Got Your Valentines Day (Sun 14th Feb) Gift?

It's that time of year again, Valentines Day, it's fast approaching and even though we know it a lot of us leave it until the last minute to buy a special gift for that special someone. So this year why not get in early and surprise your lover with a romantic photographic print with a custom message (optional), available here - Valentines Day Prints.

Order by Monday 8th Feb to make sure you get it in time! (UK only)

Goldfinches Fighting Over Food In The Snow

This was one of those rare occasions when I was in the right place at the right time with my camera and 100-400mm lens, poised and ready to snap away. I had been watching Greenfinches, lots of them, all battling it out to get to a seed feeder, but two or three Goldfinches attracted my attention and I turned my lens towards them. At first I got a couple of photographs of one of them perched on a branch in some snow, and then, unlike the Greenfinches, the goldfinches tend to be a bit more polite and seem to take it in turns to feed. However, in the frozen temperatures when the ground is too hard for the birds to find food all hell breaks loose and its bird eat bird, so to speak. Even though there was a spare perch on the other side of this small Niger seed feeder the Goldfinch on the left obviously wanted it all to himself because he seemed determined to get rid of the one on the right, of course it could have been a rival male. Anyway, I captured this image as it happened and a couple of others that were no good, heads hidden behind wings or blurred with motion as they fought, it was a relatively dull day so I couldn't get very fast shutter speeds (as you can tell from the slight blur of the wings) and was already using the largest aperture available.

Hopefully the sun will show its face more often soon and I can continue with some more bird photography.

Snow In Brighton

I'm sure those of you that live in th UK are well aware that we are having a very cold and snowy winter, and here in Brighton it's no different. These are a few shots I took looking down towards the centre of Brighton, doesn't everything look so much more beautiful like this?

Photographing Birds In Snow

The snow arrived here in the UK yesterday and since this means our birds have to work even harder to find food it was a great opportunity for me to photograph some in my garden. I put some extra feed out and waited, and soon enough down they came, and with the snow and the sunlight it made for very interesting bird photography. Here are some of my favourite shots including a Dunnock, male Chaffinch and Starling.

I was finding that each shot needed to be overexposed by about 1 or 2 stops simply because the snow is so bright and reflects so much light that the camera is fooled into thinking there is more light than there actually is. Shooting using the camera's meter reading underexposes a snow scene and makes for very grey murky images, and there is also the white balance to consider too. Automatic white balance is usually pretty good but on the day I was shooting the sky was clear and blue which results in the snow appearing very blue, therefore I tried the cloudy setting which was better but found that I needed to set a custom white balance using the white of the snow as a reference.

Blue Tit In Early November

Well for those of you living in the UK you'll have noticed that the weather hasn't exactly been in the photographers favour lately, so any bird photography has been minimal for me in the last few weeks.  So, whilst I hold out for some dry weather on a day I am able to get out there with my camera, here are a few images of a cheeky Blue Tit that visited my garden about three weeks ago and was a most cooperative little bird and stayed around for a few minutes, enough for me to photograph him anyway.

Pigeon In Flight & Magpie

I have not had much experience photographing birds in flight so this is something I thought I would have a go at when the next opportunity arose. I was visiting the WWT centre at Arundel when I noticed loads of pigeons swooping back and forth from the roof of the visitors centre as seed was thrown for the various wildfowl in the ponds/lakes. So I turned my camera on the pigeons and waited for them to make another pass, which the soon did, and I tried this several times with a mixture of results. Two of the best shots from this attempt at 'birds in flight' photography are shown here, and although the exposure is a bit dodgy on the wing of the bird in the first image, I am still satisfied that this is a good starting point to build upon.

Magpies are such beautiful birds and although they are not the best loved of all British birds I think they make great subjects for bird photography, they are charismatic and large enough that you have more time to capture them as they fly by or hop along the ground. This shot was taken when the sun was fairly low in the sky which makes for a warm and bright image with the magpie framed by the greens and yellows of the leaves on the tree.