4.1.11

Australia: Part V

Looking Back
So these photos are really meant to be part of my Australia post from yesterday, which wasn't meant to be 'published' until today, but Blogger got ahead of me so - ahem - please feel free to scan back to those photos to understand where I was and what I was up to when they were taken.

Central Australia has been on my list of places to visit for a very long time. It's perhaps somewhat ironic that I had to be living away from Australia and visiting as a tourist to make it to Alice, but there you go. After a very luxurious week in South Australia with my family we flew into Alice Springs hired a 4WD and drove across the MacDonnell Ranges, down to Kings Canyon and then across to Uluru (Ayers Rock) and Kata Tjuta.  The distances were huge and it was hot.  But incredibly beautiful.
Lizard
You can't help but feel incredibly insignificant and dependent in the desert, clinging to your car full of litres of water, food, air-conditioning, sun-screen... makes you feel small - I'm not quite sure where I'm going with this train of thought - but overall it was a wonderful and incredibly humbling experience.
Hot
And now because I'm feeling brave about posting 'me' on my blog, here's a couple of images to show you that even a little bit of editing can make a world of difference to how you feel about a photo. Below is the unedited  (SOOC) version of the photo above of Matthias and I at the top of Kings Canyon.  It was close to 40 degrees (104F) and we'd just walked up the ridge to get to the top of the Canyon. We'd also "slept" under the stars the night before (our one attempt at camping) but got completely spooked by the Dingoes walking around the campsite, not to mention the mosquitoes, crickets and other flying insects who decided to pay us a visit. Safe to say we were not feeling particularly photogenic.  To top it all off the camera has 'exposed' for the cloudy sky and not us. Pretty huh?
I can't exactly remember what I did, but I slightly over-exposed the photo and then adjusted our skin tones a little using a curves adjustment. I then worked on removing some of the red blotchiness from our skin and the bags under our eyes - in hindsight I actually think I went a little far on this, but anyway - still learning. I think I then added some yellowish tones to the photo to warm the overall photo up, by which point I had something that looked like this.
The sky is now completely blown-out, so I just added back the original sky - it's still white, but it was slightly overcast and in the final picture you can just see the blue peeking through the clouds.
Hot
Better!

9 comments:

Kristina said...

Like your editing, good job, which program do you use? I am currently looking for an affordable program to use on my new imac :)
Viele Gruesse, Kristina

ching said...

oooh what an adventure that must be. :D

Jamie said...

You look gorgeous! And now I really want to book a flight to Australia - the 40+ temps actually sound good right now since I haven't seen anything above 0 in nearly a week.

Justine said...

I agree, you look gorgeous! I did your trip on a working holiday to Australia 25 years ago now! can't believe it was that long ago, I can still remember it all so well. Thanks for wonderful memories with all your great shots.

Jen said...

lovely landscape!

SJ said...

i do love your tutorials :)

i was talking to my other half about Alice the other day and how i'd never contemplated going. I think i need to change that!

Anika said...

Wow, such great shots. It's beautiful! I really love the collage of images at the top.

Simon said...

Great images Clare. I like seeing and hearing about your editing....and you look fab in ALL the versions.
I love that cool close up of the lizard and the rest of Australia looks lovely too.

Katness said...

Beautiful photos! Always wanted to travel to Australia, but haven't got a chance yet. It's on my bucket list so it will be done. One day.