Tag: Elephant

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2018-12-09: Artistic Impressions

This week, I felt inspired to play around in Topaz Impressions and create some of my artistic impression images.  Or as I like to say, what I would paint, if I could paint :).

Next week, I am going to try and work with the new AI Sky Enhancer that Luminar just released.

Wishing everyone a fantastic week ahead!

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A young elephant seen on an early morning game drive.
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A leopard scanning the horizon at sunset in the Okavango Delta.
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A regal lion laying in the tall grass just after sunrise.
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A large warthog moving through camp.
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A fiery sunset – Africa has the most expressive skies!
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2018-10-29: Monochrome Monday

I met a friend for a tea and a visit last week, and as she also feels a connection to elephants, I started telling her about the elephant encounter I had on the last day of my last safari trip.  Since I still had a few flagged images from that sighting that I wanted to edit, I thought they’d make a great post for today.

I posted a bit of the story of these elephants before, which you can check out here if you’d like, along with a couple more images.

I hope you enjoy my selection of images, and hope you have a wonderful week ahead.

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A tiny elephant calf dwarfed by Mom and an aunt.
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One of the youngsters coming up to the vehicle to check me out.
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An elephant calf enjoying a fresh drink of water from a burst landscaping pipe.
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Adults and youngsters all jockeying for position around the water.  The littlest seemed to be trying to do a balance beam routine on the small log, and nearly tipped over just after this was taken.

 

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2018-08-26: Elephants edited with Luminar

Since it has been far too smoky to get out shooting, I decided I needed a theme for my Luminar editing this week, and I decided on elephants (surprise!).  I’ve not watched any more Luminar tutorials this week, but I have decided for the balance of the month I am going to search out resources on Luminar for Windows, as the program is a bit less advanced than the Mac version.

I actually tried to edit an image on my Windows computer using Luminar, but got frustrated with a clone and stamp issue and gave up.  Currently, I’m letting that computer download the latest update while I write this, so perhaps the issue will be resolved with the latest version.

Editing elephant images has given me a chance to work with a variety of tools to bring out texture and contrast.  An elephant’s wrinkly skin is such a wonderful feature, and raw files really need to be worked with to bring that back to life.  I’ve found that Luminar does an excellent job with this, but you definitely need a gentle hand with the adjustments as they can go up to 11 very quickly.  The other feature I am enjoying on Luminar is the Accent AI slider.  It analyzes an image and tries to adjust automatically for exposure, contrast, clarity, saturation… but like the filters that affect details, I find it it needs to be used with a gentle touch, otherwise the image starts to look overdone.

I hope you enjoy my selections for the week.  Wishing everyone a great week ahead.

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One of the desert adapted elephants in the Hoanib River bed.  Namibia, April 2017.
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A pair of elephants checking us out before heading down to drink.  Phinda Game Reserve, May 2017.
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Seeing double – a pair of juvenile elephants along the edge of a dam on Phinda Game Reserve.
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This bull was not particularly pleased with our presence, and shot out a blast of air from his trunk, sending sand up all around him, like confetti.  We were driving on the airstrip to give him lots of space on the road, but we certainly didn’t stick around any longer, as he was in musth and we didn’t want to chance annoying him any further.
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This young lady couldn’t have been more different to the bull elephant above.  We were parked on the roadway and she approached us and then just chilled out along the side of the road, waiting while the rest of her family had a drink from a broken water pipe.
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2018-08-06: Monochrome Monday

My Mom was looking for some elephant images to hang up, and originally thought she would like a sepia tinted photo, so I worked on this edit for her in Luminar.

In the end we decided a colour image would look better in the frame that she had, but at least I had another opportunity to do some editing of my very favourite animal.

Wishing everyone a fantastic week ahead!

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A bull elephant at a watering hole in Nxai Pans Park in Botswana.  April 2017.
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