and share his expertise with us. At DMC, we also had an amazing host in camp manager Maggie.
My second trip to Namibia, we decided we wanted to see different areas, so we chose the Hoanib Skeleton Coast Camp and Ongava Reserve outside of Etosha National Park. On our arrival at Hoanib, the camp manager told us our guide would be Chris, a recent addition to their staff who had moved over from another property. At 3:00 we gathered to head out on our first game drive, and saw none other than our fabulous guide from two years previous, Chris from Caprivi. Almost as far away from home as I could get, and there was a familiar face.
During our stay in Damaraland, the one thing Chris was absolutely determined to find us was the desert adapted elephants. It took until lunchtime, but he finally found them in the the rocky hills. During our stay at Hoanib, Chris was no less determined to find the elephants, but they were much easier to locate. He often said the elephants living near Hoanib were spoiled compared to the ones living in Damaraland.
We had a great time at Hoanib but then it was time to move on. We arrived early afternoon into Etosha and were settled at the lodge with a drink, chatting with the relief manager that was looking after the property. She had introduced herself as Maggie but it took a moment to realize it was the same Maggie we had met 2 years previous at DMC, as her flaming red hair from 2015 had been replaced with a more subdued shade. For the second time in under a week, halfway around the world, I was running into familiar faces. My Mom pulled up a video on her iPad of Maggie and her staff singing a song to us as we departed camp two years earlier, a wonderful memory for all of us to share.
Thinking about these memories makes me wish I had been more inclined to take lots of photos of people during my travels; that’s definitely something I need to do better with in the future. I don’t have a photo of Maggie from this past trip, but we do keep in touch now on Facebook; an unlikely second meeting has turned into a friendship 🙂
2018-04-28: WPC Lines
The photo challenge topic for the week is lines (not the kind you were stuck writing in school if you were misbehaving in class…) 🙂
Here are a few images that I found that I feel have a strong linear element to them. I hope you enjoy.
2018-04-04: Wordless Wednesday
