Image of the month - April 2024

I’ve been lucky enough to see tigers in the wild on quite a few occasions, however it still takes my breath away every time I get that first glimpse!  It was our first morning in Bandhavgarh and tigers are notoriously elusive and difficult to find, so for the first image to be recorded on the trip to be a photo of a tiger in the long grass was almost unbelievable.  The day had already started brilliantly with alarm calls and track marks telling us a tiger was around but we couldn’t find it so headed further into Maghdi in the hope of finding the Davadol tigress and she didn’t disappoint! 

When we first spotted her she was in the long grass moving with purpose parallel with the track, shooting conditions were incredibly difficult with sun directly behind her and mist on the ground making focussing almost impossible, sometimes I couldn’t even see her against the strong backlight either with the camera or without!  Sometimes she disappeared into the long grass and we slowly tracked in the same direction hoping she would emerge onto a small ridge so we could see her more clearly. 

By this time more jeeps had joined us and luckily she was unfazed by the growing crowd, and she kept moving towards us in order to cross the track right behind our vehicle.  I just blitzed the shutter button hoping the focus had locked before she disappeared into the jungle. What an awesome start to the trip.

More images from the first day can be seen in the gallery Far & Wide...

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Image of the month - March 2024

About a year and a half ago I went on a pre-Raphaelite  themed shoot  and prior to the day I had a very clear idea of the type of images I wanted to capture.  Although I was very happy with the images I came away with, frustratingly I just couldn’t find a way to  process the images to give the type of look I was hoping to achieve.

Many times, I attempted to process some images trying to emulate the pre-Raphaelite look and each time failed miserably!  It was only by chance that I was playing around with some textures that I started to create something I was more happy with and another spark of an idea from a long previous talk on landscape photography reminded me of the ‘Orton effect’ which softens and brightens an image, this eventually led me to create ‘Serenity’, the image you see below.

Unfortunately, just following the same processing steps doesn’t always work with other similar images, so although I’m very happy with ‘Serenity’ the others you see in the gallery ‘Just People…’ are still works in progress!

Photography is very much a journey rather than a destination so enjoy the ride!

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Image of the month - February 2024

January has blown its way through, and the weather hasn’t been brilliant with lots of rain that isn’t helpful for photographing small birds as they tend to hide in the undergrowth with only a fleeting glance as they nip to the feeders.  So, to keep my skills sharp I look for other things to photograph, and it doesn’t have to be wildlife!

Rugby fits the bill well with plenty of fast action which requires quick thinking. Especially as the conditions can be quite challenging with rain, cold hands, and the continual fight between maintaining a decent ISO to get the shutter speed required without gaining too much noise in the image.  Although the noise reduction software is amazing now, it’s still better to keep the ISO to a minimum, but not at the risk of getting a blurry action shot.  Generally, 1/800th of a second is the minimum speed I like to drop to for this type of photography but prefer to shoot at 1/1000th of a second if light allows. The image below was taken in awful conditions, so the best I could manage was 1/640th of a second with ISO of 6400 but luckily it was still sharp!

My chosen lens is a 200-400mm f4 which although it’s not as fast as the prime 400mm f2.8, I do like the flexibility that a zoom lens offers me while shooting sports, and if the weather permits I can flip the 1.4x converter in which gives a reach of 280-560mm but I lose a stop of light.

Sometimes it’s just good to do something that’s a complete contrast, the plus side is you know when and where the action is happening, as long as you know the rules of the sport!

You can see some more rugby shots in the gallery London 2012 & Beyond...

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Image of the month - January 2024

It’s funny how things work out sometimes especially when trying to photograph wildlife.  It was a Friday when I was meant to be somewhere else, but plans had been rearranged at the last minute giving me a free afternoon, so although it was gusty winds the forecast was okay enough that I thought I would take a chance to try to get some photographs of the Short-Eared Owls. 

Owls generally don’t like the wind and although when I left home the sky was a nice clear blue as I was driving along the clouds were slowly gathering and before long it was chucking it down with rain and owls certainly don’t like rain!  Gradually my expectations were dropping but luckily the strong winds quickly blew the showers away and by the time I arrived the sun was back, and it was only a short time before the owls were back on the hunt.

