Earning Your Stripes

Photo of the Day

Lately I have been thinking a lot more about what makes a good photographer. I took pictures for a few years repeating the same things, and expecting different results. I am now about a year and a half into my journey of discovery. It would seem as if things would be slowing down, but they actually seem to speed up. As you learn more and more the yearning to learn seems to grow as well. The picture above is a great example of that. It was taken last October during a visit to the Indianapolis Zoo. I have always been a completionist. I always felt as if I needed to have the entire body in the frame to make a good picture. Here I tried something new, and I liked the results. For some reason though I still felt the need to do the same thing in sports. It wasn’t until prodded that I started getting in a little closer to my subjects. I like the result here. This would not have worked if I had been pulled out. I will be at the same zoo again this weekend, and I would like to just try and capture details during the trip. I think that in the end my pictures will be better.

Technical Data

I made some minor adjustments in Lightroom to this photo. The real work was done by Silver Efex Pro by Nik Software. I really like this program, and I probably should use it much more than I do. I thought that the stripes on the zebra would make for a perfect black and white photo. I used the Full Dynamic (Smooth) preset, and I really liked the results. I have found in the program that I really only use a couple of the presets. The ones that give me a clean, detailed look are the ones that I like. This dynamic one is one of those.