Friday finally brings a very busy week to an end.

In between all the meetings, trip to Johannesburg and admin I have still been able to capture a few decent wildlife images.  Our good run on lion sightings continue and this week we got to spend a lot of time with five young cubs, their mom and the pride males.  Fantastic sightings and some brilliant photo opportunities.  On top of that I have also been processing a number of images from the hospitality shoot I did at Cleopatra Mountain Farmhouse a few weeks ago.  As a wrap up to the week, below is a slide show featuring not only some of the lion shots but also a few random images from the hospitality shoot images I have been working on.

[slideshow id=3]

One of the most difficult things is to choose which images to showcase on your site or portfolio so in stead of spending hours figuring out which images I should include, the Friday slideshow is purely a fun thing to which images that catch my eye, for whatever reason, gets added.

Aperture 3

A little while ago I downloaded the trial version of Aperture 3.  The hype about Apple’s new image processing software has been quite something and, as with anything Apple, it is bound to keep on drawing quite a bit of attention.

Up until now I have been using Adobe Lightroom for all my image cataloging and processing purely because I work on both Mac and PC and Lightroom is a dual platform program, making things a whole lot easier.  Since I got my iPhone and started doing a lot of my processing on my Macbook Pro I have been very open to anything Apple so I thought I would have a look at what Aperture 3 has to offer.  Being used to Lightroom it took me a few minutes to look around and find all the basic controls and start looking through and processing a few test images but one thing is for certain – Aperture definitely has that Apple magic.

Even though I can find my way around Lightroom with my eyes closed, I found Aperture’s user interface to be elegant, intuitive and easy to use.  It would obviously be unfair to compare the two after just a brief look so for the next week, which is a bit quieter than the past few days, I will only use Aperture to catalogue and process my images.  There are already a few features that I reckon is pretty nice and these include the skin smoothing brush, which can be used with surprising efficiency on certain wildlife images, and the slideshow maker is fantastic.

At this stage I have only put one image  through Aperture 3 just to check the process and it seems simple enough.  After opening the Wild Dog image on the right I did a few basic adjustments using the sliders on the left of the screen.   I then tested a few of the adjustment brushes after which exporting the final image.  Very easy to do and at first glance the results are pretty good.

I enjoy playing around with new programs and by the look of it Aperture has quite a bit of depth to it.  If you have had a look at Aperture 3 I would love to hear your comments.  Once I have given it a good working over I will share my thoughts on the blog.

At first glance Aperture 3 looks impressive but it’s gonna take a lot for me to change over from Lightroom. Let’s see how things go.

Other than that it has been a pretty quiet photographic week so gonna wrap it up.

To end off, one more image from the week that goes along with a quote I saw on Nick Coyne’s blog sometime this week.  Check out Nick’s site for a great mix of images and photographic quotes.  Some great stuff in there.

“You only get one sunrise and one sunset a day, and you only get so many days on the planet. A good photographer does the math and doesn’t waste either.” ~ Galen Rowell

Have a great weekend.  See you on Monday!

Gerry

Firstly a shout out to Grant Marcus for his guest post yesterday.  Nice insight and I especially liked the monochrome image of the male lion’s face and the last shot of the elephant.  Both have that something special that makes you look twice, three times and each time still makes you notice something new.

Recently I have noticed a lot of photographers doing 365 projects.  The short version is that you are supposed to take a picture each day for a year, hence the clever name, and post it somewhere.  The goal is to force yourself to start thinking outside the box and get you thinking of new ways to create interesting images.  Now even though, in theory, I reckon this is quite a good idea I know that I will not be able to stick to the schedule.  Don’t get me wrong, I would love to give it a bash but I know that my life right now will make it a very frustrating exercise.  I truly admire people who can take on a project like this and see it through all the way!  Being a little obsessive a project like this might lead me to a point where I start getting tense about not getting a shot and I don’t need that right now.  I get it, would love to do it, but not yet.  Perhaps next year.  Or the year after.

So, for now I have decided that each Friday I will post a slideshow with a few images from the week.  These slideshows will mostly include wildlife and landscape images but every now and then I might slip a ‘this-could-have-been-a-365-project-image’ or an image from a recent commission in there if it is interesting enough.  For now here goes with a few images from the last week.

[slideshow id=2]

As you can see from these few images, the last week’s photography has been great and it is always great to have photographers on the vehicle who are willing to wait for the moment.  Wait for the light.  Next week I actually have a few days off in the bush so I will make the most of it and go out there and shoot what I want to.  How I want to.  Some interesting ideas and shots I would like to try and get.  Anybody keen to join?

Apple Aperture 3

During the last week Apple released Aperture 3.

I have never used Aperture for no other reason that I started out with Photoshop and then Lighroom and have not any need to change.  Lightroom does everything I need it to do, well almost, and I know the program well.  For a while now I have been quite excited to see what Adobe comes up with when Lightroom 3 is released and then suddenly Aperture 3 arrives.

As with anything Apple, there is a huge hype around the latest version of Aperture.  Reviews have been great and the list of features make for some pretty impressive reading.