I used the car as a hide and the owls didn’t disappoint at one point landing in the long grass less that 10 meters away from me, they even circled the car giving a wonderful display in the gusty winds making the trip very worthwhile despite my previous misgivings.

So, don’t be put off this year when things don’t always go as planned because sometimes things might just turn out better than expected  Happy New Year everyone!

Check out some more images of the owls in the gallery Beside the Seaside...

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Image of the month - December 2023

At the beginning of November, I was very pleased to have gained the distinction AWPF, (Associateship of the Welsh Photographic Federation) along with four other members of the Beyond Group . 

The distinction is assessed by a panel of twelve images which in my case were prints on the theme of 'Wildlife of Zambia'.  The AWPF is awarded for panels that show  a very high standard of imaging that would be appropriate for National and International levels and that demonstrates an understanding of what constitutes  good photography, including camera technique, composition & design and presentation & finish that shows an empathy with the subject matter.  Unlike many panels of work there is no ‘Statement of Intent’ that describes what the panel is trying to convey to the viewer, only a title.  This actually makes it much harder because the images have to speak for themselves rather than having a narrative.

I chose to display my panel in two rows of five and seven images, simply because I like having a central image on each row to focus the rest of the panel on.  Although it is nice to have letters after your name it isn’t the primary reason I like to do distinctions, the main reason being it improves my photography knowledge and technique.  The fact that you know your work is going to be assessed by a number of very critical judges really focusses your attention to provide the very best work without any imperfections in the image, print or presentation.

Anyone can enter for the AWPF, futher details can be found here

You can view the full panel of images in the gallery Distinctions & Awards...


Image of the month - November 2023

I first visited South Africa in 2018 and fell in love the place, especially the wildlife.  This October I was luck enough to go back again for a 10-day safari starting in Antares Bush Camp which is situated in a private game reserve in the north part of Kruger National Park.

After a 11-hour flight into Johannesburg it was a sprint across the airport to get our connecting flight to Hoedspruit followed by an hour’s drive involving a good ‘African massage’ before we reached the camp.  (African massage, so called when you are driving off-road and being jostled around in the car!) The main draw of starting here was that it has an eye level waterhole hide where the animals and birds regularly visit. 

Sure enough we just had time to freshen up and get our cameras before a heard of elephants arrived silently at the waterhole for a drink.  Its amazing that such large creatures can move through the bush without making the slightest noise.  What an amazing experience to be so close to these wonderful creatures and photograph them as they happily drank their fill of water.  Elephants like fresh water so they would move their trunk around in the water seeking  a good spot to drink from, before sucking the water into their trunk, tipping their heads back and transferring it to their mouths causing quite a lot of water to splash back out!

Check out some more images of the elephants in the gallery African Adventures...

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Image of the month - October 2023

Bear watching in Finland is certainly a different experience to what I’ve done before.  You are set to  ‘Bear Time’ which loosely translates to dinner at 3pm, walk into the woods at 4pm to get settled in a hide and wait for the bears to arrive sometime after that!  It gets dark at 9pm so too dangerous to walk back so you stay overnight until 8am then breakfast and bed ready to do it all again!

The first night I got acquainted with ‘Blondie’ a pretty looking bear and ‘Skinny’ so called because he has a shaggy long coat which makes him look lanky.  The dynamics between the two is fascinating to watch, Blondie is cautious of Skinny, and he often chases her off, only for her to return and sneak some food under his nose.

I was focused on Blondie when her behaviour changed so I didn’t need to look to know Skinny was nearby, the flat light suddenly changed to a golden glow, so I kept photographing her…I wasn’t disappointed!

The bears rarely come out in the morning but at first light you still watch….just in case! Have a look at some of the other images from the trip in the gallery Travelling far & wide...

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Image of the month - September 2023

This year I seem to have spent a lot of time photographing things in the rain, whilst it can be uncomfortable and challenging with the lack of light, especially if trying to capture action it can also produce some very different images.

The American Football game between the East Essex Sabres and the Kent Mavericks was a case in point, the rain was hammering down, which was good because it can clearly be seen in the images.  However, trying to get a fast shutter speed meant the constant juggling of aperture, (the amount of light being let in through the lens) and ISO, (how sensitive the sensor is to light).  I tried to keep my shutter speed to 1/250 second which is the lowest I like to go to stop the action without panning and blurring the background. 

