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Cellpic Sunday – Sabie River View

Sabie River.

October 2024

Skukuza Rest Camp, South Africa.

On one of the last days of our stay at Skukuza, we were preparing to leave for our afternoon game drive when I stepped out of the deck of the shared community room. Our guest house is at the northern end of the camp, ringed by a protective fence. Our view to the north and west is the Sabie River plain. Occasionally, we could see wildlife just outside the fence. On this day, an elephant ventured close; her young one was behind a tree to the right of this photo. I tried to capture a picture of both of them, but they were moving quickly, and I couldn’t get a decent shot of the pair.

About the photo: I hadn’t yet picked up my “real” cameras to take on the game drive, so I had only my Samsung S23U in my pocket. Given the lack of time before the pair would disappear behind the trees along the river’s edge and the fence that would keep us from following them further, I didn’t take time to use Pro mode. I was satisfied with the JPG image.

On the left was a post with a satellite dish that provides TV to the guest house. I cropped out the post, but if I’d have included the dish in the crop, the elephant would have been at the left edge of the photo. I exported the image to Adobe Photoshop and used Generative Fill to remove the dish visible in front of the tree on the left. I then sent the picture to Luminar Neo to add some sharpness to the image and applied a small amount of Accent AI to bring more definition to the clouds in the sky. Click on the image to view the photo in 2K HD on my Flickr site.

I encourage fellow bloggers to create their own Cellpic Sunday posts. I never have a specific topic for this feature, and the only rules are that the photo must be captured with a cell phone, iPad, or another mobile device… If you have an image from a drone or even a dashcam, that’s also acceptable. The second rule is to link your challenge response to this post or leave a comment here with a link to your post in the comment. Oh, you don’t have to post it on a Sunday.

John Steiner

37 comments

  18. What an amazing trip! I think you needed a super telephoto lens that stopped movement for that runner. I don’t know how you would do that and catch all the amazing background, too. I can’t imagine how much you must have been seeing that we can’t see in the picture! Just WOW!

    Reply

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