LightningPaul

Tow weeks ago my family and I visited an ostrich farm. They grow them to sell products like meat, leather, fat and all kind of derived products from their eggs (just like what they do with chickens). Besides that you can learn about them thanks to their guided tours. These animals are very nice, calm, social, well organized but not so very smart. Fences are all around their territories to protect the visiting people. When you would enter they might kick you deadly hard. Because of the fences I didn't focus on getting full length portraits, though I made a few of them.

On the top left you see an ostrich biting me. At the bottom right you see one of the babies, probably a few weeks old. They are very cute. The other two were kind of enough to pose for me, though a few second later the one at the top tried to bite my hand. My only defenses where reacting very quickly or pushing the shutter button which made for them a scary kind of noise. Some of them ran even away.



TECH-INFO: all images where shot with a 35mm prime lens at f/2.0 and ISO100, except the one at the top left where I used my ultra wide angle 12-24mm at 24mm, f/5.6 and ISO200. All JPG images, first processed in DxO Optics Pro, afterwards in Photoshop to enhance contrasts and details using masked adjustment layers of the curves tool, selective color tool and brightness/contrast tool. No big changes were done at all though each image is improved significantly.

To get nice shots you need to try and shoot really a lot. Continuously I kept the direction of the sun in my mind. More than 200 shots were made, but these belong to the bests. To make an image like at the top left you need to have some courage. I let the animal bite in my camera. Of course I had a protective lens UV filter. It looks very dangerous but it isn't. They have no teeth so it doesn't hurt (much). They have probably been biting my camera for 30 times but I couldn't fine any scratches or traces of it. If you try this yourself then do it on your own risk. I was the only one being so crazy but I wanted something more original.



ARCHIVE THEMES: Two days ago I reorganized the themes you can see when clicking the archive button on my photo blog. I have the following categories now:
- Abstract
- Abandoned Series
- Action
- Architectural Detail
- Flowers, Plants & Animals
- Inside your House
- Interesting Objects
- Lightning
- Night or Dark
- People
- People - Children Only
- Something Else
- Stunning Views
- Toy Stuff
- Urban or Industrial
- Very Small Things

I noticed that some of you already took advantage of that. Thanks.