Africa

I have recently returned from two weeks in southern Africa and have been sorting and developing my images. I have well over a thousand images before culling the undesirables. I will be posting over the next few days but I will not post many animal portraits like this as it would get pretty mundane. The reality is safari drives take you to great viewing opportunities for a wide variety of animals, but simply capturing the most species is not what I strive for, especially in this blog.

This male lion posed for us while watching over his pride. Although I did use a long lens, it is still breathtaking to be so close to these wild animals in their natural environment, proof being our guide traveling with a loaded and handy rifle. 

Big display panels

Of course I should have shot this as a video or loop, but the tall columns are giant led panels. Not sure how they can make them this big and seamless but they are bright and look great. 

Simple

Simple shapes often attract my eyes.

Photoshop Generative Fill

The intranet has been buzzing about Photoshop's new Beta version that has a generative fill capability. There are many videos on YouTube that demonstrate the capability. Being curious I downloaded and installed the new software just to play around with the new feature. I think this is really amazing and wonder what it means for the future of photography. It is definitely cheating and taking photo editing to a different level.

There certainly are purists that will make a lot of noise about this fakery but then who of us don't cheat just a little. If we didn't there would be no need for digital cameras, cropping,  color correcting, or the dozens of other capabilities most of us use in Photoshop. I don't plan to use this much but do find it fascinating. 

The picture below is what I started with. It was taken last summer when in Scandinavia. The red fence really spoiled the image but I took the exposure anyway. But with generative fill... first I selected the area that contained the red fence and a perfectly acceptable fill was automatically created. Second I thought the right lower corner would look nice with some wild flowers... no problem. Finally I thought a few ducks on the path would help the make the picture more interesting and the composition more balanced. This all took only a few minutes.

If you consider this a photo illustration (not a straight photo) it is quite a nice image I think. What are your thoughts?

Have a drink

Rain on the window

Sanitary

Who rotated the manhole cover?

34 Granada