Serval Kittens

It turns out that serval kittens play pretty much like any other kitten. We got to observe these guys at their den in a termite mound in the Masai Mara in Kenya. Like any kitten, they are a riot to watch and photograph.

Take That

They would explore for a while, then one of them would start something. It was usually the same little rascal that instigated the play.

And That

This image is not as sharp as I would prefer, but hard to shoot sharp photos when you are laughing.

That Look

Every cat owner knows what that look means.

Momma Serval

This is the mother serval, just so you know what the kittens will look like when all grown up.

Before (L) and After (R)

It snowed in Oregon this weekend and in editing some of the snow image RAW files I made in the new Lightroom 4 beta I noticed the usual stray blown highlight in the snow. In Lightroom 3 and in Adobe Camera Raw that is easily taken care of with the Recovery slider to bring those clipped hot pixels back into gamut.

The price you pay for that is that it is a global change, meaning it affects your entire image, not just the pixels you are trying to fix. There is a loss of contrast and there are sometimes halo artifacts in edges that can result in using that Recovery slider.

Since I was in Lightroom 4 beta, it occurred to me that the Adjustment Brush now includes the Highlight slider (the new name for the Recovery slider, just to confuse us). I can now paint in the highlight recovery just in the areas that are overexposed. Very, very cool. I’ve used an image from a church in San Miguel d’Allende, Mexico to illustrate the before and after.

Step by Step

First,  click on the little highlight warning box in the upper right hand corner of the histogram and that causes the overexposed pixels to turn red – seen here on the image on the left in the lower left hand corner and to some degree in the center, but those are less easily seen.

Next,  click on the adjustment brush icon in the upper right corner of the Basic Panel in the Develop module that we are all so familiar with (just below the histogram). Next, adjust the Highlights slider all the way to the left (Yes, left. Another confusing change from LR3 is that the Highlights and Blacks sliders are now centered and go left to darken and right to brighten – why would you ever want to brighten Highlights recovery or blacks?).

Now adjust the size of the brush with the right or left bracket keys and paint over the red areas, preferrably at 1:1 view. Voila! Now the slider can be adjusted back to the right to find the cutoff where the red reappears to find the least amount needed (less is better to avoid artifacts). The rest of my image is untouched so the contrast is unaffected and if there are  halo artifacts they are only where I have brushed. The edge halo artifact problem is said to be improved in LR4 beta, but I still had plenty of them in the snow photos.

In the above image the brush did not remove all of the highlight clipping, even all the way to the left,  so, while still in the Adjustment brush and while the same mask was still active, I then decreased the exposure slider (The new Whites slider is not an option in the adjustment brush) until the red clipping went away and it also affected only those areas I had painted. Again, cool.

Lightroom 4 is going to bring all of us a huge leap closer to not needing Photoshop. For those who don’t have Photoshop or prefer not to have to use it LR4 will be a Godsend.

My next project is to explore soft-proofing the sRGB jpegs I want to send to Flickr in LR4 to see if I can finally get them to look better on the web.

Black-tailed Buck

The past week has been unusually active in the new stuff release department. First was the announcement of the new Nikon D4, and then the release of Lightroom 4 beta. The Nikon is expensive, the Lightroom is free.

I really try hard not to geek out on new stuff. I try to remind myself it is only a tool and artistry is not dependent upon having the very latest stuff as soon as it is released. But part of me gets excited about the changes. Another part of me dreads the departure from the nice, warm, cozy norm I’ve gotten used to. Especially when things like video are involved. I just want to be a photographer.

I am, unexpectedly, on the fence about the new Nikon. I skipped the D3s so I’m still shooting a D3 and feel like I should upgrade. But the changes in the new model are mostly video capabilities and ethernet, so are not things I am excited about at all.Why don’t they make a lighter, cheaper,  stripped down version with no video or ethernet. An affordable camera that, I don’t know, takes photographs? I don’t need it to make my coffee.

I want my camera to take good photographs and it sounds all the world  like my D3 comes pretty darn close to what the D4 does in that department. The D4 shoots bigger files, but that usually comes at the sacrifice of more noise and for me it’s all about shooting as high an ISO as I can without noise. On the other hand, I saw a request today for 16 megapixel minimum images so I suspect if I don’t have the new camera my images will suddenly be considered not big enough just because there are going to be more larger files available. Editors are funny that way.

