Monkey Island

A swan swims in the moat around Monkey Island at Ralph Mitchell Zoo in Independence, Kan. Miss Able, the first monkey to fly in outer space, was born at this zoo.
View On Black

I didn't like this shot when I first took it. Primarily because the sky was pretty well blown out.

But then I read Carl Weese's excellent article, "Do Not Fear the Sun", over at The Online Photographer blog.

The main thrust of his article doesn't really apply to this situation since it was a mostly cloudy day. But what really struck me was his description of the use of the various tools in the Adobe Camera Raw program.

Previously, I had a general idea of what many of those controls did, but his article really (ahem, forgive the pun) shed some light on the subject.

Luckily I still had less than a day left on my trial version of Photoshop Elements so I popped this photo into it and fiddled around with the settings some. And I definitely like the results.

I had been using iPhoto since I got my dSLR. It's a very simple easy to use program and the results are generally very good. But I can't get anything close to this image with iPhoto, the range of tones was simply too great and the controls of iPhoto too limited.

So thank you Mr. Weese for the wonderful article.

Mr. Weese writes occasionally for The Online Photographer, and he also runs the Working Pictures and WPII blogs. I've long been a fan of his work, even though it often frustrates me. His photographs are very subtle, often leaving me scratching my head. But I simply cannot stop looking at them. Check out his blogs.