My last South Africa photos: Male Lions

[Kaye Leggett]

Great images Mike - and I'm impressed you have finished editing already. And thanks for the reassurance that your wife can be wrong - I sometimes find it hard to remind myself my husband's view of my photos differs from mine and is therefore not necessarily right.

[Mike Buckley]

Ah ha! TinyPic is working again!

Thank you, Kaye!

Matt,

If your version is much different from mine, please feel free to post yours. In fact, if you would like me to send you the full-size JPEG of the color version so you can work with it, please don't hesitate to let me know.

[FlyingSquirrel]

Mike, this is beautiful. Your b/w is much better than my quick one (though, if I had spent more time, it probably would have come out similar to what the quick one did anyway). Mine is slightly more contrasty, has some cropped off the right, and an uneven vignette. I'll just let your version stand alone here! Excellent work!

[Wavelength]

TRULY MAJJJESTIC ; you must be proud about these captures indeed

[Mike Buckley]

Thank you to Matt and Nandakumar.

Matt,

One reason I just love post-processing every bit as much as all of the other aspects of photography is because of the choices that we make during that part of the process. You chose to crop the right side a bit, perhaps to display the lion in the center of the image (perhaps not); I wanted the lion off-center just a bit. You chose more contrast; I chose less. You chose an uneven vignette; I also chose one that is uneven though I'm glad that you may not even be aware that I'm using a vignette.

I tend to get more satisfaction from the choices that are made when working on a monochrome photo than a color photo. I think that's because there are more choices to be made, though I'm not actually positive that that is true. Even if it is true, I'm not positive that that entirely explains my increased satisfaction of the post-processing experience.

By the way, we should recognize that you had the disadvantage of working with the small file whereas I used the full-size file.

[Brownbear]

Absolutely exquisite in B&W

[FlyingSquirrel]

Thank you to Matt and Nandakumar.

Matt,

One reason I just love post-processing every bit as much as all of the other aspects of photography is because of the choices that we make during that part of the process. You chose to crop the right side a bit, perhaps to display the lion in the center of the image (perhaps not); I wanted the lion off-center just a bit. You chose more contrast; I chose less. You chose an uneven vignette; I also chose one that is uneven though I'm glad that you may not even be aware that I'm using a vignette.

I tend to get more satisfaction from the choices that are made when working on a monochrome photo than a color photo. I think that's because there are more choices to be made, though I'm not actually positive that that is true. Even if it is true, I'm not positive that that entirely explains my increased satisfaction of the post-processing experience.

By the way, we should recognize that you had the disadvantage of working with the small file whereas I used the full-size file.

Sorry to bump this thread once again, but I really wanted to reply/agree with your comments. I like your analysis of the art of processing photos. You mentioned that you think there may or may not be more choices to be made when making a monochrome photo; my thought is that there are not necessarily more choices, but just different choices, or to be more specific, some of the choices that you'd make in color will be dealt with differently for a monochrome (at least that's how I do it). I'll also add that I really like processing monochromes, not that I am an expert at it (or even color). In particular, I think back to the Seashell series that I was working on a while back...

Oh, and thanks for trying to console me by pretending like I could have done a better job with the large file hehe jk

[Mike Buckley]

I wasn't trying to console you, Matt. I was only stating the obvious. I'm particularly good at that thanks to my firm grasp of the obvious.

[Bobobird]

4 wows....
Great shots and compositions.