The fact that I don’t have $6,000 to spend on a new camera right now makes the decision pretty easy. And I’m betting a used D3s might be a lot easier to find and less expensive in two or three months. Time to sell my D300 for sure. It got used very little. Any takers?

Santiam River

I have only had Lightroom 3 for a short time and have not been enamored of it, so thought the Lightroom 4 beta would not interest me. But then I watched some videos to see what it is all about and ended up downloading it. It is a beta version so we are warned not to plan on being able to keep any of the changes we make to our files with it when the full version comes out in March.

The things that impressed me are mostly the basic panel changes. They changed the names of all the sliders, just to thoroughly confuse us. The recovery slider (now called Highlights), the Fill slider (now called Shadows) and the clarity slider seem to be the most significant improvements.

Also useful is that they have expanded what can be done with the adjustment brush and gradient filter. You can now paint in white balance changes and noise reduction. I have always done noise reduction in Photoshop, not because the noise reduction is any better, but because I always want to do it on a mask where I can put more where it is needed and less where it is not needed. Now I can do that in Lightroom. Cool.

The white balance portion of the adjustment brush means you can now warm up just the blue shadow areas where it is needed. Again, cool.

There is also a book making module. Not bookmaking, book making (although, a starving photographer might just welcome a bookmaking module). You can export your photo book to Blurb for printing, or to a PDF file. I have always made my books in Blub’s proprietary software and then I can’t do anything else with them. Now I can. I can make e-books that never have to be printed so they will be cheap or free instead of $20-40 a piece. I haven’t seen any videos about how the text gets added yet, whether you have to cut and paste from Word, or if you can type right in the Lightroom module. I had even considered In Design to make books with before, until I found out it costs $600.

Lightroom 4 beta also now has video editing to a limited degree.

Speaking of videos. The best videos explaining the new Lightroom 4 beta that I’ve found so far, by far, are the ones done by Julianne Kost at http://tv.adobe.com/watch/whats-new-in-lightroom-4-beta/introduction-to-lightroom-4-beta/. She can show you the work-around to be able to edit your videos even better in Lightroom 4 beta. The videos at Kelby Training are shorter, if you want more of a brief overview  (http://www.photoshopuser.com/lightroom4), but definitely see Julianne Kost’s video on the video editing. Both sets of training videos are free. Both have links to the download for Lightroom 4 beta.

African Elephant Herd in Samburu

I optimized this elephant photo from 2010 a couple of weeks ago for a submission to a client. I posted it on Flickr a couple of days ago. Last night on Animal Planet they had a two hour documentary on these elephants in Samburu. It was a very, very good documentary. There are a lot of elephants in Samburu. Apparently there are now a lot of elephant poachers in Samburu, as well. In Kenya, the rangers shoot first and ask questions later and that keeps the poaching from being worse than it is. But there are huge rewards to be had for desparately poor people, and there will always be some who are willing to risk it.

The local Samburu tribe do not consider elephants to be animals. They are above that. If they find a dead elephant they touch it and call it brother.

Samburu Warriors

Rodeo Princess

I generally tend to try to live in the present, but twice a year (New Year’s and on my July birthday) I reflect a bit on what the heck just happened, just so I keep my life based in something resembling the reality of whatever is going on. Besides, it’s kind of fun to go back over the images of the past year to see what I did that was good and bad.

My Favorite Image of 2011 – Almost never one that gets a lot of views on the web site or Flickr. There were three major candidates. One of them was an elk photo shot in 1998, so not really appropriate, I just happened to find it in my files and work on it this year. I chose the above image based on the fact that it is the image that comes up when you enter my web site, ergo I must want people to see it first. The second best was of a dog on a horse. You had to get on a horse to be in the running this year.

Captive Audience for Tall Tales

Most Views on Flickr in 2011 - Or there at least had to be a horse somewhere. Brett sure did have those dog’s attention, whatever he was telling them.

Most Views on PhotoDeck in 2011 – PhotoDeck has been an amazing stock site this year and it quickly and easily surpassed Photoshelter. Great Google visibility and I sold an image while gone shooting without any input from me – and paid no commission. The most viewed image, surprisingly to me, was a Samburu Chief’s Hut.

Most Viewed on Photoshleter in 2011 - Maasai Herding Cattle (again). No idea who is looking at this photo so much, but nobody ever buys it. Photoshelter views are way down and I am hearing from others that it isn’t just me. I considered just dropping it – then Smithsonian magazine called about a swift photo so that bought them another year right there.

