stay wide? crop? remove left headland? remove right headland? way too many choices, hence picked a middle ground.. literally 🙂
3 frame panorama, each shot bracketed.
frames blended in by +Nik Collection by Google
D7000 coupled with Nikkor 105mm f2.5 @ 105mm Aperture: f/8 and Shutter Speed: 6seconds and 20 seconds
ISO: 100
As always, I welcome any suggestions, comments and improvements to my photography, they are always warmly welcomed.
After hauling all our luggage down to the safari tent/lodge/bungalow we were quite amazed with the accommodation at the Western Plains (Dubbo) Zoo Safari, (+Taronga Western Plains Zoo ) hence there was only one thing to do – hold back the family and grab a few quick snaps before we settled in 🙂 ….
gee.. doesn't everyone think like that? 😉 anyway.. i got the usual 'is this gonna take long?' but with the Savannah right on the door step, Chaos, Mayhem and wifey were suitably entertained by the buffalo's, giraffes, zebras and other things with multiple legs cruising around the very large paddock/savannah, which, by the way is pretty cool to have a giraffe come within metres of your porch!
So I managed to get a few interior shots and a few panos at sunset and as you can see, this place it pretty spanky and great for a romantic weekend away, well that is what the couple in the next bungalow were having, we had chaos and mayhem 🙂 I also think that couple next door certainly thought twice about having children 😉
ANyway.. check out that bath, very cool, very deep and that shower, no water saving head there! I was also very pleased to see the omission of a TV.
So in a nut shell, I definitely recommend this place, it is actually quite good value when you factor in the dinner (which was awesome by the way +Taronga Western Plains Zoo) breaky, bike hire, zoo entry and night/morning tours, on which we saw and fed a Bongo, Chaos thought that was very neat, getting to feed a Bongo then going back to sleep in the Bongo Bungalow!
We are also Zoo friends of +Taronga Zoo which is also great value, just go a couple of times a year and you are well ahead and it is valid for Western Plains zoo.. if only it was not 5 hours away we would be there more often.
So, onto the imagery, all the images are processed using the PS +Nik Collection by Google plugin and this is where the software really shines in my opinion, makes the process very quick and with nice punchy results – which was the intention for these.
The panoramas were done a bit different to my normal process, rather than stitching and merging, I merged in then stitched in +Adobe Photoshop, thus automating the blend process.
The other neat thing with the Panos, particularly the one looking out over the savannah, +Adobe Photoshop adaptive wideangle filter worked wonders, I am still amazed at the software's ability to take UWA panos and remove the distortion and return them to a nice perspective, top stuff chaps.
Exif/setup data:
D7000 coupled with a sand filled Tokina 11-16mm f2.8 @11mm Aperture: f/8 (typically) ISO 100 and Shutter Speed: 1.5s, 1/6s and 3 s (typically)
out front – fancy tents, two zebras a few giraffes, dwarf buffalos (i think) and other animals that escape my memory 🙂
Lovely jubbly and thanks for looking – I welcome any suggestions, comments and improvements to my photography, they are always warmly welcomed and always appreciate the time people take to have a look, plus and/or comment
4 shot (bracketed) panorama view processed in by +Nik Collection by Google
Techie data:
D7000 with Tokina 11-16mm f2.8 @ 12mm – Aperture: f/8 and Shutter Speed: multiple ( 3 brackets) 4, 1 & 15 seconds
out front -Hoya screw in circular polariser and LEE Graduated filter (ND) 0.90
I welcome any suggestions, comments and improvements to my photography, they are always warmly welcomed and always appreciate the time people take to have a look, plus and/or comment.
A peaceful lakeside community with great fishing and natural and relatively untouched surrounds. This particular afternoon had quite some nice colour in the sky and the clouds provided some excellent layering to show some deep blues and also some warm tones as the sun disappeared over my right should, so why opt for a BW conversion? I guess simplicity..the fact that converting to monochrome accentuates the actual composition and rather than relying on bold colours it can in my mind make for a image with a more lasting impression rather than a image with a fleeting glance.
I also enjoy BW images since for me it means more concentration on the tones and composition than the visual impact of colours, don't get me wrong I love colourful and bold imagery, i guess its just nice to simplify with BW at times 🙂
Also i need more BW practice 🙂
I welcome any suggestions, comments and improvements to my photography, they are always warmly welcomed
This image was created using a blend of 3 images to achieve the dynamic range and tonal detail in the trees. I used +Nik Photography's to do the initial processing and BW conversion followed by it being finished off in . There was a little struggle with the clouds, but not surprising since there was some substantial movement between the frames 🙂
I think this is a much cleaner and dare i say it, more natural rendition of the Opera house when compared to the last shot from around in the little bay. This one was taken from just near the foot of the Sydney Harbour Bridge just as the horizon lit up like a aussie bushfire.
The other sight, just off camera was much more amusing – once the colour developed, all the photographers, of which there was quite a number, rushed madly to adjusting grad filters, modify compositions and nail the moments of glory. There have been some great images come out of this session from them also!
This image is a rare example where I have used Nik HDR efex pro 2 to automatically blend the image, in recent months/year i have been much more inclined to manually blend exposures in photoshop to obtain the required dynamic range i have found this gives complete control over process and i can dictate exactly how i want the dynamic range to look rather than relying on a program algorithm or preset to decide.
That said, i have become partial to the Nik HDR efex pro 2 plugin for PS since it often (not always) generates a fairly decent image which i can then edit as desired in my normal processing software/method. I find the 'balanced' or 'neutral' preset seems to give me the best latitude to do as I wish and it is more time efficient than manually blending 🙂
This image was 3 automatically bracket images varying from 1/2 second to 8 second shutter speed. f/16 @12mm focal length
Circular Polariser, and LEE Graduated 0.9 filter
I was waiting for a nice wave to flow right up the channel but ran out of time and patience.
See these dinky little rock pools with the glassy reflections? these are guaranteed shoe soakers…the ones with the all sandy bottoms are the worst, looks like dry sand to the casual glance until 'splash' i had two wet shoes for the next day of camping thanks to one of these 🙂
I love reading the comments that people leave and I welcome any suggestions, comments and improvements to my photography, they are always warmly welcomed and in my opinion everyone has a valid point of view irrespective of skill and experience.
3 shot panorama with a 4 year old on my shoulders, hows that for multitasking?
The only thing that would make it better would be for +Google and +Nik Photography to update the +My Nikon Life captureNX plugins 😉