One Amazing Year!

What a year! I started the year with some plans to enjoy photographing some different subjects and I was amazed at how much fun I had. Exploring local churches,abandoned mills and hospitals proved to myself that I can photograph more than just wildlife. Instead of  cursing the weather, stopping me from wildlife photography I was out and about being creative and that proved to be a huge boost to me. My 14-24mm was my most used lens at the start of the year, very different from previous years. I only really started photographing wildlife in March where I managed to catch up with Grass snake and adder and also Black-necked Grebe and Red-necked Grebe. April was amazing for birdlife, warblers seemed to be everywhere and I enjoyed some magical dawns photographing various birdlife. May and June proved to be a quiet time apart from close encounters with Northern Fulmars with some very nice head shots. Strong South Westerly winds had a big impact on butterfly and seabird photography for me. I was hoping to be photographing some new species but conditions proved to tricky. Butterfly numbers locally were very low to previous years and I only managed some more images of Common Blue,Grizzled and Dingy Skipper. Every year is different in the animal world and its just a matter of changing your plans to suit. “Hopefully Next Year” is a common phrase used in wildlife photography.

Six-belted Clearwing

Nikon D3s,105macro lens.

A totally new species to me was the Six Belted Clearwing which I photographed with a friend and although very tricky  to capture an image it was incredible to see and I even managed a nice image. Family holidays in Northumberland enabled me to see one of most amazing and humbling views any human can see. That is a view of our Milky Way galaxy. Standing on my own in pitch darkness down a country lane looking up and trying to capture an image will remain with me forever. Green Woodpecker was a nice addition on a couple of summer afternoons while sitting in a hide.

It wasn’t until September that I photographed what I thought was my nemesis bird, the Kingfisher. For too long this species was out of my reach, not until I actually started to do some serious field work and locate a resident bird in a quiet part of my county. What fun I had and I finally ended with some nice images of Common Kingfisher perched 15 feet in front of my bag hide. This bird also enjoyed sitting on the end of my lens,head and shoulder. I wish I could have shot some video I am sure it would of been great fun to watch. I look forward to catching up with Kingfishers early in 2012, fingers crossed.

Nikon D3s,500mm.

I finished autumn with an amazing trip to Portugal, mainly to do a couple of pelagic trips to photograph some seabirds. Not only did I manage some great images of Great Shearwater but also had an incredible encounter with a pod of Common Dolphins. The end of the year has been pretty quiet apart from some photography in Sherwood Forest. I don’t think I have ever photographed so many different subjects within a year before and its been very refreshing to be creative with such varied subjects. I hope 2012 proves to be just has amazing. Many thanks for following my blog and I hope you have enjoyed the photography.

I wish you all a very Happy New Year .

Who’s watching who?

Carrion Crow

Nikon D3s.500mm,1×4,1/600@f10,iso800. Fill flash SB900@-1stop

 I managed  to enjoy a few quality hours in some fine winter sunshine in company of  Carrion Crows at a local park. “Carrion Crows” you’ve got to be kidding! Well for me quality of image not subject matter comes first. What do I mean by this?  I do not live next to an amazing nature reserve or next to a dynamic zone like the coast, so I have to look at what subjects I can photograph locally. This forces you to work with what’s available to photograph however frustrating this can be in terms of subject choice, it brings a need to be creative and pushes your technical side. Just look at how many amazing shots of House Sparrow you see. Not many, and its something I need to work on soon, so theres a great project to work on if you have a good population in your area. My initial plan was to capture some flight shots but the wind and sun direction was wrong so head and body shots were the order of the day. Carrion Crows are clever birds. They soon had figured out that there were some tasty morsels in my bag and while I was photographing the birds in front , a few birds had flown behind me to grab what was inside my bag. Luckily I kept spotting them before they could grab what was in the bag. I decided the only course of action was to zip the camera bag up and move it next to my side. A great little game they were playing.

On  a technical side I used  some fill flash set quite high due to the black plumage, I probably should have added a bit more maybe,  -2/3 stop  would have been better. This helped open up the details to reveal some wonderful textures, not so boring are they! I hope this encourages you not to worry about travelling hundreds of miles to look at some dot in a field with scores of photographers lined up and to look at whats available to you to go and be creative.