Back in action, a deliberate attempt to bring my photography to the next level

Dear all,

After a nice home leave during which I’ve been an offliner for most of the time, we have now settled back in and this is officially the first blog post from the new Mac (with migration from PC to Mac not having been as straightforward as I had hoped for).

The good thing about having been an offliner for so long is the fact that it has gotten me out of the daily habit to keep up with all my social media accounts. What is interesting to notice in this context is that on Twitter people stayed in touch during my absence, while my Facebook page really died down. There’s a few lessons to learn here as per which forum to choose if you want the message about your work being spread, even when yourself you’re less active for some time. That being said, I decided from now on to focus on contributing meaningfully to the more photograhy oriented fora such as G+ and 500px, while trying to get some more shots past the curators on Earthshots and 1X.

The extra time that becomes available in this way, I will use for attacking my New York Institute of Photography (NYIP) course, processing some shots and updating the site.

And while we’re at it, let me say some more about the NYIP course in professional photography. It’s a distance learning programme that uses a great mix of written and audiovisual teaching materials. And I can tell you it’s great stuff, to me it almost works like therapy, keeping me calm and out of trouble while navigating through Nairobi traffic. And then I havn’t mentioned this yet: my proof of payment to this course gave me access to the student versions of both Lightroom 4 and Photoshop CS6, with the difference in price (79 vs 249 USD and 149 USD vs 999 USD respectively) actually covering my tuition fee. So while only just having started the course it is already paying off.

One of the things I always wanted to try yet which I never got my head around was the processing of an image in such a way that only the actual subject stays in the frame. With Photoshop at hand, I gave it a go on an image taken in the Bujumbura reptile parc with only ugly concrete as a background. As usual, your thoughts are more than welcome.

Canon 350D, Canon 18-55 mm @ 55 mm, 1/200, f/10, ISO 400

Before calling it a day, I want to let you know I am absolutely thrilled to have my ‘Cheetah Hunt’ image selected as one of the 220 images in the 2012 curated 1X yearbook ‘No Words’. I also entered the same shot for their 2012 photo awards, so while we’re at it and in case you feel like it, your vote is more than welcome, you can do so by clicking here.

All the best,

Guy