Last month on my blog I mentioned I was invited to be part of a very special project Images without Borders. This week I am chuffed to be one of the featured photographers on their website along with Craig Ferguson, an Asia-based photographer from Australia. Being in the company of world class photographers and photo-journalists inspires me to work harder and improve my skills. I am always looking for inspiration but I don’t always have to look too far. Sometimes I find it here right here at home.
A couple of weeks ago I received an email from one of my readers who was in the mood for a bit of black and white. He liked my shot of the three impala with its pattern and gesture and wanted to see what it would look like without colour. He shared his take with me which included a crop to enhance the pattern. This sent me back to harvest some images that could be improved by re-processing and by cropping. The images today were all processed in Photoshop and Lightroom using my Classic Kenya pre-set. I selected these particular images for a panorama-type crop to emphasize the composition and to take away relatively boring elements that didn’t add much to the images.
I hope that you’ll wade in with your opinions. Do you feeling something is missing from the frame? Are you imagining what they might be like in colour? You can also leave a link to one of your images that was improved by using one or both of these techniques. Be sure to include a short explanation why you made the change; you might just inspire another photographer.
P.S. Speaking of black and white, please don’t forget to check out the IWOB website. They have a great collection of images and you’ll be supporting a very worthy cause.
These work really well Sabrina, the aspect ratio adds well to that feel of the African Savanna. Wide open spaces and sky. B&W adds to that feeling of a timeless place and the history of the lure of Africa that some of us grew up on in old movies. Comp is good in all of them and lead the eye thru the image well. I really like these. Sometimes the picture is in the picture and we need to show it by removing the rest.
I love your comments Ray especially about the black and white and what it evokes. For some reason I found myself processing many images without colour; sometimes it worked and sometimes it did not. Jacob may be right in that these are a little underexposed and I might try to reprocess them without losing the feeling of this being a timeless place.
I really love the panaroma crops and colour adjustments in these images. They’re maybe slightly underexposed, but I think that combined with the colour it really works here, emphasising a some mystery perhaps, or something unknown about the location. I love the shadows on the elephants faces as an example of this.
The crop on the trees is perfect, very nice.
I think the crop on the zebra shot may be too tight. My eyes are following the zebras from right to left and then they stop suddenly at the left edge. The vignetting here probably emphasises it a little. I could be wrong, what do you think?
Your image of the lion sleeping from a recent post was superb! I’m loving these shots
Welcome Jacob. Thanks for your comments. I have to agree with you on the zebra shot. I was of two minds whether or not to include it but since this is a blog about learning, I added it in at the last minute. While I like the rhythm of the four zebras, there needs to be more room for them to move. I think the warthog image is a much better example of that principle.
I think consistency to the subject helps a bit. Since these are in B&W, I’m not wanting to see them in color. If you added some color in, then my mind might take me there. Sometimes I’m too linear like that – I love the color of some of my India photos, but I liked some of the conversions I did too. However, when I don’t like them if I view a group of the photos and I sprinkle the B&W in with the color. Again, that’s me.
Hey we think alike; I can be pretty linear too. It would be neat to see some of your India photos processed in colour versus B&W for a side-by-side comparison.
I like all four but the trees catch my fancy. When I first started taking digital images back in 2003 I did not keep a lot of those images. I regret that now as I would like to have some of them to work on with the software tools we now have. Lessons learned.
There’s absolutely nothing wrong with a lesson learned especially when you share it with others
Oh, I’m loving these. I tend to prefer black and white, so I wouldn’t likely miss colour. I like these crops for a couple reasons… they really allow your subjects to take center stage, but also I love how the images work together as a set. They become very compelling.
Thanks Erin. I didn’t realize you were inclined to Black and White! I did kinda stack the odds in favour of B&W by not including the colour images but it just seemed the right way to present them.
These are fantastic, Sabrina! Even without seeing the originals (without the crop), I feel like the crop really helped to make a story out of the photos.
I do agree with Jacob about the crop on the zebra shot and how it feels “cut off” especially when compared to the other 3, but all of them are still great, great photos!