Wishing everyone a great week ahead!
2018-09-03: Monochrome Monday
2018-09-02: Leopards in Luminar
I mentioned in my post last week that I would concentrate on using Luminar in Windows for the balance of the month. I missed getting this posted before the end of the month, but still wanted to share the images and my thoughts on Luminar in Windows.
First off, thankfully the clone and stamp issue that I found the first time I opened my version of Luminar in Windows had been corrected once I updated the software. Basically what was happening is the clone and stamp layer would appear to work normally, but then would disappear once you clicked done on the clone and stamp module. A bit frustrating, so I am glad that is no longer an issue.
I had read in a few blogs that there were a couple fewer filters on the Windows version; I didn’t count them myself and never found I was missing a tool I wanted to use, so that’s definitely not a concern for me. The one thing I really enjoyed was using the touchscreen for creating masks; my Windows machine is a Microsoft Surface complete with the Surface Stylus. What a huge difference using that made in terms of accuracy. I never transferred my logo file to my Windows machine, so I had to open up the edited files on my Mac to add a logo and then export. I didn’t have any issues with using the files on different systems, which is a good thing as I don’t see leaving my Mac as my main editing machine any time soon, but it does mean that I can work on the road and transition to home in a fairly seamless way.
I’m going to say for my editing purposes, there really isn’t any difference between Mac and Windows for using Luminar. Others may have a different experience, but I didn’t have any issues.
I decided on leopard images as I knew I had some that had some with contrast issues, some wonky colours to deal with and an images where I would need to test the clone and stamp. And Leopards in Luminar just has a nice ring to it, don’t you think?
2018-08-29: Wordless Wednesday
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.
2018-08-22: Wordless Wednesday
2018-08-21: Flamingos – Before and After
I had flagged this image to include with my Monochrome Monday post yesterday, but when I started editing this in Luminar, I was so impressed with the transformation, I thought it would make for a good before and after post.
These flamingos were far away; I had the Panasonic at full 400mm zoom and they still are really small, so I shot this mostly as a proof image. With a digital camera, there is little downside to snapping a photo or two even if you don’t think they will be great.
At least you have a record of what you saw, and it might actually turn out okay. Needless to say this isn’t getting printed to hang on my wall, but it is a great example of how far you can recover a rather drab image.
As I said, I brought this into Luminar planning to include it with my black and white shots, but all it took were a few sliders to bring to colour and texture of the image back to life.
I saved a split shot with the before and after (I really like this view option, I find it much more helpful than toggling before and after on and off). You really get an idea of how flat and lifeless the image was out of camera, and how much detail and colour be recovered.
I edited this in under five minutes, so it definitely wasn’t a big time investment to play around and make this image the best it could be.
2018-08-18: Smoky Skies
Like last year, Northern BC has been hit hard with wildfires. It’s actually pretty scary looking at the wildfire maps, as it looks like most of the province is currently on fire. Thankfully, there is currently no danger in our immediate vicinity, other than extremely poor air quality from the substantial amount of smoke that has settled in the region, and the airborne ash that lately has been coating my car every night.
Yesterday morning started out normal enough for the past few weeks, a bit smoky but nothing too terrible. But then as the morning wore on, it got darker rather than brighter, and at 9:10am it looked like we were in the midst of some type of solar eclipse event. I went outside to try and capture a few images; it was extremely smoky, cold like it would be in the middle of the night, and all the photo sensitive lights had come on. It was spooky quiet as all the birds had dropped to complete silence.
By 10am the darkness had passed but it remained incredibly smoky throughout the day.
I was in the middle of work so I didn’t have the opportunity to drive anywhere more interesting to take pictures; this is a view down my driveway to the road… not that you can really even see the driveway in the image. It was just the sky I was focused on.
This shot was taken on my Fuji camera with the 18-55 lens, shot at f2.8, ISO 2000 and 1/60 sec. I created the merged panorama in On1 Photo Raw, and for efficiency edited it in On1 (back to the Luminar processing tomorrow). The merged panorama was a bit of a challenge because the images were so dark. I had to up the exposure slider on all the individual images, and then reverse that on the panorama. My camera is basically always set to auto white balance, and I changed it in editing to daylight, and that got the sky to be true to life.
Just to give some perspective, sunrise this week is around 5:55am.
All of us here are praying for the safety of all the incredibly brave people working to put these fires out, and hoping that some favourable weather will be heading their way soon.
2018-08-08: Wordless Wednesday
2018-07-30: Monochrome Monday
Hopefully no one is getting bored of leopards, after having a few posts in a row featuring my favourite cat.
If you missed the post from yesterday, you can check it out here, with lots more images of this beautiful cat.
Wishing everyone a fantastic week ahead.
2018-07-29: The Tamboti Leopard
Even spending a short time in the bush with a given animal, it is easy to get caught up in the drama of its life, and care how things turn out for it. Regardless how deeply I realize it is all part of nature and the circle of life, I still find myself feeling sad in hearing of the passing of an animal that I had a special sighting of.
I recently read on the Londolozi blog that the Tamboti female leopard has not been spotted in over a month, and is presumed dead. I had two sightings of her on my last trip; the first, we arrived to the riverbed moments after she stashed her cub into a new den site, missing what we thought would have been the sighting of a lifetime. We did catch a brief glimpse of her moving a cub into a deeper part of the bushes she stashed them in, and as we headed back to camp, I was happy to even have seen the briefest glimpse of a cub so tiny.
The next morning, our last on safari, after having an amazing moment with elephants we headed off on a whim back to the clump of bushes where she stashed the cubs. Our wonderful ranger Dave had an instinct that she might move the cubs again, and as we arrived, we found her with one of the cubs and were able to follow her on a long journey through the bush to her new den site, and then spend some time watching her interact with her two tiny cubs. I’ve posted about this sighting before, and you can see some other images here.
Reading that she is now presumed gone, and only her female cub remains, prompted me to edit a few more of my images to share, and to relive those wonderful moments in the bush, watching nature unfold.