Biggest Blunder of 2011 – Always a favorite category every year. Thank goodness I confine it to the realm of photography, otherwise I’d be overwhelmed with possibilities. The winner is (drum roll) buying an Epson 4900 printer. First, Epson reneged on the $500 rebate I was promised. Now It is sitting beside me, a 115 pound paper weight. It quit working after 61 prints. I never even got through an ink cartridge. They are sending a replacement printer (refurbished? we’ll see) rather than a repairman. At least I wouldn’t have to carry the repairman upstairs.  So now I have to find a way to get the old 115 pound printer downstairs and boxed up for return, and the new 115 pound printer upstairs – again. Not to mention taking a half day off of the day job to be here when the semi truck delivers it (FedEx doesn’t do 115 pound 40 inch packages). It’s on a pallet. Don’t get me started.

Best New Software of 2011 – I bought Lightroom. I upgraded Nik Color Efex Pro to 4.0.  So naturally the best program was PS Kiss cross calibration profiles for Lightroom and Adobe Camera RAW. I can use a Canon calibration profile (or Leica or Nikon D2x for that matter) for my Nikon D3 images, and I do because the Nikon camera profiles in Lightroom sometimes have horrible color shifts in the shadows or in dark clouds. For those images I can either use the Canon profile for my Nikon D3 in Lightroom or convert the RAW file in Nikon Capture NX2, which I am usually too lazy to do.

Most Used Lens in 2011 - The 70-200mm f/2.8 (not the newer version). Still the one lens I would take to that deserted island with me. I didn’t get to go to Africa, or Yellowstone, or anywhere big-lensy. I used the 200-400 a lot in January and not much since then.

Best New Gear Purchase - I’ve been lusting after the Really Right Stuff ball head for quite a while but my old Kirk ball head still worked well enough that I couldn’t justify it. Then the luggage handlers somewhere between Nairobi and Portland, Oregon managed to bend the 3/8 inch hardened stainless steel knob on my old ball head last year. It would take a burly blacksmith several blows with a heavy hammer to accomplish what KLM/Delta luggage handlers did without the benefit of an anvil or, I’m assuming here, a hammer.

Biggest Surprise of 2011 - No Nikon D4! It is rumored to be announced later this month. Sadly, the D800 is rumored to be the new D3X, with a 24 mp sensor. I had hoped the D800 would be a good high ISO travel camera like the D700. It’s looking like I might have to lug a heavy D4 around the back streets of Europe.

Best Trip of 2011 - I couldn’t afford to travel much last year. My best trip was to Mackay, Idaho to David Stocklein’s ranch for some photography of horses running in snow, cowboys, cow dogs, puppies, and gorgeous landscapes. They don’t even notice those beautiful mountains surrounding them in Mackay! “Oh, yeah, I guess they are kind of pretty now that you mention it. Don’t usually notice ‘em much.”

Stuff I NEED in 2012 - A strong back to haul those replacement Epson printers up and down the stairs. A Nikon D4, obviously (duh). A really fast, sharp, image browser so I don’t have to use Lightroom any more (I need a browser, not a catalog). A second tripod so I can stop swapping between the ball head and the Wimberley.

Gift Horse

I didn’t do New Year’s Resolutions last year and I think I was worse off for it. So I am actually kind of eager to take a stab at them this year.

1. My overriding resolution this year is to follow the advice of photographer Jay Maisel, who once said “If you want to take more interesting pictures, become a more interesting person.” Becoming a more interesting person does not involve armchairs and TV sets, though there was a PBS documentary on how they make a Steinway piano this year that may have qualified. I need to take my camera more places and stretch my boundaries more. I need to read more this year and expose myself to more interesting art and events. Which reminds me of the poster from the ’70′s that said ‘Expose yourself to art’ and the photograph was of a guy, from the rear, with his raincoat held open in front of a statue. We actually elected the model for that poster, tavern owner Bud Clark, to be our mayor in Portland, Oregon. Twice.

2. Be humble. This is a good one for its obvious meaning. It is a cornerstone of Buddhism, for good reason, and has much more extended meanings in that respect. In an artistic sense it can mean to get over yourself and let the muse preside. I am currently reading the Tao of Photography, and it speaks a lot about setting aside your likes and dislikes and biases, because they really get in the way of how you interpret your subject. Quiet yourself so the subject can speak to you. Be accepting. If it rains, go with it and have fun in the rain instead of grumbling and sulking. I went out in a Land Rover one afternoon in the Masai Mara in Africa and my two car mates sat and grumbled and sulked about the rain while I took some of my most interesting photographs of the trip. Fly me all the way to Africa and I’m not missing one second of it. Accept what is. It is hard to accept change. But it’s going to happen whether you like it or not, so to be happy you need to greet it with loving acceptance.

