Animal

Sheep and the lamb

I was out with the long lens one day and captured a few shots of the sheep and their pups who were in a field behind out vet.

Animal

The Tonbridge Squirrel

These chaps were so easy to photograph. As soon as I walked up to the canal near Tonbridge Castle they were everywhere. I was only there for a minute or two but got lots of photos.

I’ve given this one a comic feel with the help of a PS action.

Animal

Blue bell fields forever

The blue bells (and buttercups) have sprouted everywhere here in Edenbridge! This is the field behind our local vet. There is a small wood on the other side of a stream and this is the edge of the woods. Behind me is a field of buttercups, to the left of me is a hill leading to the railway track and to the right of me is a field full of sheep.

To me this shot looks like it’s an HDR image but I can ensure you that it’s not and most of the processing was done in Camera Raw with some tweaking in Photoshop.

Shot taken with my Sigma 10-20mm wide angle lens, which I’ve not used in ages!

Animal

Even dirtier and darker

My dog, Kaz, covered in mud one day. He stuck his whole head in a muddy pond while on a walk in the fields.

Dark and dirty (ie. the first photo) can be found here.

Animal

Dark and dirty

For some reason this shot came out really dark (no idea what I did) but I went with it and created this pic of Kaz after he stuck his head in a muddy pond.

I’ve recently been taking him to a new place behind our vet.  It’s near a field of sheep but completely fenced off so he doesn’t cause them any grief.  It’s a long walk to get to it and so is very quiet, though the odd train going by does break the silence.  It’s also near the oh-so-lovely sewage works but I don’t really notice it.

You get a pretty good view as the field is on a hill so I hope to put up my shots from it.

Animal

Updated portfolio pages

Nothing major but with the help from the guys from the Revolution theme support site I’ve been able to tidy up the image thread found at the bottom half of the portfolio pages.  It will now display threads from the related category (for example, nature photo threads on the nature portfolio page).  The thread will be a preview and will basically show only the photo.  Links to the full entry, where you;ll find background information and alternative images, are provided.  The full list of portfolio pages are:

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Animal

Kaz at sunrise

 

A shot of my Golden Retriever, Kaz. He’s a poser as you can tell.
Seriously though, it’s very hard to capture him as he doesn’t stay still for more than a few seconds. At just 3 years old he’s is so full of energy especially when I take him out for his walk! I reckon he could keep going all day long!

But luckily on one of my early morning expeditions I caught him here. He was standing up on a mound near a pond while the Sun was coming up and the sky was a wonderful yellowy-orange. I think he might have heard a train coming and so went into ‘alert mode’ – Kaz loves to chase the trains, but so far he’s never caught up with one.

Again this is Edenbridge and at a place called Prettymans Pond. I’m not sure what it’s called that but it’s fantastic little pond and I’ve spent many an hour here practicing my photography and taking shots of the pond and the trees in every way I can think of. I’ve found that by going back to the same place over and over again you eventually see different angles for shots and find different ways of capturing the same subject. I’ve also tried to go here at different times of the day in different weather conditions. It’s been very interesting to see the changes these bring and I’ve certainly learnt how to look at things with a ‘photographer’s eye’.

This is a slightly adjusted photo (see below for original). I’ve cropped the top and left a little and increased the saturation throughout. Also I’ve lightened Kaz a little as he was a bit too dark. What does everyone think? I still think the sharp foreground branches are a little distracting?

In the process of creating this photo I thought of two questions:

Question 1: What is the best way to convert an image from Photoshop (PSD, TIFF) to JPEG? What I normally do is save the PSD as a TIFF then go into ACDSee and convert it there at max. quality to a JPEG (thus keeping the EXIF data). But this photo really highlights a problem (or two) I’ve noticed in that converting to JPEG reduces the saturation and darkens the brightness. Is there a better way to convert to JPEG to keep the exact tone of the image as well as the EXIF info?

Question 2: I had to refine and touch up the selection of Kaz in Photoshop as left alone he stuck out too much and his hair (especially his underneath) had a nasty line where one part of the image was dark+saturated and the other was bright+lightened. What’s the best way to blend these areas? I used the smudge tool on the selection layer and the result seems OK but is there a better way?

The original photo has been printed in the UK newspaper, Kent & Sussex Courier on 01-Feb-2008 (my first print!) and made it to onto Flickr’s Explore on Jan 8, 2008 at #434. The scan of the newspaper print is below:

Blog entry at Dark Matter Magazine is here.