Crowned cormorant

Crowned cormorant, originally uploaded by andiwolfe.

A classic pose for drying wings and feathers. This photo was taken at Simon's Town, South Africa (east side of the Cape Peninsula) Oct 7, 2010. It was Steve's first trip down to Cape Point. We did the usual sight-seeing stops and then had some fun doing field work in a dune field. I'll post on that bit of the day soon.

Limpet shells

Limpet shells, originally uploaded by andiwolfe.

All along the coastlines of South Africa, where dune fields also occur, one finds limpet shells piled up in the first swale of the dunes. This is usually several hundred feet away from the beach, and up dozens of feet from sea level.

I wonder if these are deposited by gulls or other creatures who eat the animal and leave an intact shell. It's a mystery to me.

Baboon portrait

Baboon portrait, originally uploaded by andiwolfe.

Baboons are very clever animals, but have really become a problem on the Cape Peninsula. This is especially true at Cape Point National Park. The animals are so used to people and the fact that tourists carry food that they've become thugs and muggers - all for a chip bag or a boxed sandwich.

It's very seldom that I would be able to get close enough to a wild baboon whilst out in the field to take an intimate portrait. The behavior of wild troops is very different from these accustomed bands of thieves. In the wild, there is usually a sentinel baboon that keeps track of everything going on in the vicinity. When the sentinel spots a hiker, there's a hooting call that alerts the rest of the troop, and off they run.

Leucospermum

Leucospermum, originally uploaded by andiwolfe.

From Kirstenbosch Botanical Garden in Cape Town, South Africa. I love the contrast in colors and the extreme bokeh in this image.

Cape Point Lighthouse

Cape Point Lighthouse, originally uploaded by andiwolfe.

Another lighthouse picture from South Africa. I think the Cape Point Lighthouse has the most spectacular views of all the ones I've visited over there. However, I think it's time for a new coat of paint on this famous landmark.

Simon's Town

Simon's Town, originally uploaded by andiwolfe.

I like these colorful boats, all ready to go out to the marina. I wonder, though, why small boats such as these are painted in such garishly bright colors.

Cape Peninsula

Cape Peninsula, originally uploaded by andiwolfe.

This was a fun processing exercise. I processed with Silver Efex Pro to convert the color image to black and white. After that I exported a tiff to Photoshop CS5 to convert it to gray scale. I then added a custom quadtone, brought it back into Aperture and added just a touch of classical soft focus using Color Efex Pro. I like how the tones bring out the patterns in the water.

I would really like some fish, please. . .

I would really like some fish, please. . ., originally uploaded by andiwolfe.

I had a good time watching these Southern Black-backed gulls as they maneuvered for possession of this fish. They eventually shared it, but the gull in the background first had to wait until the one in front had taken several bites.

Cape Point

Cape Point, originally uploaded by andiwolfe.

I always enjoy seeing this place when I'm able to visit Cape Point National Park. It's only an hours drive south of Cape Town, and it's beautiful no matter what the weather. I have been at this very spot with the wind blowing so hard that you are nearly blown over. On this particular day the weather was calm, the colors of the flower were at their prime, and it was very tranquil. Click on the image for a larger view.

Something for a gloomy day

St. James rainbow, originally uploaded by andiwolfe.

We're supposed to get 1 -3 inches of snow by noon, combined with sleet and freezing rain. I'd rather think back to last October when I was doing my field season in South Africa.

I photographed these colorful beach houses at St. James, on the Cape Peninsula. It was Steve's second full day in South Africa so I wanted to give him a tour of the region. We did a bit of collecting later in the day. I'll do a blog post of that site in a day or so.

For now, though, here are some bright primary colors to take my mind off of winter.

Which way did he go?

Which way did he go?, originally uploaded by andiwolfe.

Hartlaub's gulls at St. James; Cape Peninsula, South Africa.

Green point lighthouse at sunset

Green point lighthouse at sunset, originally uploaded by andiwolfe.

An alternative title would be: Learning to use Photoshop CS5. This is the second photo I've processed entirely using the CS5 package. I usually process RAW files in Aperture and with the Nik Software plug-ins. This combination usually works very well and is super fasts for processing "easy" images.

This photo was pretty difficult in terms of contrasts between the foreground and background. I've found that Adobe Camera Raw does a much better job of processing the RAW file to bring out the best of the pixels. However, saving the processed "negative" as a TIFF and bringing that into Aperture is a huge storage hog, tripling the size of the file compared to the RAW one.

So, instead of bringing this image into Aperture, I did the processing in Photoshop. It takes longer, but I'm pretty happy with the results. The key is to make the masks accurately. I've learned a lot about obtaining and refining selections for building masks over the past week as I've been struggling to learn how Photoshop works. It's much more complicated than how I usually process images, but the control of where an adjustment is placed is so much better -IF the mask is made well. I bumped the magnification up to 1200X to make sure I masked the edges accurately. Time consuming, for sure, but the effort was worth it, I think.

I don't expect that I will ever sell this image, but, as a learning exercise, it was time well spent.

Image added 19 Jan 2011:



This is a photo of the lighthouse from the seaward side. That's where the light shines. The street side is blocked off, probably to keep the condominium owners happy.

Hanging around

Hanging around, originally uploaded by andiwolfe.

This is a street photo I took while in South Africa October 2, 2010. I was on an excursion to Cape Point with Dennis and Gigi Laidler. Trent Bosch and his family were in Cape Town after the AWSA symposium and the Laidlers were taking them to see the sights around the Cape Peninsula on this lovely Saturday morning.

I was in the back seat of a Land Rover when we rolled up to a stop light. This young man was hanging out, watching the traffic roll by whilst casually eating an apple.

The photo was a bit underexposed and so I did a faux HDR treatment, bringing the exposure up by a stop or more and then stacking the two photos together to process in a Nik Software plug-in: HDR Efex Pro. I had not used this software before, but really enjoyed exploring all of the settings. This is my rendition of that captured moment in time.

I like the square crop on this image. The subject is positioned well for looking into the street, and seems totally at ease with the world. The taxi cab stopped in the frame of the glass door, stating where the photo was taken - Fish Hoek. The red phone box draws the eye into the center of the frame and the pedestrian crossing sign completes that line.

The processing gives the image a feel of being a watercolor. Digital photography has so much leeway for digital darkroom processing, which appeals to me. I don't think every photographic image needs to "look" like a photograph.

South Africa video blog: September 19, 2010 - part 1

My first few days in South Africa were spent on getting organized for the field season and adjusting to the time zone. To help with the transition Nick Laidler offered to take me on a photo safari around the Cape Peninsula. We were to start before sunrise so that we could be in place in time for sunrise. Nick, however, overslept a bit and so we made it only as far as Zandvlei, which turned out to be a fantastic spot for photographing the sunrise.

Here's my first of three video blog entries from that day.



You can see some of my favorite pictures from the 2010 field season on my Flickr account. Click on the link to go to the album: 2010 South Africa