There are a couple of advantages of it being a horrible weather day, one was the lack of supporters standing on the sidelines and giving relatively clean backgrounds without the help of lots of Photoshop work and the second was that I didn’t have to worry about control the exposure so that the white kit isn’t blown out with the sunshine.

So next time the weather isn’t as you would like, go ahead and do the trip anyway, you never know what you might get as a result!

Check out some more shots from the day in the gallery London 2012 & Beyond...

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Image of the month - August 2023

Badgers are such iconic creatures with their distinctive black and white striped face, yet we rarely see them as they are nocturnal.  Earlier this year I visited a hide where there was a good chance they would visit and hopefully I could get some photographs, but like most things involving wildlife you can never be sure until it actually happens.  The hide had a big reflection pool with a ramp to the top so we sat avidly waiting and listening for the smallest sound, despite the small LED light which helped us focus it was impossible to see anything in the distant darkness.

After many false alarms  just before 10pm we heard the rustle of vegetation and the scraping of paws on the wooden ramp, suddenly that iconic face appeared looking directly at us, very tentatively he looked around for the peanuts and sunflower hearts scattered around before digging his nose in for a good feast.  He didn’t look very old and the scars on his shoulder and face told of a scrap, probably with another badger. 

The hide had speedlights so we could photograph the badgers, although I like to control the power to get a more natural effect rather than that bright lighting with totally black backgrounds, so I increased the aperture of the camera and decreased the power of the speedlights by 2/3rds.  The badgers weren’t affected at all by the flash going off, but just continued to feed with their head down which meant waiting patiently for that split second where they raised their head to glance around.  Once they finished feeding most of the badgers turned and disappeared quickly into the night, but one just settled down and munched away, looking totally calm with his surroundings he stayed quite a while and allowed us to get some nice badger portraits.

You can see more badgers in the gallery Just a bit further from home…

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Image of the month - July 2023

Kingfishers are probably one of the most photographed and popular birds in the UK, hardly surprising with their amazing colour and superb fishing skills.  So earlier on in the year it was nice to spend a little time photographing them from a hide rather than searching for them locally in the wild.  This pair had recently hatched a brood so the young male was keeping the chicks supplied with fish while mum kept them warm in the burrow on a fresh spring morning.

He would return to fish about every twenty minutes, sometimes taking a fish for himself but more often than not manoeuvring the prey so that it was in line with his beak and the head of the fish at the tip ready to be fed to the youngsters.  Later that morning when it got a bit warmer, mum also made an appearance, the male has an all-black beak while the female’s lower beak is red.

In between the kingfisher visits a wren flitted about, sometimes difficult to see but always easy to hear, its amazing that such a small bird can sing so loudly!  So it was a nice bonus to get some close up shots of such a beautiful bird.

When you are lucky enough to have such a good encounter with a kingfisher there is a limit to the number of different images you can get with a ‘bird on a stick’, so time to have a go at catching some flight shots, diving wasn’t an option as long grass impeded the view.  Ramping up the shutter speed to the fastest I could achieve with the slightly overcast day I  did manage to capture a few in flight, although like most things in wildlife photography you do depend on the subject co-operating!

To see some more kingfisher shots from the day, check out my gallery Flora & Fauna…

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Image of the month - June 2023

Now for something completely different!  My photographic portfolio has been a bit wildlife heavy over the last few months, yet I have always enjoyed watching and photographing sports, particularly water sports.  There is something about capturing that splash or movement of water, especially if there is a bit of sunshine to really bring out the colours.

So, a few weeks ago I photographed a new sport for me, jet-ski racing organised by the Jet sport Racing Association of Great Britain or JSRA for short.   They hold championship six race weekends throughout the year throughout the country and the nearest one to me is at Wyboston Lakes in Bedford.  With a full day of racing and a mixture of sunshine and cloud I was soon rapidly filling up my memory cards, you have to shoot everything because by the time the action happens, and you see it….if you’re not looking through a lens with your finger on the shutter button you have probably missed the shot!

I took my trusty Olympus 150-400mm lens which gave me the reach I needed to capture the action and at a constant f4.5 aperture meant I could get a minimum 1/1600 second shutter speed and still keep the ISO low.  The fact that the racers were following a course meant that it was easy to follow the action, although sometimes the massive amount of spray blotted out any riders in the background, losing any kind of sense they were in a race!  I was also careful not to over-expose the highlights off the water so often shot at least 1/3 or 2/3rds of a stop underexposed.

