Category: Africa

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2017-02-13: Monochrome Monday

I’ve shared some photos and stories before from my time at a Mara river crossing, and thought I would share a few more images for my monochrome Monday post.  I hope you enjoy, and wishing everyone a great week.

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A lone gazelle tries his luck crossing the river.  My guide explained that the gazelle typically cross in small groups or alone, as there is a huge risk of them being crushed by the larger wildebeest and zebra.  Unfortunately, crossing alone makes them prime targets for the crocodiles.
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Part of the first wave surging up the bank.
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There were only a handful of zebra amongst the herd.
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The crossing came in waves; a group surged across, struggled to get up the banks, and just as the last few wildebeest worked up the bank, the next wave would surge forward to cross.
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Chaos and the herd mentality.

 

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and

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2017-02-06: Monochrome Monday

A trio of photos from my time Uganda for this monochrome Monday.

Wishing everyone a fantastic week.

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A chimpanzee munches on figs high in the treetops in Kibale National Park.
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A huge flock of birds takes to the skies along the Kazinga Channel.
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Makara the silverback looking pensive.

 

Please visit:
www.jennifersawickyphotography.com for wildlife, landscape and nature inspired artwork.

and

https://shopvida.com/collections/voices/jennifer-sawicky for textiles inspired by my photography.

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2017-01-29: Leopard Before and After

I know today is supposed to be my what I’ve seen this week day, but I’ve seen absolutely nothing at all, so I had to come up with something a little different.

When I was in Queen Elizabeth Park in Uganda, we were lucky enough to come across a leopard, once in the morning for a fleeting glimpse, and then for a longer period just before nightfall.  Four of the six people that were also on the tour had never seen a leopard in the wild before.  It was drizzly, near dark, and I was shooting from a vehicle where people were moving around a fair bit, so I had to deal with both movement of my subject and where I was located.  Some of the photos I took were at 1/100sec, f5.6, ISO 25,640.  No, the ISO isn’t a typo.  I believe on my Nikon it was called Hi2.0.

I have been extremely blessed with leopard sightings over the years (check out Lions vs A Leopard or 2016-10-17: Monochrome Monday for just a couple examples), but I continued to photograph this one because I thought it would be interesting to see how the images turned out, and what I could do with them.  While everyone else was heading on to other safari destinations after our Uganda tour, there is no guarantee they would get another leopard sighting… what if an image like this was the best that you could get?

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Tons of noise and a strange colour cast = not the best image.  But the position of the leopard is nice.

Below is the process I used to work through this particular image, and the end result.

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I loaded the image into Photoshop and used Topaz Denoise 6 for noise reduction.  This is the image on import.
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I used the preset Raw – Stronger for my noise reduction.  While the noise reduction softens the image, it is still a step in the right direction.
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I then loaded the denoised image into Nik Color Efex Pro.  I use lots of different plug ins, but I really like the Lighten/Darken centre option in Color Efex for images like this.  I used the presets remove colour cast at 25%, lighten/darken centre, sunlight (to add some warmth back to the image) and brilliance/warmth to add some colour saturation.
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After I saved the image in Photoshop, I returned to Lightroom and did a final crop, as the edges were still very noisy, and did not add anything to the image.
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And here is the final result!  While not my best leopard image, if this was the only image I had and wanted to use it in a blog post, photo slideshow or book about my trip, I would be happy to do so.  And it turned out, this leopard was the only one I saw on this particular trip.

So there you have a before and after – let me know if posts like this are something you would like to see more of in the future.

Please visit:

www.jennifersawickyphotography.com for wildlife, landscape and nature inspired artwork.

and

https://shopvida.com/collections/voices/jennifer-sawicky for textiles inspired by my photography.

 

 

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2017-01-24: WPC Graceful

I can’t think of anything more graceful than watching birds in flight.  Trying to capture that grace and beauty with my camera is a challenge that I am always happy to undertake 🙂

 

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A tawny eagle, Masai Mara, Kenya.
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A pied kingfisher carries home the catch of the day.
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A pair of gulls catch the eye of a marabou stork.
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A pelican soars of the Kazinga Channel in Uganda.
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A fish eagle crosses the river, heading to its mate.

Please visit:
www.jennifersawickyphotography.com for wildlife, landscape and nature inspired artwork.

and

https://shopvida.com/collections/voices/jennifer-sawicky for textiles inspired by my photography.

WPC: Graceful

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