3. Be Thankful/ Don’t Want. There was a great cartoon in the paper today that said “Why do we have all this stuff? When is it ever going to be enough?” And the reply is “When the the answer to wanting is not “it all.” We really ought to take a moment each day and be grateful for what we have. It could always have been less. It is said that most anger comes from entitlement. We don’t get what we think we deserve – respect, honesty, timely service, etc. When we learn not to have expectations we lose the anger. The ultimate is unachievable to all but Zen masters – expect nothing, be grateful for everything.

4. Be Nice. Vincent Versace was recently talking about his trip to Mayanmar, where the overriding principle in all activities is “Do Right”. I wish to ask myself “What is the loving thing to do?” and do that. What if…Wall Street, corporations, and politicians made their primary goal “Doing Right” rather than doing whatever is the most profitable for themselves? Sadly, the CEO would be sued by the stockholders. There is a precedent in US law. Give people the benefit of the doubt. Look for the good in people and situations (I really like and really need to work on this one).

5. Commit to being fit. I know. But I didn’t make this one last year and I have to say, whatever small amount of motivation this resolution gives me will be a LOT more than I had last year. OY Vay!

Gift Puppy

Rudolph?

It was a dark and foggy weekend. Just right for curling up with a good book. I read “Walking on Water, Reflections on Faith and Art” by Madeleine L’Engle. It was written in 1980, but the topic is timeless. And it still came up twice recently in lists of recommended books by other photographers. It was heavy on the faith and light on the art, but that was okay. If she had been giving the church sermons when I was a boy I might still be attending church.

Like many books on art, she lamented the loss of creativity we have as very young children. I’m not sure where the statistics were obtained, but she quoted that 90% of 5 year olds are deemed creative, but only 10% of 7 year olds, and 2% of adults.

The common theory is that creativity is beaten out of us very early by well-meaning adults, and that may be mostly true. Chris Orwig likes to talk about when he visits grade schools and asks how many of the kids draw and all of the hands shoot up. How many can draw a house? All hands shoot up. He then asks his photography classes at Brooks Institute and only a half dozen admit to drawing at all and one or two can draw a house. He didn’t say it had to be an architectual drawing of house with three views, but by the time we are old enough to attend Brooks Institute we are led to believe the house would have to be perfect or we aren’t allowed to draw it.

Drawing, beaten right out of us. It starts with “Well, if that’s Mommy where are her ears and why is her hair green?” You learn that there is no leeway there. You have to use the damned flesh colored crayon for the skin or you’ll be chastised. The purple crayon goes unused.

The numbers above on where we lose creativity made me wonder how much is actually natural. In medical school we were taught about plasticity of the brain. We lose plasticity, to a large degree, by age 7. It turns out that we are fairly loosely wired when we are born. The neurons get connected as we age, which is why newborns and toddlers are not gifted with a large degree of gracefulness.

I was going to say grace, but the author reminds us “We are suspicious of grace…But a child rejoices in presents!”

During those loosely wired years we can pick up a foreign language with ease. Plop a five year old in France and he’s talking French in two weeks. It’s just not fair.

Just Hangin'

I guess Chris Orwig’s comments make me lean more toward the nurture part in quashing our creativity.

More quotes from the book – “We are more than we know…” Meaning we have a hidden knowledge we are not aware of. Many spiritual books refer to this as lost knowledge. The thought is that we are all knowing as a spirit, but when the spirit enters the mortal flesh we are made to forget. We spend the rest of our lives re-discovering the lost knowledge, which may explain why some it sounds vaguely familiar. In Walking on Water it is referred to more in the sense that the author discovers meanings she never intended in her sentences when she reads them later in life.

“Only the most mature of us are able to be childlike.” I believe it was Picasso who said that we are most creative as children and the successful artist is the one who is best able to re-discover that child within.

“I am am 61 years old, and I am also 4, and 12, and 15, and 23, and 31, and…, and…, and…” Priceless quote. Sigh.