By the end of the day, I was so Jet-skied out I wasn’t sure what I had captured, overall, I took nearly 8,000 shots which were quickly culled down to 1,000.  I particularly liked this shot as it conveys the feeling of movement and speed, I left the marker in the background but desaturated the bright red to make it blend in more and not draw the eye away from the Jet Ski Pilot (Luke Thomson).

You can see some more images from the day in the gallery London 2012 and beyond…

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Image of the month - May 2023

In May 2020 I had just got the LRPS, and it was becoming evident that the lockdown was going to be more of a marathon than a sprint, so I needed to find a photography project.  One of the advantages of the weird time during Covid was that it was so quiet, very little road noise from cars and no aircraft criss-crossing the sky combined with the beautiful weather meant being able to enjoy the garden and appreciate the variety of birds visiting.  This gave me an idea for a lockdown project to try to photograph fifteen different species of birds within the local area and put together a panel to be submitted for an ARPS, (Associate of the Royal Photographic Society).

Quite honestly at the time, even including sparrows and starlings I wasn’t sure if there was enough  variety to even manage it, but I needn’t  have worried I ended up with way more than fifteen and more importantly it gave me a reason to get out and walk or cycle when motivation for going around the same small area was low.

I ended up focussing on three local parks and my back garden, which is a small urban space.  All of the parks were public places often frequented by dog walkers which meant being patient and not getting frustrated when the birds were scared off.  Luckily they were used to people and so often returned a little while later.  Overall, the project lasted for two years, the finishing point being my first foreign trip after the pandemic.  It took a further year to put the panel together along with the statement of intent which was the hardest part!  During the assessment I was so glad that I had spent the extra time on the statement, I knew it would be an important aspect of the submission, but I hadn’t fully appreciated how important!  I’ve included the statement of intent below:

“This panel aims to illustrate some of the bird life I’ve found throughout the two years of lockdown in my small corner of South-East Essex, either in my garden or during a daily walk or cycle ride.

During this period of restricted travel, I found that aside from the birds that are relatively easily seen, there is also a wider range of species that are more elusive to the casual spotter.  The limited local area meant that I got to know the environment thoroughly and because they were all public spaces, I had to develop my field-craft skills in order to achieve effective bird images.

My objective was two-fold, firstly to provide a focus and motivation for photography when living alone in lockdown in order to maintain my mental wellbeing, and secondly to capture fifteen different local species of birdlife in their natural habitat.”

You can view the images full sized in the gallery Distinctions & Awards...


Image of the month - April 2023

Most people like the idea of good weather for a day out, but photographers aren’t like most people!  Bad weather can give a totally different feel to what would normally be just another image of a moorhen, and we certainly had plenty of bad weather when we arrived at the hide just before Christmas.  Even though it was midday the light was awful with torrential rain, luckily the wildlife didn’t seem to care and just carried on as normal, (and we were nice and dry in the hide so we didn’t mind either!)

The main challenge was getting the shutter speed fast enough to even capture even the slowest of movement.  This meant shooting wide open at f4.5 and bumping the ISO up to at least 800 and as the light deteriorated more an ISO of 2500 just to get a shutter speed of 1/320th second.  The plus side of this is that the slower shutter speeds really captured the rain falling, but meant that any flight shots or quick movements by the wildlife just resulted in a blur.

By 4pm it was totally dark which meant using flash, the kingfisher still kindly obliged, even sitting on the softbox of the flash sometimes!  Even though the flash wasn’t set up for the kingfishers it was fun trying out different settings to get some very unusual images of the kingfisher in the rain.

You can see some more of the rainy images in the gallery Just a bit further from home…

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Image of the month - March 2023

At the end of January I had a chance to try out my new passport and fly to Spain to photograph raptors.  A nice bit of sun and a beautiful clear sky meant that temperatures got a bit on the cold side especially noticeable when sat in a hide for hours on end! 

In Spain you shoot through glass, mirrored on the outside so the birds can’t see you, however on the coldest morning at -10C the condensation from our breath was freezing on the inside of the hide window and even with the fans it took a while to clear making capturing fast moving birds a bit of a challenge.

