Rainy season is back in Jonglei

The heavy clouds closing in just after sun had set on the horizon with some nice reflections over our compound.

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In between the clouds in the PAC750 heading to Bor from Juba. This during the rainy season. the Pilots trying to dodge the turbulent areas flying around the clouds that covered the area ahead.

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Sunet Sonaisali Island, Fiji

Sunset at Sonaisali Island Fiji. Sometimes the best colors come out after the sun is already gone down with the reflections being through the clouds to the ocean. The effects of the clouds cutting slices in the sunrays was very interesting. This picture is a 9 picture stepped Pseudo HDR. - 4 to + 4 EV. Taking the pictures in RAW helps making sure it is possible to maximize the use of the data available in the RAW file. It would be possible to bring out the stones to be visible more but I feel the picture would then not reflect what I saw.

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Beach on Mana Isand, Fiji

Photo on the north beach on Mana Island. Gone through the pseudo HDR process to get the full dynamic of the clouds.

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Sunrise over pacific

Picture taken 10,000 Meters up after the sun has risen and is partially hiding in the clouds.

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Islands in Fiji

Photo taken from Mana Island.

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Mana Island Fiji

Spent the first day of 2011 on Mana Island , Fiji with my daughter. Crystal clear water and nice sunny place.

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Sonaisali Island sunset

The picture is taken looking away from the sunset. There was a big rain on the way over the island and the clouds are lit up by the sun behind the camera. Again a pseudo HDR photo. The colors due to the clouds covering part of the sun where very deep.

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Sunrise over South Pacific 10,000 meters up in the sky

I am back from a one month holiday, needed to leave Africa for a while. Flew to Fiji in South Pacific and had not even reached when I could start taking pictures. This on is run through a pseudo HDR process to get the full range of the colors in the sunrise.

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Turquoise sunset

Sunset in Bor tonight. This is a pseudo-HDR with 5 photos processed to get the correct turquoise color that was in the clouds. 

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Opening ceremony of a house in South Sudan

Photo I took at the ceremony to open the new SSRRC building in Bor, Jonglei state, South Sudan. I really liked the color combination which reminds me of pistaccio and choclate chip icecream. The house really have the strong colors shown.

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Changing EXIF data and Geotagging with least effort?!

Yesterday I downloaded Zoner Photo Studio 12 Professional as it seemed to be a product that had some features I have not found so far in any other software I am using.

I have before tried to put up pictures on Google earth, Panoramio, PicasaWeb, Flickr, my own picture gallery and so forth but always had an issue with Tagging.

1. I dont want to spend time tagging everything while typing a lot of information. I want to batch tag a lot of photos with the basic tags I need.

2. I want a simple way to point and click on a map to geotag a picture.

3. I also liked the idea of being able to easily re-organize pictures into folders based on year, month and date. Normally when I go out and shoot pictures it is one location one day for a particular activity so the date seems to be the best starting point for storing my pictures. My Canon 350DS just give me the 261CANON folders with 100 pictures in each. It however also make sure the EXIF data is there so why not use it.

4. I also want to make sure each pictures is marked with the Copyright information in the Exif data easily.

In the batch EXIF mode Zoner will open a new window and you can simply mark and click and the tag is added and then save it to all pictures.

Zoner allow me to batch tag a whole directory, even Geotag a whole directory if needed. Ofcourse pictures are taken at more or less unique GPS points but with 600 pictures in my web gallery that would be an impossible task to do. At present I am just targetting trying to show them in the right village. For some specifically interesting photo's I will Geotag them on the actual spot.

I have not seen these features in any of the softwares I use normally. Picasa, Adobe Photoshop CS2, Digital Photo Professional.

One thing I have discovered the Zoner software can not do properly is HDR pictures. Atleast not if you are taking pictures without tripod, remote release and so forth as the software assumes your 3 - 5 pictures are perfectly aligned before importing. Thus Photomatix and Photoshop is still the best choice for me in that department.

It should be noted that tonight the SmugMug uploding page went offline with the following error message. Atleast! it does not impact the viewing of the pictures on this blog! eventhough theyare on the site. Can only hope they are uploading a new version of the site with some new features then ?!

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UNHAS Caravan in Akobo South Sudan just before the rain

Was in Akobo a few days back and this is the plane we flew on. We had to rush back and take off as the rains arrived.

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Tokul and tree before the rain

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Nile Riverside facing oilcompany bargelanding

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Nile Riverside

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Sunset in Bor

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How long time does it take to grow a tree?

Shorter time than it takes a car to rust to bits. This truck cabin is located in our compound just outside my office. The tree is about 20 meters high overall.

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Who said sausages dont grow on tree's

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Bricks Galore

Took this picture of a stack of bricks while the dark clouds was coming in. The interesting thing is that I would not have expected the grass to be so green as it was under the dark clouds but there is so much fresh grass there is a lot of variation in the green shades all over the village.

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