Fun With Photos; Photography That Tells A Story.

Part of the enjoyment that I get from going on safari comes long after the trip is over. From sorting through the ten or twenty thousand pictures to cleaning up the good ones (sharpening, slight colour corrections here and there and a little cropping) to posting them on the websites, creating greeting cards, printing, displaying and selling them are all fun and a lot of work! It takes up to six months after I get back to finish this process. That is part of the reason that I only go on two safaris a year. I wouldn't be able to run my businesses and keep up with the photo process otherwise.My latest fun I have been having is with GIFs. I like telling a story when I take pictures. At 5 to 8 frames per second (depending upon which camera I am using), scrolling through the pictures is sometimes an interesting way of telling a short story of what is going on without taking a video. I really enjoy looking at my pictures this way as it brings back the fond memories of what was going on with the animals that day.

For the first GIF I made, I chose a picture of three zebras. They noticed a lion off in the distance and immediately perked up and started wagging their tails. Each picture is interesting as they seem to be wagging their tails in unison. Unfortunately just one picture doesn't display the anxiety that I could imagine that the zebras were feeling at the time (especially the pregnant one on the left), so it was fun to make a gif showing a little bit of movement in that brief second of time illustrating a little more of a story behind the image.

Click on the picture to see a larger gif of the zebras wagging their tails.

Lion on the Horizon- Click on image to see animation

The next one that I had fun with is 14 pictures of two male lions in the Masai Mara. This one was much more difficult. I didn't know that the lion was going to yawn. My camera was hand held and I certainly didn't know at the time that I would try to make a gif out of it, thereby telling a more of a story about the image. Without a stable surface when taking the pictures, they were difficult to line up, but it still turned out pretty good in the end.

Click here to see the lion animation

Four Months Post Africa...

Four months after we returned home from Africa and I am finally finishing up with the pictures. As soon as we returned home, I started printing and framing pictures for our Christmas exhibit. It took months to set up, but was worth it as it was really well received. I had animals Mostly consisting of North America on one wall and animals from Africa on the other.

My next delightful surprise was winning the Governors' Camp's 2010 photo contest with this shot.

Gotcha!

I just finished updating my pictures from our African adventure to the websites. If you are curious, you can find the galleries here:

Lions, cheetahs, elephants, giraffes, zebras and miscellaneous African animals.

We also have one website dedicated just to animals from South Africa, Tanzania and Kenya.

Sadly, I am mostly done with the pictures from our Kenya and Tanzania safari. Our next African Safari will be  South Africa and Kenya in 2012. My next safari will be polar bears in March of 2011. I am looking forward to blogging about the polar bears It is an interesting experience at 45 below with no running water and three    roommates who I haven't met before. And yet, if it will be anything like last year's polar bear experience, it will be incredible.

Our main website can be found here: Harvey Wildlife Photography

My next big project with these pictures now is to create greeting cards. Another huge undertaking, but one that is really rewarding. That should pretty much take me the next few months to finish. I'll have to post pictures of Harvey Wildlife Photography greeting cards on one of these blogs. In the meantime, I have a few of them here.