Personally, after buffaloes, I find zebra’s the second most difficult species of which to get an original shot. Yet here again, I tend to feel the KISS moto holds up: Keep It Simple Stupid, so why not go for a straightforward tightly cropped portrait? Sometimes I have the feeling people (including myself), get lost on getting that mind blowing special award winning effect and forget about the straightforward, yet solid images out there.
This was originally a color shot, yet a B&W conversion made the black rim around the ears pop nicely, so that’s what I went for. Dodged and blurred the background, then burned the nose slightly in post processing, and all ready.
A quick reflection on 2011. It’s been quite a year for us, both on a professional and a personal level.
At work, I’ve been suffering from the general malaise around development aid, creating all kinds of uncertainties within the organization, yet let me not bother you with that!
On a personal level, it was a big year, Sietske and myself got married and 2012 will bring us a baby nature lover 😉 so big things coming up.
2011 has also been the year I decided to do something with my photography in general and my wildlife and nature photography in particular, since that is the type of photography that makes my heart beat faster.
It all started with this blog/site: Pics from the Wild, the reason for developing it being explained in my first post, posted on 03/08 and featuring a heavily oversharpened picture of 3 waterbucks (talking of oversharpening, check out the latest Wild-Eye post on the 10 most common processing mistakes). Since that time, the site has gotten 12500 hits, or over 2500 hits per month, or 83 hits per day, I am quite happy with that.
In the wake of the site, I also developed a FB page, a Twitter account, a 500px portfolio and added pictures to the Wilde Eye photo gallery. Traffic on the facebook page is OK, with 46 followers since 05/11, on the other hand, I am quite disappointed with the level of interaction. To give an example, I posted some questions to which nobody responded. Is it because they have been asked before, because people just don’t care, or … I would love to hear from you what I can do to make it more interesting for you. The same goes for Twitter, the least satisfying way of sharing my work, I joined Twitter on November 9th, tweeted 137 times, follow 59 people and have 19 followers, not what I would call a great succes 😉 besides one interesting contact that might lead to a future cooperation. More about that later.
Then there is 500px, which I joined mid November and which has been quite satisfying till now, with some nice words and comments received, 39 followers and over 1700 views, this one being the most liked picture: Mother Earth.
One but last but not least there is some of my work on the Wild Eye gallery, with this being the most viewed picture. Once again, a big thanks to Gerry and the Wild Eye team for their support, the guest post and the first time somebody oficially referred to me as a wildlife photographer, thanks guys.
Finally and most importantly, I want to thank Sietske for the great times out there, getting the images we are sharing through all these fora, really excited about what the future is going to bring. 2012, here we come! And that being said, let me end with 2 images by Sietske.
