In 2011 I was lucky enough to go on a fantastic trip to the Greater Kruger National Park in South Africa with my better half Emma. It was Emma’s 40th Birthday so we pushed the boat out and stayed at a luxury lodge. Even more luck came our way when we arrived and were told that we had the entire place to ourselves as there was nobody else booked in. Not only did we have the lodge to ourselves, but also the game drives were ours to do what we wanted. It will take a lot to beat those fantastic 6 days we had.
Back then, I was shooting with my old Nikon D70s and trusty Nikon 70-300mm f/4.5-5.6 lens. I was chuffed with some of the photos I got, but my Lightroom/Photoshop skills where a bit limited back then. This photo of a Lioness sitting on top of a mound was just after sunrise and loved the way the sun was lighting her from the side. She had been out hunting (as you can see some blood on her right ear and around her nose) and was on her way back to locate where she had hidden her cubs.
So, this morning, I thought I’d re-visit one of my favourite shots from the trip and give it a re-edit. “Content Aware” in Photoshop wasn’t around back then, so this time around I decided to remove the distracting grass too and here are the results. What is great is you have to remember that the D70s is just a 6.1mp camera which is nothing by today’s standards, but that camera was a joy to shoot with. Ok, the photo isn’t crisp sharp, but then when I look at the exposure settings of ISO400, f/5.6, 1/500sec at 300mm, I probably would try to shoot at f/8 and sacrifice some shutter speed if I had the chance again.
Here is the new edit followed by the old one.
{Click image for a higher resolution, click Flickr Link in caption to view photo on Flickr}
