Tag Archives: Nairobi NP

Share

Dear all,

It has been some time, yet most of you will know I have a good reason for that: Ronja Maj Dekelver joined us on 11/06/2012, and she was born an ace in advanced parent sleep deprivation techniques 😉

Canon 5D, Canon EF 50 mm f/1.8, f/1.8, 1/400, ISO 320

As for the blog, three weeks ago Stephen Earle provided a great guest blog, which I presume you enjoyed as much as I did. Once again a big thank you Stephen for this great contribution to Pics from the Wild and I hope it also got some extra traffic your way. In my own last post, I talked about connecting and in this blog post, I want to go one step further, since once you are connected, it is in my opinion all about sharing and about taking that mantra a step further than focusing on sharing your own work only.

In that context, I want to say a few words about Google+, which I started exploring a few weeks ago (for those of you on G+, the link to my profile is taken up in the sidebar). What I like about it is that in a short timespan, people took the effort to check out my site and to share some of my shots, in FB f.e. that doesn’t happen too often, I guess the difference lies in the fact that G+ is geared to photographers for photographers. It is also worth noting that you easily reach more people through G+, where I am in 1 month part of more circles than I have followers on FB in the timespan of 1 year! There’s one downside to G+ and that is the fact it takes some time to get your head around sharing meaningfully (there they can learn a thing or 2 from the likes of FaceBook, …). It is well worth cracking the nut though.

All that being said, a great way of sharing in G+ are the themes that are being created/curated. In that context, I have created a theme called Wild Kenya and I welcome those of you with shots portraying the beauty of Kenya (people, wildlife, landscapes, …) to contribute. Mike Gaudar was the first one to contribute and I am sure more great shots are to follow. Just check out the quality of the contributions here, I absolutely love it, so A BIG THANKS to the contributors: Albatros Travel Africa, Barnita’s Photography, Andy Bitterer, Diego Cattaneo, Mike Gaudaur, Robyn Gianni, Russell Johnson, Nicolas Lotsos, Wayne Marinovich, Maggy Meyer, Winston Mitchell, Sandy Schepis, Nicole Sharpe, Gerry van der Walt and myself.

The first G+ Wild Kenya contribution, with a big thanks to Mike Gaudaur

Then, to allow others to share my work, I added a G+ button to all my posts and pages on this site, allowing people to share things they like on their Google+ site without leaving Pics from the Wild.

Here’s one of my recent shots, since of course, besides creating exposure for others it is key you contribute to the community yourself, otherwise people will loose interest!

Canon 7D, Canon 300 mm f/4 L IS USM, 1/1000, f/8, ISO 800

Finally, you may also have noticed that I added a link to my instagram account to the sidebar of the site. Another great way of sharing, much in line with our modern day visual orientation and hence suiting photographers to share bits and pieces of their life and work through the medium they know best. On top of that there are also interesting small competitions going on that can help you big time in getting your work out there: #spectacular_works being one of them, where I got my rhino reflection shot selected amongst the many entries.

I’ll keep it at that for now and look forward to your thoughts.

Warm regards,

Guy

 

What moves you?

Dear all,

Last week, I posted about the power of sharing your work and about magazines and sites where you can get information or browse through interesting work by others.

What I just found out to be a great way of actually finding out what moves you photographically, is browsing through portfolios on 500px or in the brand new yet superb Wild Eye gallery and to add pictures that really move you to your favorites. And now it comes: your favorites end up together in one folder so that by taking a look at that folder, you will find out straight away what kind of pictures move you: thight shots, wide shots, saturated shots, close-ups, B&W shots, …

You can then use this infromation in at least 2 ways. You might actually find out that you are stuck in a rut, since you are always shooting what actually moves you, in which case it could be a great exercise to get out of your comfort zone, to go out there and do the opposite. Or as in my case you can actually find out that the type of picture you like is actually quite absent in your own portoflio. My favorites have a high amount of animal silhouettes against a rising or setting sun, while I actually have very few or none of those, giving me a great assignment, since I’ll be going out to look for them.

Talking about favorites, check out this one from Sietske, she hasn’t been writing till now, nevertheless, I decided to start posting some of her work, this one is from a fantastic sighting in Nairobi National Parc earlier this year. Myself, I had a lot of similar pictures, yet none could beat this one, enjoy!

Canon 450D, Canon 300mm f/4 L IS USM, 1/125, f/11, ISO 200

That’s it for now. With one last request, there’s a few questions on the Pics from the Wild facebook page I would love to get your view on. Check them out here, looking forward to hear from you.

Warm regards,

Guy