According to one definition surreal means an oddly dreamlike quality.

A decade ago I went on a three day safari before heading out to a remote village in Kenya where we were working on getting a library set up.

The safari was surreal in a few ways: the animal life so different from what I am used to seeing. They were doing a burn to keep the grasslands healthy and it was the rainy season, so the atmosphere had a hazy other-worldly quality. (You can make an image larger by clicking on it).

The return from the safari, flying over the Kibera slums

then traveling though “the jam”,

then to the hot crowded reality of a small village

magnified the dreamlike quality of those three days at Masai Mara.

For the Lens Artists Challenge: Surreal I took a few photos from that little trip and played with them to get an even more surreal look, using a bunch of different tools and techniques in Topaz Studio 2.