Cowgirl and Puppy

The author also introduces a new concept for me – kairos. We all know about chronological time, and wish we could stop it. Kairos is the time spent contemplating art; being lost in thought, “touching on the wonder of creation”, the time we lose when we ‘lose track of time’. Maybe that kairos time isn’t factored in and we can subtract it from our age.

I had a deja vu moment when the author talked about going down the stairs at her grandmother’s house without touching them. I totally remember doing that. I’m sure it was probably just a recurring dream (later I resorted to just skimming off of the front of the steps. I actually did do that and could go down a stairway really fast.), but she is convinced she did it and lost the ability as she grew out of childhood. Likewise, she is convinced we could walk on water – if we could just remember how. “The child is aware of unlimited potential…”

Spitsbergen

If Madeleine L’Engle sounds familiar, it is probably because she wrote a very popular novel for young adults called A Wrinkle in Time. It was rejected by about 30 publishers before becoming famous. Too difficult for adults to understand. That’s why the publisher who bought it marketed it to teens. Teems can still suspend disbelief, which may be what is necessary to be a good artist. Unlimited potential.

Stovepipe Hat

150 years ago I would have had to wear one of these to be cool. It would have been made out of beaver then. Felted beaver fur. Darned near wiped out the beaver population. The beaver trapping led European men (mostly French Canadian) into frontiers they might not have been enthusiastic about going to otherwise. It introduced diseases like small pox to Native Americans that had disastrous consequences. No white people were around to record the devastation so it just happened without becoming a part of our history. All for hats.

Then there were the ladies hats of the early 20th century that employed egret feathers. Of course they needed to be breeding plumage feathers so nests were raided. The birds were not exactly asked if they could spare a feather or two. On the plus side, that led to the National Wildlife Refuge system to protect what little was left of the nesting birds. I think about that when people say we need to let free markets do what they will with the world without regulation.

A Man's Hat

If you can find a top hat these days it is made from silk. Or leather, if you prefer, though it certainly makes an altogether different statement.

Mad as a hatter. Partly a popular phrase thanks to Lewis Carroll, but also a truism related to the mercury poisoning that most hat makers suffered from 150 years ago. Mercury was used in curing beaver fur to make felt. The hat makers inhaled the mercury fumes and most of them eventually suffered mercury poisoning and even died as a consequence.  Mercury poisoning  causes all manner of neurological sequelae, from tremors to tingling to muscle weakness. It also causes mood problems. Sufferers become withdrawn and diffident. Of course, some of us just come by that naturally.

Painted Hill

I had a dinner conversation with a friend this week about how we were both getting kind of bored with straight nature photographs. Then I found a couple that really moved me.

So, it’s not nature photography in general. It just seems that the bar has been lifted and it takes something special, something with gesture or something extraordinary to capture my attention. Maybe it’s the sheer number of photographs on the web on Flickr, 500 px, etc.

I have noticed that I am editing differently. I am more critical and I am looking for something different than before, say, three months ago. When I go into a folder to find an image I tend to peruse the rest of the images in the folder and often find a little gem in there I had overlooked in the past. Like the photos in this post.

I am also adding “Pick” flags to other images that I especially like, but aren’t going to process right away.

Bison bison

Which leads me to a recent blog post on Julianne Kost’s blog informing me that Lightroom has a Refine command. Refine demotes all of the photos in a folder. All of the Picks are demoted to unflagged and the unflagged photos are marked as rejects. What a brilliant concept.

I haven’t had the nerve to pull the trigger on the Refine command yet. I may need to hire a hit man to come in and do it for me. Because in reality, all of those images that haven’t been flagged as picks are just going to sit in there forever and never be shown to anybody. There are terabytes of hard drive space to be recovered here. Maybe one folder at a time – when I’m in a really bad mood.

Lakeside Snag

“If it looks good, photograph it. If it looks better, photograph it again.”

Galen Rowell

I have found the above quote by Galen Rowell helpful over the years. The tree above reinforced that philosophy a couple of times. The first time, when I made this photograph, I came upon the tree in great evening light. I hesitated to stop because I had photographed this tree in good light the year before and thought I had taken the ultimate shot. I remembered Galen’s adage and I stopped and took photographs that were clearly superior to those I had taken the year before.

