As I mentioned in my previous post, I’d been to visit my family in Mongolia last month.  It was great to spend time with them and catch up (though I did come down with a stomach bug of some sort while I was there), and while we didn’t go out too much, I had a very relaxing time.  I’ll write a bit more about what we did in a later post.

One of the things I did while I was there was mess around with my youngest brother’s camera, a Nikon D40.  It was the first time I’d ever really used a DSLR and… I can’t see myself ever being content with a regular point and shoot any more.  I’m actually looking around now to see what’s available in the DSLR market, including the used/refurbished stores, but more on that later.  I personally took probably over 500-600 pictures over a period of 2-3 days (days that we went out), and though they’re not all post-worthy, I felt some were interesting enough to put up.

I’ve never been a hardcore Photoshop user, I’ve just dabbled with it in uni for an “elements of webdesign” course I once took, and for batch resizing.  But tonight, I thought I’d see what I could do to “spruce” up a few of my pictures – and I have to say I had fun with that too!  It’s amazing how one can make colors pop out and seem more vibrant.  I know that digital manipulation is no replacement for quality photography, but used in conjunction, I now feel that certainly has its benefits.  Below is what I came up with in the course of 2 hours (the one of the lavender mountain range took me almost an hour as I was figuring out what I could do with PS)

Post edit: I’ve updated the Hustai pictures and put them in a gallery HERE.