This image of the month captures two marsh harriers squabbling over food, luckily a bit later in the day when the light was good enabled me to lower the ISO in order to get the shutter speed needed to freeze the action.  I found it difficult to capture a good fight as ideally you would like to see both birds faces, but often it was one face and the other hidden, or if they came in from the side the shadow of the incoming birds wings would cast over the other birds face, hence capturing the moment wasn’t too difficult but getting everything right also had a huge element of luck which is why I had so many shots and deletions!

The plus side of the cold weather was that the birds were hungry and even a fox came to steal food!  Overall, a very memorable trip, with loads of images to edit, a few of which you can see in the gallery ‘Travelling Far & Wide…’

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Image of the month - February 2023

Continuing the winter theme, earlier this month I took a tip out to Lackford Lakes in Suffolk. 

Normally a great wetland area, this time the cold snap had frozen all the lakes creating some beautiful landscapes but not much birdlife except by the visitor centre where the feeders were very busy.  A blackbird really stood out against the frosty ground, particularly the orange beak which provided a real splash of colour in the muted landscape.  Sometimes in the right conditions the everyday birds can really stand out!

You can see the rest of my winter bird images in the gallery Just a bit further from home...

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Image of the month - January 2023

Happy New Year!

Hopefully many of you will have gained some new camera kit over the Christmas period, but I was recently reminded that the best camera you can have is the one that you’ve got with you when you see something spectacular, and often it isn’t the all singing and dancing DSLR but the phone in your pocket!

On holiday I often use my iPad to record movies and panoramas which is something my camera will do but is just a bit of a faff compared to the iPad, however I don’t often use my phone simply because the screen is small and can be quite difficult to frame an image in bright sunlight. 

However, the recent snap of really cold weather produced a quite spectacular hoar frost which formed when the water vapour in the air came into contact with an object that is below freezing, the water vapour immediately froze to form ice crystals. The hoar frost had an amazing feathery structure, and the freezing process was so quick that it trapped air, giving it a white or silver opaque appearance.  The frost was everywhere, on branches of trees, leaves, and grasses even the benches and it was so thick that it looked like a dusting of snow had fallen, creating a winter wonderland.

As I only had my phone with me it became my camera of choice to capture the spectacular scene in front of me.  I found that ‘portrait’ mode worked really well with close up shots, helping to blur the background, I also found that if your hands become too cold that the touch screen doesn’t work!

You can see the rest of my phone images in the gallery Beside the Seaside...

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Image of the month - December 2022

Wow, into December already and I don’t know where this year has gone, it has been so good getting back to some sort of normality and being able to travel again.  Yet lockdown has taught me to appreciate what a diverse area I live in in terms of birdlife and it always surprises me with something unexpected.

Monday was one of those days, I knew that there was an over-wintering kingfisher in the area but up to now I hadn’t seen it despite spending many hours looking.  Typically, when you don’t look for wildlife you tend to find it although this kingfisher didn’t make it easy, in fact there was a blue tit in the same tree almost next to the kingfisher which drew my eye in that direction otherwise I would have probably missed it again!

Although I like shooting toward the light at sunrise or sunset, its not to successful when the sun, (be it a winter sun) is higher in the sky, and that’s where the kingfisher was, directly in the suns path  in a densely packed area of twigs and branches.  Surprisingly he stayed there for a good 20 minutes preening and then eventually flew down to a branch ready to fish.  Not the best images in terms of background and lighting but sometimes its just nice to get a shot of a kingfisher in the wild, not set up in a hide but just as an unexpected treat!  That’s what makes photography such an amazing hobby.

Check out the other kingfisher images in my gallery ‘Beside the seaside…’

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Image of the month - November 2022

When you think of flash photography you generally don’t think about it in a wildlife setting, mainly because you must rely on the wildlife coming to you.  So, when I had the chance to spend the night in a hide by a pond equipped with lights to capture the nocturnal wildlife it was an opportunity not to be missed!

