Little Stone Chimney

Circa1750. Read about the chimneys history here.

This tiger image lacked photographic impact. The color and contrast is flat and needs a pick me up. I used Aurora HDR Pro to bring out the contrasts and added some layers to bring out some colors in the textures.

The image now has photographic appeal and with the added enhancements makes my image pop.

Sleeping lion basks in the morning sunlight.

Mother and baby.

This How We Do It...

A lot of my friends ask me how I like to finish a picture. I always tell them it's a matter of preferences of what the photographer likes. Some like a more realistic image while others like over saturated or HDR effects in their works. The truth is, what ever makes you happy is the best application for you. I constantly change or try out many different techniques in my post processing because I like to keep up with the new and changing soft ware and my personal tastes change over time too. Generally I prefer a realistic look with a slight touch of extra color and detail. Here is the way I usually approach my work.

I upload all my images to Adobe Camera Raw and make a back up copy for safe keeping. I use one copy for post and I look for an image with pose that pleases me. I find with animals, pictures with eye content with the viewer make great choices. I then check to make sure the image is razor sharp especially in the eyes. I then open the image in the raw converter.

In the converter I make adjustments to exposures and any minor cropping I decide. I do not like to crop a lot. I mostly do it to assist the composition. In this case I didn't have enough reach with the 400mm lens I was using so I had to crop more than usual. I also set the sharping and noise slides to 0. These need to be applied later on.

I now use Aurora HDR Pro to bring back the highlights add any color saturation and detail. Constantly switching from 100% to fit viewing mode to make sure any changes I make do not destroy the image quality of the pixels. I find I can really get the 3D effects I like with this application so I have incorporated in to my main process. Here is where most of the magic is done. I add my sharpening and noise reduction here. Once I am satisfied with my image I open it in Photoshop CC.

Here I clone out any unwanted items that will distract the viewers eye. This image had sunlight reflections in the background I felt needed to be eliminated.

Here is a thing I like to do. I rotate my image 180 degrees and add a soft layer mask that lets me lighten or darken any areas I want. This technique shows me if my composition is working and lets me blend in or out the subject matter to make my image pleasing to view.

I save the image to my files, then resize the image for the web.

Here is the finished image. Hope you enjoyed reading this and I hope it will help you become the photographer you want to be.

Eastern Rosella

Siberian Tiger

A trip to the Buffalo zoo today was productive. I got some great shots and will be posting them here as soon as I get them processed.