Kruger
So we went down to South Africa.
What better way to start off my first African vacation than a safari drive in Kruger National Park? After receiving a recommendation about Wildlife Safaris (the link here would suggest I recommend them as well), we booked a four day tour. When picked up in the minivan, we were happy to find out that there are no other tourists with us. Thus three have set off from Johannesburg to the park: Efrat, Clive (the amazing guide) and myself.
The thing about driving around in the park is that you can spend hours looking in all directions and not see a thing (an interesting thing that is; an animal; preferably one of the Big Five). So it was a nice treat to see three male lions not more than 15 minutes after entering the park.
We’ve seen four out of the Big Five: lions, elephants, buffaloes and rhinos. We didn’t see leopards, even though I would have settled for one. You might wonder (as did I) why aren’t the giraffes or hippos, being bigger than some of the above, aren’t included in the Big Five. It’s because the list is made up of the most dangerous animals to hunt. And nobody wants to hunt a hippo. Or is scared of a giraffe.
Oh, I wouldn’t bother you with a photo of the waterhole where the Battle of Kruger occurred. It has lions, buffaloes, crocodiles and more almost 52 million views, but when we got there, the place was quite empty. So I’ll finish with a Wilderbeest followed by a Woodland Kingfisher (and just assume you recognized the lion and buffaloes above):
30
I admit it’s been a while since I wrote here. Sorry about that. I’ll try to make up for it now.
Yesterday I was 30.
It felt pretty similar to 29 and 363 days. Except that instead of working my girlfriend got me a wireless remote for my Lucinda and rented a studio for a self portraiting session. Now I don’t think I told you about Lucinda just yet. She’s the new Canon 50D I got with a Sigma 24-70 f/2.8 lens. Now I still love Lucille (Canon 350D if you recall, on sale now!) but this camera is in a different league. Okay, I got carried away. Back to the studio:
Let me describe the setup we had at the studio (since I didn’t think of photographing it with my cell phone or something): the camera was connected to the external studio flashes (an umbrella, a spots, beauty dish and a softbox, each time we used something different). The camera was also connected to the wireless remote and my laptop. So every photo we took showed up on it and we could enjoy it immediately. Here’s a sample where I didn’t quite manage to hide the remote in my hand, so you might be able to spot it in the photo:
And then I started playing some more with the lights:
Settings? The photo above and the one below were shot with a softbox firing behind me, in addition to the umbrella flash in front.
This has been a great deal of fun. Sorry. More than that: this has been the most original birthday gift ever, and I enjoyed it so much. After three tiring hours in the studio we were famished, and had to go for a big birthday lunch. Unfortunately, it was not before Efrat managed to go all Mike Tyson on me. I barely got away…
Fashion Summit 2009
Three bloggers have decided to help out the Designers Bazaar of Tel Aviv’s Sexual Assault Center. Dar Mashiah from Fashion Pea, Shelly Peleg from Private Collection and Ofer Yeger from Cupcakes (who pushed me into creating this blog). This fund raiser for the Center is based on previous collections donated by many designers and many volunteers making it happen (even I’m in). It’s happening on the 25th and 26th this month in Tel Aviv’s Fair Center (a Hebrew invitation to the event is here). Since the goal is noble, we even had video coverage during our photo session by a reporter and camera man from Ynet’s La’isha.
We met at Shelly’s graphics studio. Our initial goal was to take the photos on the roof of the building. The very harsh sunlight was a minor set back compared to the strong wind. I’ll spare you the photos from up there. For my sake, as well as for the girls’. So we went back into the studio, a great open space with so much artistic stuff around every computer, wall or table. With great natural light, we started taking some photos:
Bloggers For Bazaar
Bloggers For Bazaar
Bloggers For Bazaar
This session was a great. Sure, trying to sync three models together isn’t an easy task. Apparently they don’t blink their eyes simultaneously. If they do, one would look the other way. If she doesn’t, someone laughs. But all these little “screw-ups”, when happening with the right people, are a great deal of fun. This has also been my first contact with the media, which was kinda exciting.
Bloggers For Bazaar - Behind the scenes
I really enjoyed this photography session. Increasing the awareness to the fundraising Designers Bazaar is an amazing added bonus. And here is the great team that made this happen: Dar, Shelly, Ofer and Efrat.
Bloggers For Bazaar
HDR Photography
HDR (High Dynamic Range) photography refers to increasing the color range of a photo.
Our eyes are an amazing contraption. They quickly adapt to many lighting conditions, and the brain kicks in whenever help is needed. In certain conditions, your camera will fail dramatically (or just fail, depends how you look at it), be it a camera mounted on a spy pen or a new Canon 5D Mark II. The conditions I’m referring to are ones which include very bright and very dark areas. Correct exposure to the dark areas will burn the bright areas, correct expose to the bright areas will result in very grim dark areas.
Consider the following photos of average exposure, correct exposure to bright areas and correct exposure to dark areas:
 People's Park, Shanghai - EV 0 |
 People's Park, Shanghai - EV -2 |
 People's Park, Shanghai - EV +2 |
So what do we do? We take multiple shots with EV compensation! The photos above were taken at aperture priority with an aperture of f/16. The first image shutter speed determined by the camera for correct exposure: 1/640 seconds (high ISO used). For the underexposed image, the shutter speed went up to 1/2500 seconds (-2 means 2 stops under, so multiplied by 4). The overexposed image’s shutter speed was 1/160 seconds. Notice how the first photo is nice, but it loses details which are found in the other 2 photos (at a cost of ruining the remaining details of the image).
Next, we combine the photos into a single picture, by taking the correctly exposed areas from each photo. You can do it in Photoshop (many tutorials online) or use a program doing that thing exactly. I achieved the following result using the trial version of Photomatix (so forgive the watermark):
People's Park, Shanghai - HDR
Detailed building from the underexposed photo, details in the tree and water from the overexposed photo.
Check your camera user manual, usually it will offer you an auto-bracketing feature, which will take a normal photo when you first release the shutter, an underexposed on the second release and an overexposed on the third. You can also determine by how much do you want the EV compensation to be. By the way, using a tripod is recommended.