I’m confident in using lights in the studio, but you can’t just nip out into the centre of the pond to get an exposure reading with a light meter, so with the camera set to manual and a bit of juggling with the power of each of the four lights we managed to get what looked like a reasonable exposure.  What is reasonable and how do you tell, I hear you ask…well it’s a case of taking a shot and then looking at the histogram on the back of the camera making sure that particularly the highlights aren’t ‘clipped’ or over-exposed.  Then it is a case of waiting for something to turn up and just after 7pm a heron obliged.  After the first few shots it was a case of again checking the histogram while hoping the heron stayed around, all a bit frenetic at times.  The white parts of the heron looked over-exposed on the screen of the camera, but the histogram was still okay, so in-between visits we tweaked the power once again as well as our camera settings.

Now we waited, and waited, and waited….eventually at 1pm an otter turned up, darting around with his head quickly turning back and forth as he devoured a fish, spraying water droplets everywhere.  Not an easy subject to focus on as they are so fast and don’t stay in one place for very long.  Later in the morning another couple of otters and a heron to finish off our night’s shoot.

Certainly, something to try again now I have a bit more idea and experience of what to expect.  You can see some more images from the night in the gallery Working with flash…

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Image of the month - October 2022

It’s that time of year again when the six-print panel competition rolls around, and I often have to be a bit ‘creative’ in putting the panel together to make the images work coherently.  It’s a rare occasion when a panel almost creates itself!

It was on my Zambian adventure, when at the end of the day as the sun was setting giving that perfect light, that we came across a family of yellow baboons just chilling on a log.  Both the adults were just sitting grooming whilst the youngsters ran and played along and around the log, every now and again returning for their parent’s reassurance.  This in itself was exceptional, being able to witness these special moments between the family but what made it amazing was the rim light which gave a beautiful glow to the animal’s outlines picking up every hair and detail.

As soon as I processed the images I knew I had a panel that worked, the top line of the youngsters playing, and the bottom line of the youngster’s interaction with the adults.  I made sure the line of the log lined up to give a strong base and that the tones and colours matched across the panel which I called ‘Family Time’.

If you would like to see each image larger then check out my gallery Print Panels…

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Image of the month - September 2022

A few months back I talked about not doing landscapes and ‘must try harder.’  Well, normally during the summer break from the camera club we have meet up evenings to make the most of the fine summer weather and take some pictures.  The evening normally concludes with a social gathering in a local pub and this event was planned for Battlesbridge Mill, a picturesque Essex scene with the sun setting behind the lock…well that was the plan!

Despite having wonderful sunny and hot days without a drop of rain for weeks, when we turned up at the location it was cloudy and dull with the threat of rain, (this is why I hate landscape photography I thought to myself!)  However, the clouds had some definition, although it wasn’t easy to see at the time and the reflections in the pools of water were also quite pleasing, I thought it had potential for at least a reasonable monochrome picture.  So, after taking a few photos, slightly underexposing the image to keep the highlights from blowing out and trying various different viewpoints we all retired to the pub with little expectations of the images captured.

Fast forward a couple of weeks and I start to process the RAW image, if I just looked at the jpeg I probably wouldn’t have bothered!  Wow, what a difference processing made and even though I did produce a monochrome image as planned I actually think I prefer the colour version.  I did get rid of the distracting sign on the building, as well as its reflection and there was an annoying patch of light in the pool of water above the lock which I cloned over, but beside that it was just a case of bringing the exposure up and adding a bit of tonal contrast to make the scene ‘pop’.

Below is the original jpeg and the processed RAW colour version, if you would like to see the monochrome version then check out the gallery Beside the seaside..

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Image of the month - August 2022

A couple of months ago I was lucky enough to finally get on my Covid postponed safari to Zambia and wow, was it worth the wait!  We arrived just after the annual rains, so the landscape was green and lush with plenty of ponds and lakes teaming with life.  During the 17 days I took 19,500 frames which I eventually culled down to 12,500 and this month has been spent processing about 500 of the images.  I was blown away by the sheer variety and diversity of the wildlife we came across making every day special and exciting as we just couldn’t predict what we would see next.

I thought I would group the images by species and start this month with the elephants, in particular this image which I called ‘A helping trunk’.  

These two elephants had just crossed the Luangwa River and were attempting to climb a rather high bank, the first elephant had struggled a little, kneeling on the bank and using his trunk to push himself up.  The second elephant wasn’t as big and struggled even more, so it was lovely to see the first elephant extend his trunk and help the other elephant up.  I must admit that elephants aren’t the species I instantly think of wanting to photograph but honestly they have such a range of behaviour and emotional responses I have never been disappointed.

