Photo of the day

Yes. I had a big learning curve in photography over that week. By the end I was more calculating in the shots I took. Any decent pictures from the start of the week (like the elephant one) are simply coincidental. Though to be honest, with that subject matter, most photos would look pretty good.

You're right, and I did think that once I'd uploaded it this morning. I actually needed a picture with a 2:1 ratio for a project I'm doing, and didn't want to lose resolution by cropping horizontally. But you're quite right.

Umm... I think this is what Thor meant by cropping out the adult elephant.

-Erik-

Cool pic. I wanna see more James.

Oh, that's so cute. Looking back on what the hell those crazy humans are doing, shooting his picture.

Man, this safari of yours must have been some experience, Southall. I'm totally envious.

As you may or may not know, Kenya is on my Top 5 places to visit list.

Your a beast

Some great photos there, James.

You mentioned that you had a big learning curve with the photography. I had a similar experience when we were on holiday. Firstly there was trying to take different photos from the ones we took last year, but also I wanted to try and see if I could improve upon the photos I had already taken.

In a lot of the photos I've taken in the past when capturing the scenery the sky was all washed out: over-exposed since the landscape was quite dark in comparison. This time I narrowed down the area that was used in the view to assess exposure and then metered for the sky rather than the landscape. This meant that the sky was quite good but the landscape was a bit under-exposed. At the moment I'm seeing how Photoshop can help me to bring out some of the details in the landscape but retain the lovely sky.

Hopefully I'll "exhibit" some photos here soon.

Also, one thing I did notice. Remember when on things like Blade Runner and The X-Files when they're examining photographs and they zoom in on an area of interest and the resolution suddenly improves instead of becoming pixelated? Well that magically improving resolution doesn't happen in real life!

I managed to capture a photo of an otter swimming, but even at maximum zoom (12x), it still looks very small in the frame. But when I enlarge that particular area it's not long before it's just a brown pixelated mass.

Looking forward to seeing more photos, James.

I have thought about it - and I've even had a look online for to get one. But I'd rather speak to someone face-to-face and ask a few questions about pros and cons.

Would a polarizing filter sort out the over-exposing of the sky? I wouldn't have thought so.

Thanks, Tom.

I did think to bracket my photos - my camera can be set to take 3 photos at once: one "proper" photo and one additional shot either side of the original photograph. And the extent to which the photos either side are from the original can be set also. But I didn't do any experimentation before my holiday to be confident whilst away.

What I did practice before going was trying to do some "astrophotos". I thought that will the low amounts of light pollution on Skye I might be able to get some good starfields. However, every single night of the holiday was overcast. Not a single clear night for the whole fortnight.

Though I did get some reasonable sunset shots.

Great pic Alan, it takes me back to being there, what a gorgeous place

Alan, have you tried the LEVELS function in photoshop? There's even an automatic level correction function which is very useful if you're lazy but won't always bring out the correct results of course, like everything automatic in software. I think it's "ctrl+shift+L".

You can always try the lasso tool and choose certain areas which you want to improve, not the entire image itself, if you aren't already doing it. It's the no.1 tool in photoshop, altering certain areas. Sharpening the foreground and gaussian blurring the foreground, maybe can help you too. Experiment, work with it You need a steady hand for the lasso tool but once you've mastered it, you can do everything.

alt-ctrl-z (edit-step backward) doesn't do it? Otherwise, there's the history column (bottom right if i remember correctly) from which you can right click and erase just one step, the one you want?