Second and Third Thoughts
Do you want the BEST camera or the RIGHT camera for you? Arm yourself with the knowledge you need before you make that all-important camera purchase. This guide is completely free, unbiased and unsponsored. A must-have for all photographers looking for a new camera.
Source: Camera Buyer’s Guide: 2024
I’ve just bought a new camera, so this is not relevant to me, but I’ve watched lots of videos that John has produced and they’re always informative. The guide is free and you might find it helpful.
I’ve been sorting my photos from our Rome-Venice trip. I really like this one.
Boys Playing in the Alley
Gia and I spent a few days in Rome recently. One of the excursions we took was a visit to the Borghese Gallery. Our guide was keen to show us some of the exquisite sculptures of Bernini—in his view, a much superior sculptor than Michelangelo. As is usually the case in these situations, it’s hard to get a view with too many people (like us), signs and barriers and often not very good lighting. I contented myself with taking some “detail shots”.
Truth Unveiled by Time
The Rape of Proserpina
Apollo and Daphne
David
Pauline Bonaparte as Venus Victrix
Aeneas, Anchises, and Ascanius
I decided to convert the photos to B&W as this gives a more consistent look and feel to the selection. As I am trialling Topaz Labs’ photo processing suite, I used their modules for B&W conversion and noise reduction. I was quite impressed with the results for noise reduction, just using some of the standard presets.
I have been getting my camera gear organised for our next trip. When I checked the memory card, I found a few photos that I’d forgotten about. For some reason, in the last two or three years a pigeon couple have been trying to nest in the corner of our balcony. We have found twigs made into very basic nests and, on occasion, an egg. Up until this year, nothing came of any of the eggs because we would scare the pigeons away. However, this year we were away from the middle of February to the beginning of April, so they were able to nest without interruption. We didn’t notice until a few days after we came home, when the window cleaner found them.
I took a few pictures now and then, but not too many. We didn’t want the pigeons, but we were too soft and let them be.
The new pigeons left the nest and we cleared “everything” up, but still had to deal with ma and pa trying for round two. So we now have netting.
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This looks like a good thing.
We spent three nights at Lebala and each evening we had a beautiful sunset while we enjoyed our sundowners.
If you’d like to know about the camps we stayed at, Lebala and Little Kwara, you can read my TripAdvisor reviews on the camps here and here.
If you’d like to see more pictures, I’ve created a bunch of albums that you get access from this page.
I found several photos that I had incorrectly tagged, so were overlooked then when I was creating the post, Death of a Hippo. These show what was left of the hippo about 2 days after she died, and the scavengers still around.
Another safari post: it shows how close a bull elephant came to the Little Kwara camp.
This video does take a little while to download. Naturally, I think it’s worth the wait, otherwise I wouldn’t have posted it. 🙂
This photo is the first in a series that some people may prefer not to see. We were on safari, staying at Lebala Camp. We had stopped by this lagoon for sundowners when I spotted activity on the opposite shore. It was a hippo being attacked by two hyenas. I gulped down the rest of my G&T and our guides hurriedly packed stuff away and we raced around to see what was happening.
On the next page, there are pictures showing the attack in more detail. They aren’t pleasant and you may prefer not to look. For the six of us in the Land Cruiser it was a lesson in the hard facts of life on the Africa plains. The hippo had clearly been badly injured in a fight, probably with another hippo—two hyenas would not have been able to take down a healthy one.
I’m posting these two pictures because it was the first time I’d ever taken photos with a shutter speed of 1/8000 sec; this seems to be too fast for WordPress media library as it reports 1/501s. Other meta data: ISO 160, f/2.8, -0.3 EV, 40mm. The camera is an Olympus OMD E-M1; the lens is the Olympus 12-40 f/2.8 Pro.
The Falls were pretty amazing even in the low season without much water. I’ll be posting more photos in a new album when I have finished processing and weeding.
oddrops 