Showcasing the beauty of Mother Nature
I had grand plans for photography and posts this past week, but my schoolwork got me bogged down, so much so that I even missed my usual Sunday post. Now it’s nearing the end of the long weekend and the weather has cooperated to get out for a round of golf, so a quick image and then I am off. After a long winter and lots of time during the week spent at the computer, I have to have my priorities! Have a great week everyone!
I’ve been letting the feeders run to empty now, given the likelihood of bears in the back yard, but that hasn’t slowed down the volume of birds in the yard at all, at least not yet. Today I spotted a new species for the first time, a Townsend’s Solitaire, and while I didn’t get a great image of it, at least it got me outside for a few minutes to capture the other visitors, before it started to rain.
The one bird I didn’t get any images of today is a hummingbird, and they have arrived back here as well. They are one of my favourite birds to watch, and hearing them buzz and chatter from the bushes or investigate me when I am out walking the dog is one of the joys of summer.
Just a couple today, I hope you are also getting the chance to get outside and enjoy spring.
It was far too cold for me to get out and photograph any local birds this week, so instead I have come up with quite a random assortment of African bird images to share this week.
Wishing everyone a wonderful week ahead. Stay safe out there!
I have some bird images that I took on my first trip to Africa, which I printed to fill a frame with 4 – 5″ x 5″ openings. While I see it every day, I haven’t really given it much thought in years. But today when I looked at it, I wondered if with the skills and software I have now, I could improve upon those images.
All of these were shot in raw format with a Nikon D5100 with a 55-300mm kit lens. I did the best I could at the time with editing them, but we all know that software has come a long way in the last 6 years, not to mention there has been a ton of room for improvement in my skills with editing (and still so much to learn).
A lot of these were taken during the harsh light of midday; but when you are out and about, you shoot what you see, when you see it. You never know if you’ll even see the same species of bird again, let alone have another opportunity to photograph it. And as it stands, after 6 trips to Africa, I have only seen carmine bee-eaters on that very first trip while in Zambia, so I am glad I did capture what images I could 🙂
For each image, first is the original edit, and second is the updated edit.
I think in every case, the re-edit made substantial improvement. As soon as I remember to pick up a replacement light magenta ink cartridge for my printer, I am going to reprint these and replace the original images in that old frame.
I have a few other ideas of images I would like to explore from my archive, so watch this space in the coming weeks and months.
Have a great week!
I spotted a barred owl hanging out in the backyard a couple of days ago while I was having lunch. It spent a bit of time trying to hunt, and the rest trying to nap. It was -28C, so I took the photos through my window, as it was just too cold for me to get out to take a couple of pictures. Besides, Murphy’s Law would have kicked in, and by the time I got bundled up enough to head outside and take a few images, the owl would have flown away.
Thankfully things have warmed up a little bit here; still cold, but at least not bitterly cold. I hope your week ahead is looking up too 🙂
I’ve been having fun this weekend working on some of my photo art images, but decided to share a few images of interesting weaver nests today. They caught my eye, and I decided to just go with it.
On my most recent trip, we saw communal nests of the red-billed buffalo weaver and the typical hanging basket style nest of southern masked weaver (that’s my best guess, as we didn’t actually see anyone in residence).
On previous trips I saw several other great examples.
As much as I had hoped that my photo art topic would allow me to get comfortable with Topaz Studio version 2, I haven’t actually even tried it yet. Fingers crossed that this week coming up I can make some time to a watch a tutorial or two and get familiar with the program operation, but for now, I have stuck with the original version, and I am really happy with the results of this weeks experiments.
I decided to focus on birds this week, and played around with two basic combinations of software. The sunbird and hornbill were edited primarily using the Topaz AI Remix module, while the rest were done with Impression (along with the usual basic edits to start for tone, cropping, etc.).
Do you have a favourite this week?
I hope you enjoy, and wishing you a great week ahead.
Travelling through southern Africa, pretty much any time of year, will provide the opportunity to see a great variety of birds. Today I chose to focus on ones with feathers in shades of blue. I hope you enjoy the variety of images today, and wishing you a wonderful weekend!