Check out my other elephant pictures in the gallery African Adventures…I’ve tried to capture images of behaviour
Hopefully the other images in the sequence conveys the personality and beauty of these majestic creatures in my gallery African Adventures…

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Image of the month - July 2022

Well, here we are in July and I’m still only about a third of the way through editing my Zambian adventure, so when I got the opportunity to go and photograph some American Football at the East Essex Sabres I jumped at the chance.

Now the secret to getting some good sports images is to know and understand the rules of the game which means you at least have a chance of pointing the camera in the right direction at the right time… the rest is up to the photographic gods and a fast shutter speed!  Luckily I know the basics of what to many can appear a confusing and odd game with so many stops and starts and being a bright sunny day, the main problem was trying to get a shallow enough depth of field to pick out the action from the surrounding chaos.

One of the other difficulties faced when shooting most kinds of sports whether amateur or professional is the distracting backgrounds of people, advertising or just the odd blue wheelie bin!  So finding a position where you can capture the action and have a good background normally determines where I’m going to shoot from, oh and it helps if the sun isn’t in your face!

I also find back button focus works well, especially when you are trying to follow the ball and other players run across in front trying to drag your focus away I simply just release the focus button and keep following the action, re-engaging the focus when the view is clear again.

I chose this image as I liked the hands all going for the ball creating that moment of anticipation which is always good in sports photography.  You can see more images from the day in my gallery London 2012 and beyond…

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Image of the month - June 2022

Since the last blog in May it’s been a busy month for travel and photography…finally getting to Zambia for a 16 day safari.  The problem this month is that I haven’t had time to organise, let alone process the images I’ve taken so here is a quick taster.

It was the first time I had spent more than 8 days in a single place, and I did have concerns that the end of the trip would just be ‘more of the same’ but I needn’t have worried.  Zambia is so diverse in term of the range of flora and fauna there is always something new and of interest to photograph.

We arrived just after the rains and even during the short time of a week it was fascinating to see how the ponds were drying up and the habitats were changing and evolving along with the wildlife.  The first week the Red-Billed Quelea were present in their thousands and by the second week they were in much smaller and more difficult to find groups.  Birds were also a bit harder to find in week 2, although still a good variety when you did see them.

The chance to have time to capture and explore different ways of portraying the wildlife was really liberating, especially when there might be a week or more between sighting specific species the pressure to make every opportunity count was more relaxed and I was able to learn from previous attempts and refine the way I shoot.

The downside of this is the physical and mental toll of crammed days with little or no time to relax.  Mornings started at 4:45am and by 5:15am we were heading to the park ready to enter as soon as the gates opened.  Often we had a plan of where we would headfirst in terms of the best light and the previous days sightings.  Roads varied from bumpy to ’hang on and try to stay in your seat whilst hanging onto your camera bumpy’.  Sometimes driving through thick vegetation mean you had to duck round branches or be ready to fend off a branch that whiplashed back into your face, so you were always alert!  Breakfast at 9ish when most of the good light has gone and then a more sedate drive back to the lodge arriving just before brunch at 11:30am.

The main lodge was the only area with internet so most of us spent a bit of time after brunch catching up with internetty stuff before going back to our chalets to charge batteries and get organised for the afternoon.

2:30pm cake and tea before heading off for the afternoon session, this was the hardest part of the day because the sun was unforgiving until about 4pm but we needed to use this time to get to areas of the parks before sunset, you probably only have a 20-minute window of good light before the sun drops below the horizon.  As darkness fell we spotlighted our way back to the lodge just in time to drop cameras and bags ready for dinner at 7pm.  Then shower, bed, and repeat!  (Bedtime also includes sharing your room with lizards, spiders, and a range of flying things, however you have a mosquito net to keep them at bay!  Hippo’s eating and splashing around 20m from my room also tended to keep me awake).
If you want to see loads of lions and the big 5 then Zambia isn’t the place, but for leopards and diversity of wildlife it wins hands down!  Also, the chance to share the experience with a group of like-minded people really makes it a holiday to remember.

Luckily the pre-trip playing around trying to capture birds in flight paid off as shown by this Image of the Month with a White Fronted Bee Eater taking flight.  More images will be added to my Travelling Far & Wide gallery in the months to come!