I have just signed up and will be downloading the 30 day trial version of Aperture 3 during the weekend to check it out.  If only half of the reviews are correct and this program has the intuitive feel of most Apple products it should make for a pretty powerful editing package.

I am gonna have fun checking out Aperture 3 to see what the hype is about.  Lightroom 3 is going to have to pack quite a punch to stay ahead of the latest Apple hype.  Will share my thoughts once I have had a chance to play around a bit.

To read more or download a copy of Aperture 3 click here.

Before I sign off for the weekend a quick thought on creativity and sharing your work.

Morkel Erasmus, a previous guest blogger on Photo-Africa recently posted the image on the right on his blog. The image is a combination of a number of shots and some attention in Photoshop.

This image is a great example of digital art and the only thing that is certain is that people’s opinions will differ whether this is a good image or not.  The reality is this – Morkel took a few images, some time and a whole lot of Photoshop creativity to create a fantastic digital artwork.  Not a photograph.  In this instance the photographs do not stand alone as the final product but forms a part of the final product.

Creativity is the ability of making something out of nothing.  Taking a normal scene and making someone else see it for the first time.  Sharing your vision.  Creativity is also very personal and if you are someone who creates something, whether a photo, digital artwork or painting, you will never be able to impress all the people all of the time.

When you create something, share it.  And don’t worry too much what people say – whether good or bad.   Based on an old post on Seth Godin’s blog, remember that there are four groups of people who will potentially view your image or artwork.

• Strangers – People who don’t know you and have never seen your work.
• Critics – People who don’t like your work and sometimes don’t like you.
• Friends – People who like your work and think you’re ok.
• Fans – People who think your work is amazing / spectacular / unbelievable whatever you create.  Your mom normally falls in this category.

Before you react to any kind of comment on you or your work take a moment to think where the comment came from, learn what you can and move on.  There is no point in trying to please everybody all of the time.  Not possible!!  So whether you get good or bad comments on your work – listen, take from it what you can and then set out to create something else.  Take more pictures.  Make more digital art.  Share it with more people.  That is the only way you will grow your own creativity.

Have a good weekend and, yeah you guessed it… go out and create something!

Gerry

As you have seen, and read in yesterday’s post, I change the five slideshow images at the top of the blog every month.

It’s always an interesting exercise to go through my images to choose five for the slideshow.  Here are the images I chose for February and a few thoughts on each.

I shot this image almost two years ago.  It was a pretty quiet, overcast day out with not too many major photographic opportunities.  We stopped to have a look at and shoot some images of a group of zebra on the side of a road when they slowly started crossing.  The perfect leading line of the road immediately came into play and all we had to do was wait for the right moment.  This was one of the last animals to cross and after stopping for a split second moved off the road.  The overcast conditions made for a pretty easy exposure as full on sunlight would have made the road a lot brighter but in this case matrix metering did the job.

The Springbok is one animal I have not had the pleasure of photographing all that often but I was lucky enough to capture this image in the Namibrand Nature Reserve in Namibia.  This male was following a group of females and was moving parallel to us for quite some time.  Again, it turned in to a waiting game ad I waited for him to walk into an area where the background would not distract from the image.  He was walking on the base of a sand dune and even though he did not want to go and pose on the top of the dune I was able to click the shutter as he walked through this dry, grassy patch,  Love the texture of the grass and the flash of color on his side.  Namibia, definitely heading back there not too long from now.

I was not sure whether to use this image or not.  I reckon it is a very powerful image even though technically it is not quite up there.  I shot this at midday, in very harsh African sunlight, when Gavin Tonkinson, one of the contributing photographers on Photo-Africa, and I sat with these two brothers for almost the entire day.  They were hanging around an old wildebeest carcass and every now and then they would have a full on go at each other to get to the last bit of meat.  It was spectacular to watch a scene like this but because of the very strong shadows, from the midday sun, quite difficult to shoot.   We played around with many different angles, modes and exposures and in the end I still like this shot even with the harsh shadows.  If only we could have photographed this scene a little later in the day when the sun was closer to the horizon. Imagine nice golden light on the two angry lions faces.  Those eyes would have just came alive.  Oh well, I still like the image.   If only…

This is an image I shot almost four years ago and till today it is one of my personal favorites.  After watching a massive breeding herd of elephants browsing around our vehicle on a rainy afternoon, the matriarch decided it was time to go.  As one, they all started moving away from us.  The hazy conditions made for quite a moody scene and this image was the result.

I have not done a lot of macro photography.  I shot this image, of an Elegant Grasshopper, about three years ago.  That particular year there was millions of these colorful pests around.  It was one of the few times that we took quite a bit of time to photograph the smaller things even though it was hit and miss kind of stuff.  One of my goals for this year is to do a lot more macro photography, with some of the new toys I now have, so as a way to remind myself of that I decided to add this image to the slideshow as well.

Quite a diverse mix of images but that’s what wildlife photography should be all about.  Would love to hear your thoughts and which image you like the most.

More soon.

Gerry