Bolivia, 2013

Luckypenguin

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Location
Brisbane, Australia
Name
Nic
Thought that I'd start a thread with some images of travels through Bolivia in August and September, 2013.



A large portion of the Altiplano in the south west of Bolivia is quite dry and rugged, but as the winter snows melt the fresh water trickles down between the valleys in small streams. In such places grow the grasses that are the favourites of camelids like the Llama (pronounced Yama for anyone who is not familiar with the use of the double L in Spanish). Near the end of our trip through the Altiplano we happened upon this herd of Llamas grazing in amongst the melting snow and ice. Given the contrast between the terrain we had been driving through and this place, we could think of no better name for it than "Llama Heaven"

Canon G1X

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1. CG1X-IMG_2717-PR Canon Powershot G1X Altiplano Bolivia by Nic (Luckypenguin), on Flickr



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2. CG1X-IMG_2721-PR Canon Powershot G1X Altiplano Bolivia by Nic (Luckypenguin), on Flickr



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3. CG1X-IMG_2722-PR Canon Powershot G1X Altiplano Bolivia by Nic (Luckypenguin), on Flickr



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4. CG1X-IMG_2723-PR Canon Powershot G1X Altiplano Bolivia by Nic (Luckypenguin), on Flickr



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5. CG1X-IMG_2719-PR Canon Powershot G1X Altiplano Bolivia by Nic (Luckypenguin), on Flickr
 
I love photo 8! The angles of the converging lines create this effervescent feel as sky clashes into the mountain in the horizon! :)

On a more serious note, thanks for sharing these photos. What a beautiful place. How did you even think of Bolivia as a place to visit?
 
Great images. I commented on the llama shots on flickr already. The Rock Valley is stunning!
Your typical "look" is present here too... the images seem to glow, without losing sharpness or contrast. Another way to describe it would be, like bleach bypass but with hardly any loss in saturation. Really distinctive, and I wonder how you do it :)
 
I love photo 8! The angles of the converging lines create this effervescent feel as sky clashes into the mountain in the horizon! :)

On a more serious note, thanks for sharing these photos. What a beautiful place. How did you even think of Bolivia as a place to visit?

It is very beautiful. To answer your question we didn't just decide to go to Bolivia on it's own, although it was a destination that I was really looking forward to due to it's landscapes. Essentially it was just one country along way when travelling overland from Mexico to Chile.
 
Great images. I commented on the llama shots on flickr already. The Rock Valley is stunning!
Your typical "look" is present here too... the images seem to glow, without losing sharpness or contrast. Another way to describe it would be, like bleach bypass but with hardly any loss in saturation. Really distinctive, and I wonder how you do it :)

Thanks, Bart. It's mostly just highlight and shadow recovery (where applicable), clarity, and modifying the blue colour channel to lighten it and reduce saturation. Below is a SOOC jpeg compared to the processed raw.

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Join to see EXIF info for this image (if available)




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Gorgeous images Nic. Like I mentioned before, would love to know how you go about approaching your edits. I dare say it seems simple to you, but I'm sure everyone could do with a few pointers.
 
Very nice stuff Nic. Up to your usual standards for clarity and sharpness. My favorite image is probably the first one in the second post, with that opening in the rocks and the sky showing through. And one with the llamas, but I'm not sure which. I'd have thought it was hot there but for the photos of your wife all bundled up...

Looks like quite an adventure you've been on...

-Ray
 
Gorgeous images Nic. Like I mentioned before, would love to know how you go about approaching your edits. I dare say it seems simple to you, but I'm sure everyone could do with a few pointers.

Thanks, Rajiv. This time I do promise to put something together, and God knows that now I am home I do have a mountain of material with which to find a few examples!

Very nice stuff Nic. Up to your usual standards for clarity and sharpness. My favorite image is probably the first one in the second post, with that opening in the rocks and the sky showing through. And one with the llamas, but I'm not sure which. I'd have thought it was hot there but for the photos of your wife all bundled up...

Looks like quite an adventure you've been on...

-Ray

Thanks, Ray. It is hard to believe how cold it could get up there when the images make it look like a warm, sunny day. We were actually caught in some strange weather which involved us getting stranded in a bus during a snowstorm when we were heading south from La Paz, and during this trip here through the Altiplano he had to change our itinerary. Normally on these 4WD safaris you leave a town called Uyuni and then cross the Chilean border and finish in a town called San Pedro de Atacama. This time around the same cold front that stranded us a week earlier had dumped the first in San Pedro in 26 years and had caused the border crossing to close.

You mention that you weren't sure which of the Llama photos that you like, but I think that I'm going to have this one below printed on a 40x20 canvas (after some cropping, of course). It's hard to describe what it was like just driving into this idyllic spot in the middle of such a barren landscape, and when I make a big print I like it to have a memory attached to it that makes it more than just a pretty picture.

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These images below give a good idea of how barren a lot of the landscape was, in this case along the the winding, dirt road from Uyuni to Villazon which is a Bolivian town on the border with Argentina. These were taken through the window of a Toyota Landcruiser that was being pedalled with a fair amount of enthusiasm so they aren't really the crispy landscape images that I would like them to be.



Panasonic GH1

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PGH1-P1110351-PR Panasonic GH1 Altiplano Bolivia by Nic (Luckypenguin), on Flickr



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PGH1-P1110356-PR Panasonic GH1 Altiplano Bolivia by Nic (Luckypenguin), on Flickr



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PGH1-P1110355-PR Panasonic GH1 Altiplano Bolivia by Nic (Luckypenguin), on Flickr



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PGH1-P1110353-PR Panasonic GH1 Altiplano Bolivia by Nic (Luckypenguin), on Flickr



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PGH1-P1110357-PR Panasonic GH1 Altiplano Bolivia by Nic (Luckypenguin), on Flickr
 
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