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.

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.

Dancing, Football & Karate In The Studio!

Well I've been busy in the studio and spent almost an entire afternoon photographing a dancer in various costumes, and a young karate kid and football player. With the dancer there were certain jumps and positions that we wanted to catch on camera which meant fast shutter speeds to freeze the action like this shot of her jumping up with her legs behind. Then there were the other portrait shots more close up to show off the hair and make up as well as details such as the tap shoes.

In between costume changes I photographed the next karate kid as he demonstrated various moves and poses, again often capturing movement, but I was using flash anyway. Also getting some shots of him with his four belts to date and various other portrait photographs like the one here with the football.

Wildfowl & Wetlands Trust Day of Photography

Mallard Males Fighting

It seems like a distant memory at the moment but the fact is we did have some gorgeous hot sunny days in the last month, and so I took the opportunity to visit the Wildfowl & Wetlands Trust in Arundel. Armed with my digital SLR and long lens I arrived there fairly early and was fortunate enough to have to sun with me all day as I spent around 6 hours photographing more species of wildfowl than I can remember. These are some of the best shots from the day, the results were varied but as you can see I did get several great images also considering it was my first time out in the field so to speak.

Mallard

Mallard Female

At first I set about getting some record shots and probably got a bit carried away photographing every bird in sight, whilst still trying to get good shots, however I really wanted to try and capture some of the birds behaviour and after the initial excitement I knuckled down to business and had to have plenty of patience to wait for the right time to release the shutter. My patience paid off and whilst I did get some great record shots I also got some much more interesting action shots.

White-headed Duck

Wigeon

Photographing A Full Moon

Photographing the moon is something I have never done before, so on a very clear crisp evening I ventured out with my camera, 100-400mm lens and 2x extender mounted on a tripod. It's surprising just how bright the moon really is as I soon found out when I shot the first image at 1/160 second on f11 at ISO 400. Previous attempts to capture the subtle gradations on the moons surface failed with overexposure including 1/50 second and 1/80 second. However, this is not to say that using slightly longer exposures cannot give pleasing results. The second image you see here (shot on a separate evening) with the moon more bleached out, out of focus behind the spiked branches blurred from the breeze, combined with an exposure of 1/2 second, offers enough light to highlight the foreground detail, whilst giving the impression of movement but the downside is that the moons detail is lost which is why I chose an aperture of f8 to keep the depth of field relatively shallow.

Photographing Paris & Eiffel Tower At Night

Well I'm off to Paris for a short break, although this time around I'm one of seven members of staff accompanying a group of sixty four students which should be fun. I have visited Paris three times before and absolutely loved it, and on previous visits I have taken many photographs of this fantastic city, though this time I'm not sure I'll have that much time to myself to snap away.

One of the most photographed landmarks in the world, the Eiffel Tower, dominates the skyline from most parts of the city and is a huge tourist attraction, so it can be difficult to find a good spot to photograph it without people walking across in front of the camera, particularly at night. I persevered when I took these night photographs back in 2007 and managed to successfully take three or four long exposures and here are some of the results. In the first image I wanted to include the tower but make it a small part of the scene in which I have tried to capture a small slice of the hustle and bustle that surrounds this attraction even at night, and I like how the fountains soften the harsh street lighting with the blurring that has occurred due to the long exposure.

With the second image I wanted to try and do something a little different and so I chose to include one of the magnificent sculptures in the foreground, and this one of a bulls head grabbed my attention. Once again the running water appears soft against the imposing lit tower that contrasts greatly against the dark blue sky.

Male Chaffinch In Flight At Feeding Station

This is one of the few shots I have taken so far of a very small bird in flight, they are so fast that it is very difficult to capture them and as you can see even in this image the male Chaffinches wings are blurred, although I do like the effect it creates. Once he had landed I only had time to take one other shot before he flew off and luckily I was fast enough to get him stationary on the feeder looking very bright red even on this slightly overcast day.