Ilana Block wins with Africa Photos

A huge CONGRATULATIONS to Ilana Block from Canada. Her images shown below are three of four that won the gold medal in CAPA's (Canadian Association of Photographic Art) Nature Competition. Please click on each image and scroll over it to read what she has said about each.

I first met Ilana when I did a 3 day program for the Montreal Camera Club back in 2016. Along with Ilana I met Sylvia Rourke and John Zimmerman (who sponsored my program), both had images that contributed to Canada’s winning placement. Ilana is a sweet compassionate photographer with a deep love for nature. Her passion and commitment to her craft will serve her well in this field. Ilana will be returning to the Mara with us in 2021.

From Ilana:

These images were made on the BEST photographic journey I have ever been on; my trip to Kenya with Denise Ippolito and Paul McKenzie. I learned so much, was so overwhelmed by all the animals and by the beauty of the place, had so much fun with the people on the trip, and was very pleased with the epic photo opportunities that we had! What an incredible trip!

Her Bio:

Ilana Block is a Naturopathic Doctor and Wildlife Photographer living in Montreal, Canada. She loves to travel, to be out in nature, to discover new places and get to know new birds and other animals, meet great people and share her love of photography. She has been exhibiting at local cafés, an art gallery, local universities, has permanent collections in a couple of hospitals and also had an exhibit in Paris. She has been selling her images over the past few years. Check out her website-

https://www.ilanablockphotography.ca/index

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Quick and Efficient Dust Bunny Clean-Up- an excerpt from my Photoshop Quick Tips File III

Often times when I am shooting pan blurs or creative blurs I need to use an f/22 or f/29 aperture, however, this can show a lot of dust bunnies on your images. I found that dust bunny clean-up on an image can be time consuming, sloppy and destructive if not done well. The healing brush can leave small pucker-like lines and cloning is often messy. I came up with this method after hours and hours of trial and error. I feel this technique works best especially when you have a lot clean-up to do.

First bring your image into Photoshop, duplicate the layer Cmd or Ctrl J, then go to Filter> Noise> Dust & Scratches, when the dialogue box opens apply (14) pixels to the Radius and on Threshold (1) to the level, see screen capture # 3 below.

Once you hit OK, the effect will be your top layer, next add an Inverse Layer mask (an inverse layer mask aka as a hide-all mask is created by holding down the Alt/Option key while pressing on the mask icon at the same time) see screen capture # 4 below.

After your inverse layer mask is set up, select a soft bush at 100% opacity, set to paint with white and brush over only the dust bunnies in the image-it will look like you are erasing them if you are doing it correctly.

*Note if you have just a plain blue sky with no objects or clouds you may not need to use a mask to selectively apply the effect.  Also, sometimes these values need to be adjusted but make very small adjustments to this recipe.

#1 Original Image

#1 Original Image

#2 Close-up of the left top corner of the image-showing all of the dust bunnies

#2 Close-up of the left top corner of the image-showing all of the dust bunnies

#3 Dust & Scratches Dialogue box

#3 Dust & Scratches Dialogue box

#4 Inverse Layer mask/ hide all mask should look like this. Red arrow pointing to the mask icon.

#4 Inverse Layer mask/ hide all mask should look like this. Red arrow pointing to the mask icon.

#5 Final image after using a layer mask to selectively paint the effect only on the dust bunnies.

#5 Final image after using a layer mask to selectively paint the effect only on the dust bunnies.