Tag Archives: Tanzania

Black & White

Dear all,

Canon 350D, Canon 75-300 f/4-5.6 @ 300mm, 1/500, f/10, ISO 200

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.

Have a great week and try to keep it simple,

Guy

 

Spotted in Kenya

Dear all,

As shared earlier this week on Twitter and Facebook, check out this article by the nofilmschool! I’m afraid that the mentioned and long anounced 200-400 f/4 with inbuilt 1.4x converter will go straight to the top of my material bucket list and I’m even more afraid that my money bucket won’t be full enough to remove the lens from my bucket list and get it in my bag 🙁

Yet no worries, meanwhile I’ll keep on enjoying what I do with the tools I have at my disposition. To quote David du Chemin: ‘gear is good, vision is better’ and I can’t agree more! Regarding shooting what you like and improving from there, please also check this blog post by Shem Compion. And that then makes me think of a site like 1x, where you’ll be uploading images not to get them selected because the curator doesn’t like your style and turns down your image without any explanation. The choice is yours, you either put up with it and see it as a challenge sparking your creativity, or you forget about sites to the likes of 1x and focus on shooting for yourself and developing your own style, … personally I tend to lean towards option 2, yet I’d like to hear from you what you think.

But I’m deviating here, back to the Canon in the wild sighting: as per the DSLR, what is your take? 7D II? 5D Make III? And what is that Rate button about?

I’ll leave it at that for now, sharing 2 more shots of the cheetah sighting discussed in The Hunt.

The first shot may not be to the likes of you all, yet after playing around with the image for some time, I came to this fine art style of image, reflecting the way I remember the moment, extremely intense, I managed to bring this feeling into the image by dropping the contrast completely and by pushing the blacks.

Canon 350D, Canon 75-300 @ 280 mm, 1/500, f/10, ISO 200

The second one is a straightforward shot from the same sighting.

Canon 350D, Canon 75-300 @ 300 mm, 1/500, f/10, ISO 200

Warm regards,

Guy