Kruger National Park 09-08-2023 (part 3)

Even more sightings from day three: 

 

Kruger National Park 09-08-2023 (part 2)

More sightings from day three:

Kruger National Park 09-08-2023 (part 1)

 Sightings from day three:

 

Kruger National Park 08-08-2023 (part 3)

Even more sightings from day two:

 

Kruger National Park 08-08-2023 (part 2)

More sightings from day two:

 

Kruger National Park 08-08-2023 (part 1)

Sightings from day two:

 

Kruger National Park 08-08-2023 (sunrise)

 ...and so day two of our Kruger National Park adventure got under way in spectacular fashion.

Kruger National Park 07-08-2023 (sunset)

 Who can resist an African sunset? Not this guy! I moved around a bit and took several.

Sunsets with a telephoto lens are fantastic for zooming in and picking out details in a landscape as well as filling the sensor with those great sunset colours.

Kruger National Park 07-08-2023 (part 2)

 More from day one:

Kruger National Park 07-08-2023 (part 1)

My wife and I just returned from a trip to the Kruger National Park and over the next few days I will be posting some of the photographs I took while there. I took along my D850 as well as a 24-120mm and a 70-300mm, however most of these pics were taken with the 70-300mm. I mainly used aperture priority with f8 most (but not all) of the time & auto iso between 64 and 4000 with a minimum shutter speed of 1/500th of a second. I just adjusted as needed when the light started to fade in the evenings. This setup made for easy and quick shooting in fast changing scenes and I think the results are sufficiently good to make me very happy.

I highly recommend the Kruger National Park in South Africa not only for it's great facilities and service, but also for the abundance of game in a pristine natural African landscape.

Here then are the first five from day one:

Visit to Mölle 1

Visited a small town called Mölle today, a harbour town that provides plenty of photographic opportunities. On previous visits I took the more conventional tourist pics of the harbour and surrounds but this time I was a little more interested in details, colour, texture, etc. 

Took my D850 with the awesome 50mm f1.8 G "nifty fifty" attached. I also had a polarizing filter screwed on the front to get rid of reflections and boost colour, especially in the sky.

I'll split the pics over a couple of posts.

Snapseed Photo Editing App

My go-to photo editor on phone and iPad is the wonderful and surprisingly adept Snapseed app which is available for free on android and Apple devices. If you have not tried it out then give it a whirl and see for yourself what the fuss is all about.

I took a portrait of the plastic model head earlier today and then converted it to jpg via RawTherapee on Linux, transferred it to my Apple phone, played around a bit with Snapseed and then transferred them back to the computer and resized in the free GIMP photo editor.

 I have posted a random selection of various versions of the portrait below for you to peruse. 

Personally I am impressed by the quality of the output from Snapseed and also that it is so wonderfully versatile & handy to use to get some interesting looks. It isn't for everyone, but it's free and it just works.

The original portrait photograph

Six examples of the Snapseed treatment:

Rare Selfie Time...

It's not often that photographs get taken of me, mostly because I am always behind the camera. Today, just for once, I wanted to try out the portrait set-up that I have been shooting with the plastic head but using a real human head for a change and the only available (read "willing") sucker human at home today was me. So for better or worse you get to see my scruffy face today... 😱

First shot is a colour version of my scruffy face, second is the whole set-up but with the plastic head in my place, third shot is a 100% crop to show the totally insane resolution of the D850, and finally a B&W version of my scruffy face. B&W doesn't make me look any better though...

Colour version

Set-up shot

100% crop

B&W version

Final Fun With the Plastic Head (for now)

 Ok, just one more post featuring the world's most patient head-shot model. At least for now... it has been fun though.

As before I used my D750 and three Speedlights controlled wirelessly. The only change was using an Elinchrom softbox for the rear fill instead of the reflector I used before. 

Just two pics (plus one bonus pic...), the final image and a pull-back shot. You get the picture.

In the "bonus" pic below I just substituted some Christmas lights in the place of the Speedlight powered gobo used above to provide a somewhat sparkly background for a change.