Tag: nature

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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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2017-01-22: What I’ve seen this week

Actually, I guess this should be more appropriately titled What I Saw Last Week, as none of the photos are from the last 7 days. It’s typed now though and no point in wasting time changing it.  On to the photos, and wishing everyone a great week ahead.

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Chickadees rarely sit still, so I am glad I managed to get a clear shot of this little one.
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A coyote made a visit to my yard one day; (s)he didn’t spend too long and I am grateful I looked out the window when I did to get these few photos.
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The coyote was very aware of me in the window snapping photos.
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What a difference the sunlight makes!
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A magpie spent a few minutes in the back yard, gathering food from the deer bucket.
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On my way back from town, I spotted this barred owl up the road; I quickly rushed home and grabbed my camera.  The owl was very far back from the road, and didn’t stick around long.
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Now you see it, now you don’t.  I only managed a couple minutes watching the owl (which was my first owl sighting of the year).

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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2017-01-17: WPC Ambience

It may seem a little strange to post photos from a Masai Mara wildebeest river crossing for a post on ambience, but honestly, the ambience was a very integral part of the experience for me. When you are watching a nature program, they presenters do an excellent job of making a river crossing seem like an amazing spectacle – which is absolutely is!!!  They also do an amazing job at making it seem like a secluded experience, which it absolutely is not!

We left our camp at 6am for a 2+ hour drive to the potential crossing point, in the hopes of getting a good parking spot to watch the action.  On route we passed wildebeest in the thousands, if not tens of thousands, some marching the direction we were headed, and others, heading in the direction we had come from.

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Wildebeest as far as the eye can see.

I had never anticipated being the only person there, but I also didn’t expect to find quite so many other people there.  But, the atmosphere was a lot of fun.  I spent time chatting with my guides and with the people in the vehicle next to us while waiting to see if possibly the wildebeest might make a move.  They were certainly taking there time, and a good number of people gave up as the afternoon wore on.

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The view from our vehicle at the crossing point.  Land cruisers, jeeps, minibuses and land rovers, packed in like sardines and even double parked, all in an attempt to see the action.

When the gazelles approached the water and the crocodiles practically licked their lips, we collectively tried to will the little antelope back from their gruesome fate.

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People in the vehicles were saying things like “Don’t go in the water, it isn’t safe!”  If only they would have listened.
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I saw five gazelle attempt to cross the river, and only two made it out.   

And when at 3:15 the wildebeest started crashing through the water, those that were left were all uttering the same things “amazing”, “mind-blowing”, “unbelievable”.

The atmosphere surrounding that stretch of river on that day in late September, really made the experience that much more special.

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A surge of wildebeest crossing the Mara River in the Masai Mara, Kenya.  There were plenty more vehicles on the opposite bank!

 

WPC: Ambience

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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2017-01-15: Artistic Impressions

I’ve had another great week of wildlife viewing around home, and I think I have gotten some really nice images, but I’ve been caught up with other projects and haven’t had an opportunity to do any review or editing.  So, I’ll have to do a good catch up next Sunday, but for now, I hope you will enjoy a couple of my artistic impressions of the fox that visited last week.

Wishing you a great week ahead 🙂

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