My ultimate goal is to publish a book on Masai Mara in Kenya – this is a reserve close to my heart and one that I have visited every year for the past 19 years – this would have been my 20th consecutive year.
Obviously due to corona virus and travel being prevented I haven’t been able to make it 20 years this year.
I was one of the fortunate people in lockdown that was able to work from home. I have a full-time job as well as my photography and my tours.
Over the past 15 weeks I have been starting the very slow process of reviewing and processing hundreds of thousands of images, initially in preparation for the book, but also to sort out a portfolio of all my best wildlife images from across the world. I am still on my first old hard drive and progress is very slow.
I have never really enjoyed processing images; I have always been about capturing images but not necessarily about “finishing them” in post processing.
My processing was limited to a little sharpening and basic brightness, contrast, and saturation adjustments.
However I realise that post processing is a critical part of any image that you see anywhere and I have enjoyed exploring this more and taking old images and making them look better, whilst still maintaining the original aesthetics of the image.
It is also about all the memories that come with the images – I feel like I have done 20 years of safaris in the space of a few weeks. I have found images that I had forgotten about, images that had been rejected previously and some that I didn’t even know that I had.
I have discovered some hidden gems.
I may not have been able to visit my favourite place this year, but I have still been able to connect with it in someway and relive many happy memories.