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Image of the month - May 2022

Birds in flight can be challenging at the best of times.  Large birds are good to start practicing on as they fly in a fairly consistent way, even your average pigeon can surprise you with it’s turn of speed when you are trying to capture it flight.  Kestrels are easier to photograph in flight as the hover over their prey before striking and most bird of prey poop before taking off which gives you a clue about when to press the shutter button.

Small birds on the other hand are just so quick, I can’t count how many times I’ve got a perfect picture of the branch or post they took off from and no bird in shot!  Sometimes they flap their wings and then stay perched, only to disappear in an instant with little or no warning.  Once I was photographing a Chaffinch on the bird feeder and blinked only to see it had been replaced by a sparrow…magic!

Sometimes you just have to put down the camera and just watch, learning the little tell tail signs that they are ready to make a move, at least with digital if you miss, its just another frame to delete, so often its best to press the shutter and hope because you never know what you will capture.
I always go for a fast shutter speed, at least 1/2000 of a second and if I can get higher I will, depending on the light.  Aperture is normally wide open at f4.5 or more commonly f5.6 and gone are the days when I worried about pushing the ISO, on a good day it’s normally set at 1600 but noise reduction software is so good now I would rather risk the noise compared to a blurry shot with low shutter speed.

Like most wildlife and nature photography there is always that element of luck..but then practice can also increase your ‘lucky’ shots so give it a try and don’t be disappointed with an empty frame they will get less with practice!

Check out the other birds in flight in the gallery Flora & Fauna...

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Image of the month - April 2022

I really do find landscape photography the hardest to do….why?

Possibly because there are so many factors out of the photographer’s control, the main one being the weather!  You can be in the most scenic location and if the weather doesn’t fit the mood then however much post processing you do it isn’t going to make it a ‘wow’ image.  That’s why getting good landscapes when on your travels is a rarity rather than the norm, so the answer is to find your own landscape close to home and visit it often during the year when the weather and light changes in such a way that the ‘wow’ image is possible.

Sadly, I’ve yet to heed my own advice so here is one I’ve had to ‘enhance’ with a bit of Photoshop help! : )

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Image of the month - March 2022

Sometimes it’s easy to overlook what is right in front of us or close to home.  A local nature reserve only a few miles away from where I live is a place I keep meaning to go, but because its off my normal track I keep forgetting to visit.  That all changed last week when I made a conscious effort to go, only to be thwarted by a roadworks closure when almost within touching distance.  Not to be deterred I tried the longer route which surely must be open…..but no, also closed!  Really?!

The main reason for trying to visit was I had heard that the feeders often attract Long Tailed Tits which are really lovely looking birds which although can be quite common I’d never seen them.  So a couple of days later the road had reopened and I finally I could go and explore…sure enough I was greeted by a Long Tailed Tit and a Blue Tit already on the feeder, yay!

Now I know where it is it will be a bike ride next time and hopefully avoid any road closures! You can see more imagess from the day in the gallery Beside the seaside...

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Image of the month - February 2022

I’ve done quite a few print panels of six with various layouts but not many triptychs , (which is a panel of three images), I done even fewer triptychs as PDI’s or Projected Digital Images.  All the same rules apply, the main one being three similar images on a theme which are similar enough to work together but not actually the same!  Yes I know it seems contradictory, but it is actually a careful balance of images that on their own may not appear stunning but just work well together as a panel.

PDI offers am added complication that the three images must fit together on a screen without overlapping so can end up quite small, hence the need for an image with a clear focal point which is easily identifiable rather than something more subtle.  Generally, tones or colours should be similar, but in my panel called ‘Time Travellers’ I have chosen to go for bold complementary colours as the strong theme is easily identified.

The other beauty of triptychs is that they can be on a variety of subjects, literally the only limit is your imagination!  You can see more triptych ideas in my gallery, many of which I originally produced as postcards.

 

Image of the month - January 2022

So here we all are at the start of another year and on reflection not only have I really missed foreign travel but also photographing the wonderful action sport of canoe slalom.  The last visit to Lee Valley was prior to Covid in 2019 which seems an absolute age away, hopefully things will continue to progress this year and maybe I’ll be able to photograph more than birds and people?

You can see more images of canoe slalom in my gallery Wonderful White Water...

Happy & healthy New Year everyone xx

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