Whetting Your Appetite For Travel -- Travel Pics
Well, let's see if this generates interest -- an invitation to share your travel pictures. I'll post the images I've been working on, and invite you to the party! For me, at least, it gives me ideas about places I haven't traveled to yet.
African Crested Cranes -- jaw dropping beauty.
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Above photos...view from our lockdown hotel room in Kuala Lumpur. The following three, caves in Sarawak Borneo...our last vacation in March
Ok. You're killing me, I want to go to those places!
Nice shots!
Here's a couple of shots similar to Cathy's from a different perspective.
From a seaplane
From Rainforest Station - Kuranda
From our last pre-Covid trip in January 2020 to Panama. A tender ship, at sunrise, heading back to the Pacific under the Bridge of the Americas to escort a ship into the Panama Canal. You can see a few of the dozens of ships waiting to enter the canal in the distance.
And a bit later with more tender ships headed out to meet a large container ship approaching the bridge.
And a couple of shots from Monkey Island within the canal.
Cathy - Here's a couple of sloths from our Panama trip.
From our last Tauck tour prior to COVID - Israel and Jordan, September 2019.
Great pictures. Fascinating animals. Here's my Australia contribution: Nightlife at the Sydney.
I recall it as a relaxed crowd, food and fun. Unfortunately, did not find a concert we wanted to attend while we were there.
And, I might have shared this before, but I Photoshopped it recently:
And, hope to see you on tour:
Never seen a sloth before. The one pic looks like a human face.
Gotta stay on your toes, Doug. They move quickly!
Oh, thought they were slow and slothful.
Don't know if it's all right on this forum, but as an alert, turn on the Covid-19 Alerts on your phone, set it for the U.S. and your State.
I think this link works without subscription:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/11/18/coronavirus-app-exposure-alerts/
We saw tiny baby sloths on one of our Tauck tours, adorable! Cathy, we too did not hold Koalas, they get very stressed from being held and have to be changed out frequently to give them a rest between tourists. And of course, you know me...they are all rampant with Chlamydia.
Smiling Sam -- Your photos from the Israel and Jordan tour brought back such memories! I was there in March. I absolutely LOVED it -- my second favorite trip after Grand Australia and New Zealand. We couldn't go to Bethlehem because the West Bank was closed; we couldn't go to Masada because Jordan closed the land border from Israel (both because of COVID). We did make it to Jerash (flying from TLV to AMM as "plan B"), and made it to Wasi Musa, but never into the Petra ruins, first because of torrential rain, and second because of Jordan's closing of tourist sites -- and the airport. God knows there's nothing in Wadi Musa except the Petra ruins! Came home early (because of the airport closing), but have bookings for next March (which won't happen) and March 2022. Fingers crossed.
Hong Kong
On my Aus/NZ trip (2016), some people elected to hold a Koala for an extra fee. One group member had the Koala pee on her.
British - regarding the chlamydia, I won't ask what you were thinking of doing with the Koalas...
As a former midwife, that kind of thing is always on my mind!
July 2019 we caught part of the Great Migration.
Seems every old European city has one of these dug up. This one is in Ohrid, (North) Macedonia
And here's a bigger one in Epidaurus, Greece:
And another (Delphi):
Mountaintop monastery (Meteora, Greece). Remember the Bond movie "For Your Eyes Only?:
The painted village of Pyrgi on the island of Chios:
We didn't get to see a river crossing with the Great Migration. Dynamic.
This happened on our K&T tour. It was totally unexpected. We were having brunch after the balloon experience when our fearless leader said he heard the migration might be visible after few hours away. It would be a long ride - possibly for ‘nothing’. One guest opted not to go. But the rest of us had the experience of a lifetime. It was beyond words. Wildebeests were everywhere and the water crossing was mesmerizing.
Shanghai Daytime Skyline
Nice pic, Sandman. You caught it on the one smog-free day of the year!
Nice animal portraits.
Impressive shooting angle in Cathy and Steve's shot of the gondola in Italy -- down low, big bow of the boat -- really a nice composition, if you don't mind the comment.
Here's a Photoshopped version of a gondola scene to make it appear as a watercolor.
My feeling is that what makes the image is the posture of the gondolier -- you almost feel the stretch, so it's an appeal to something in addition to your visual sense. So if you don't mind the tip -- look for postures in composing pictures, in addition to facial expressions. You kind of look for aspects of the image that will elicit an emotion in the viewer. Lots of photo nerds call that "The Moment" -- I think it means find the right Moment to press the shutter, and that Moment is designed to elicit an emotion from the viewer, carrying the photo from being a snapshot to something more enduring.
Doug - You have inspired me to want to take some beginner photoshop lessons online during the winter lockdown. Any suggestions?
With regard to the above pic:
This is actually an old pic before I started really getting into photography. But it's enhanced here to give the impression of a watercolor painting. I made it a sunset shot, with oranges in the background and blues in the foreground.
YES! I'm still taking courses online from a guy named Blake Rudis. He's the best I've found over the years. Take his 30 day course. The online fee is $20 a month, stop anytime. That's really cheap.
Each day, you do one lesson -- masking, dodging, replacing skies, taking out blemishes, trees and junk from a photo, etc. Most lessons are only 15-20 minutes, but you need to practice the techniques so you won't forget it. After the 30 day course, you can do advanced stuff in each area. I'm not a particularly fast learner, so I repeated the course after a couple of months, am now moving on to coloring images with more subtlety, hopefully. I still like the in-your-face stuff I'm doing, but it's really too unreal. LOL. Here's the link.
https://f64academy.com/
I really encourage you to do it -- most people interested in photography at the amateur level just do Lightroom, which is great, but limits you to basically editing your photos. I start with Lightroom to get exposures, etc. right, then press Cmd-E, and it takes the image into Photoshop, where you do anything -- play with skies, emphasize the subject, darken backgrounds, change the colors of backgrounds, ad infinitum. Photoshop is what the kids learn in Art School to go on to professional careers.
You can take a photo that you thought was so-so or even good, and make it WOW!
And if you take it easy, have fun, enjoy the process -- it will be really rewarding. Blake is sort of a Type-A, talks fast, so just re-run the videos as much as you like.
Finally, Blake has a preference for an old program called Adobe Camera Raw -- instead of Lightroom. Just recently, Adobe made ACR and LR the same in capabilities. But I find LR easier to use, easier to navigate your photos, easier to store them. So I start with LR and go to PS. Blake starts with Adobe Bridge goes to ACR then to PS. He'll teach ACR, but if you are currently a LR user, I'd recommend you do LR and punt into PS.
If you have any questions, feel free to PM me or even PM me for my phone number and call me -- I'm really happy to help folks.
Best wishes,
Doug
This one is overdone, but I like it. And, it was actually like the original scene. I enhanced the reflections in the water of Lake Louise, Alberta.
For a sense of scale, the red dot to the left background shoreline is a couple in a canoe.
Now I know what they mean when they say one has gained weight like a hippo! LOL. Roundest one I've seen, MIL. If you were into sky replacements, some of your images would really stand out. When we travel, tours tend to give us pre-noon and early afternoon flat skies. FYI, the new Photoshop 2021 has added a sky replacement tool that helps you mask the old sky so you can add a new one.
All these photos are wonderful. Oh to travel again