Fallen

The second time was this past fall when I found the above – my tree had fallen. I had wanted to photograph it on digital media, but the light was never good and I didn’t really make that much of an effort. It was a tree, it wasn’t going anywhere. Until it went to ground. Don’t ever make the mistake of thinking you can come back and take that photograph later – you can’t. You can take another photograph, but not that one. It will never be exactly the same again. Coincidentally, I saw this tree, from another angle, in one of Galen’s books.

This tree is at a spot called The Narrows at Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in southeastern Oregon. The Narrows was actually a town at one time. It was a way station for travelers. Then the automobile came along, and a new road to Burns, and The Narrows became irrelevant. This tree was undoubtedly planted by a resident of The Narrows 100 years ago.

The Narrows is the narrow connection between Malheur Lake and Mud Lake. Malheur Lake has a couple of secrets.

First of all, Malheur Lake is not a lake, it is a marsh. Most of it is about a foot deep and that explains why the shore expands and contracts so much between high water years and low water years. This created some problems. More on that after I reveal the second secret.

Malheur Lake is located in the northern end of The Great Basin, which extends down through Nevada and Utah and includes the Great Salt Lake. The major characteristic of The Great Basin is that none of the lakes have an outlet. They maintain their level through evaporation alone. Guess what? The inconvenient truth is that Malheur Lake has an outlet. In high water years it forms the Malheur River which flows into the Snake River, which flows to the Columbia River, which flows to the Pacific Ocean. An outlet to the sea.

If you want to get technical, the fact that Malheur Lake is not actually a lake means that, technically, lakes in the Great Basin have no outlet.

The vast change in the size of Malheur Lake from year to year caused no end of trouble in the 1890′s. The cattle baron of the area, Peter French (who actually just managed the ranch for a Sacramento man, Dr. Glen), asserted that his land extended to the water line of Malheur Lake.  The smaller farmers in the area farmed the land between the high water mark and the water line, thousands of acres, claiming Peter French’s claim stopped at the high water mark. The courts were apparently no help and the feud went on for years and became increasingly rancorous. It ended in the killing of Peter French. He was shot in the back. It is said the man who shot him drew the short straw among the farmers who drew to see who would do the dirty deed. The man who shot him was exonerated. Guess who was on the jury? Isn’t history fun?

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Pretty Horses

I have watched, with some interest, the limits that photographers put on themselves. It seems like it started with the digital age, but really began much earlier in the physical darkroom. Everybody wants to describe how far he will go in the capture and post production of an image. It’s like we all draw squares around our self and refuse to cross the lines.

My square has gotten bigger over time, but I still don’t spend enough time outside of it.

I blogged a couple of years ago about the ‘hand of man’ photographers that won’t allow any evidence of man’s existence in their photographs. I started there,  in the beginning. I wish getting rid of the hand of man on the environment was that easy, just wishing it away.

The past couple of weeks I have watched podcasts and webinars of a couple of highly successful and talented photographers that don’t use flash. The images they create are stunning, but I wonder how many great images they had to pass up because the natural light sucked. On the other hand, I also recently watched videos of National Geographic photographer Joe McNally at work. He takes control of the light with flashes, strobes, reflectors, and camera controls and the images that come straight out of his camera are unbelievable. Different strokes for different folks. I come to realize that I admire all of these people, but I’m just going to have to find your own balance in these matters.

The above photograph is an image with almost nothing done to it. I did use flash because we shot the horses back-lit to get the light coming through the snow they kicked up. I almost never crop, and this is no exception. In Photoshop I added a touch of contrast, lightened up the shadows slightly, and added some selective noise reduction in the darkest shadows (the only thing I actually needed to do in Photoshop because I needed a layer mask). This was just one of those situations where we had good light, good subjects, and a good contrasty lens (the Nikon 200-400 VR) that produced great shots out of the camera all afternoon.

Lonesome Tree

This image, on the other hand, is one of only a couple that I’ve taken this fall knowing that I would do extensive post processing on it. Last year I either wouldn’t have taken it or I would have deleted it later. What changed is that my boundaries have been pushed a bit by Nik Color Efex Pro. I’ve seen possibilities for my photos that I didn’t really know existed, or were at least not obtainable to me until now, and I was open to them. Would I go this far on every image? No, most images, especially wildlife images, will be dealt with minimally. I still get more of a buzz from getting a great image right out of the camera, as in the top image.

I think experimentation and pushing yourself outside your comfort zone is a good thing. It worked for Bob Dylan – not that he didn’t get severely criticized for it. Every time. For this fall, at least, the view is pretty good from here outside of my box.

Original Lonesome Tree