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Tag: photography
Down in Devon
Last weekend we drove down to Devon, to visit Paul’s family.
We stopped at Paignton seafront, where we played a dancing game on the pier, took lots of photos underneath the pier, and chased a big crow who was trying to break open an enormous shellfish by dropping it on our car! I am full of admiration for the crow for having learnt how to do this, but less impressed that he decided to throw things at our windscreen. Thankfully he didn’t break it, but I do wonder how many tourists return from the beach to find their cars vandalised!
After Paignton we went to Totnes, where we found a proper vintage clothing shop called Revival that almost caused me to go into shock the moment I walked through the door. Paul managed to dissuade me from buying a beautiful red tailcoat, just because the silk lining in the sleeves was completely shattered and the lapels also needed replacing or re-covering. I wasn’t certain how old it was (there was no label), but it was beautifully made. The pad stitching under the lapels was fantastically neat, and there were pockets in the tails, and the buttonholes in the cuffs were all functional. And it still had all of its original buttons!
Damn, I wish I’d bought it.
Mind you, whilst I could have replaced the damaged parts of the jacket, and made the sleeves an inch shorter, I didn’t fancy taking it apart sufficiently to make it short enough in the waist. So I probably would have ended up never wearing it, and eventually selling it on Ebay for less than it would have cost me to buy and restore it. So it’s probably just as well I left it behind.
Probably.
Carrion Crow
This little cutie was begging for another piece of the muesli bar that I was eating.
Thatcham Nature Discovery Centre
Today we went to the Thatcham Nature Discovery Centre, for a wildlife photography course.
I learnt far more on this course than I did at the Twilight Photography one. I think the course and the teacher were just better suited to the way I like to learn.
I’m really pleased with today’s pictures (which are here, on Flickr), plus I had a lovely day out with Paul. We’re really looking forward to our holiday now, and contemplating buying another big zoom lens that we can fight over!
Twilight Photography
Yesterday Paul and I went to South Hill Park, for a workshop in twilight and low light photography.
While it was still light, we went for a walk around the lake and staked out a good spot to take photos of the sunset. We then set the cameras to Manual (scary!) and started playing around with the settings to see what would happen.
Once it had gone completely dark, we played around with artificial light. This is Paul, waving an LED torch around (mostly) in front of the camera. We also played with candles, sparklers, glow sticks and very long exposures.
You can see the rest of my photos on Flickr.
This is an extremely edited selection – most of the pictures I took by the lake were identical, just changing one setting each time until I’d found the best one.
I don’t think I’m going to take up photographing sunsets or waving torches around any time soon, but I do feel as though I understand my camera a little bit better than I did before. We’re going on holiday in November, when it will be dark for quite a lot of the time, so hopefully I now have enough knowledge to be able to take better photos while we’re away.
Wolf Conservation Trust
Today we took a trip out to the Wolf Conservation Trust at Beenham for their open day. They’re not usually open to the general public, so the place was very busy. We took our cameras, and so did almost everybody else, but we were saddened to notice that the bigger the lens, the ruder the person behind it. Admittedly it was quite a difficult place for taking photographs. The wolves were often lying down in the long grass, so it was difficult to see them, and in most areas they were behind two layers of chain link fence which makes for irritatingly obscured pictures. But we saw people barging to the front of queues, pushing small children out of the way, hogging the limited space on the viewing platforms with tripods, and generally moaning that they weren’t able to get that elusive perfect shot. One man was even complaining that the birds of prey display had been set up “all wrong” because he couldn’t get a picture of a peregrine falcon without the owners’ vehicle behind it – as though the entire event should have been rearranged for his benefit!
I must admit that I was feeling a bit grumbly myself. I’m not very good at taking photos through wire mesh, I didn’t really have a long enough lens, and it’s difficult to manoeuvre an SLR and a walking stick at the same time. So I made an active decision that I didn’t want to turn into one of those whingeing photographers, and had a much nicer afternoon as a result. It was much more satisfying simply watching the wolves and the birds without squinting through a viewfinder and worrying about depth of field.
Much as I love taking photos (and you can see the ones I did manage to take over here), sometimes it’s nicer to put the camera away and simply look at the world. If you really want to take photos of wolves, the Wolf Conservation Trust run special photography days, where they’ll bring the wolves right out so that you can interact with them and get your perfect pictures without the fences being in the way.
We came back via something I wish I had taken a photo of – a lovely cream tea at The Spring in Sulhamstead. Two scones with jam and clotted cream, two pots of tea and two big slices of cake. Just what we needed to cheer ourselves up on a Bank Holiday afternoon.
Leaves in the snow.
I went for a walk in the snow this morning. I took a grand total of 99 pictures, then came back and edited them down to just 9. I went out rather early, so although there was a lot of light reflecting from the snow, it wasn’t really daylight yet. As a result a lot of the pictures were rather grainy. I also took a lens that I’m not really used to using (70mm macro), so it took me a while to get the hang of it.
I ended up concentrating mainly on single leaves. Some were still just about clinging on to the trees, others were lying in the snow. I’m honestly not sure what’s going on with this one! It’s clearly not attached to a tree, so it must be lying on the ground, but somehow it looks as though it’s floating.
I particularly like looking at the largest version of this one. It’s still rather grainy, but you can see an absolutely amazing amount of detail of the structure of the leaf.
Square Format
This is the big fat frog that hopped out from underneath the broken fence as we were pulling it down. He didn’t seem too keen to get out of our way – Paul had to rather unceremoniously pick him up and plop him down in next door’s plant pot!
This morning, whilst wandering around on Flickr, I joined a group for square format photographs. I tend to crop my nature photos into squares, so it seemed like an interesting place to look around and see what other people were doing.
In one of the discussion threads there was a conversation about square format digital cameras. That’s where I found out about the Rollieflex MiniDigi. It’s styled exactly like the original Rollei twin lens reflex camera, but it’s teeny-tiny! (Smaller than this frog, in fact.) Unfortunately it costs over £350, and the resolution’s only 3 megapixels, but it does look as though it would be fun to use. Also, cute!
(Not that “cute” is my primary criterion for choosing things. Of course not. “Does it come in pink?” is much more important. Obviously.)
Encounter With Owls…
I’m just dropping in for a flying visit to upload the photos from the first part of our honeymoon – you can see them all here.
Yesterday we had a Falconry session in the morning, and an Encounter With Owls in the afternoon. This enormous chap was featured in both. His name’s Woolly, and he’s an Eagle Owl.
We also met a Merlin called Angel, a Gyr/Peregrine Falcon called Romeo, a Harris Hawk called Miller, and lots and lots of owls.
I have to confess that I am a huge fan of birds in general, and birds of prey in particular, so getting to spend a couple of hours getting to feed them and fly them to the glove was absolutely amazing.
You can tell how much I enjoyed it by my enormous grin – that’s Woolly on my arm. I’m leaning slightly away from him because I’d already learnt the hard way that his wings were long enough to hit me in the face!
I don’t know of anywhere local that rescues or rehabilitates birds, but I might have to do a bit of research when I get home. It would be brilliant to be able to have contact with birds like this more often.
Butterflies and Bees.
To make the most of the fact that I happened to be off sick on the one day in the last fortnight when it wasn’t chucking it down with rain the entire time, I went for a very short walk with the camera – just down to the edge of the lake and back.
Paul’s taken the 300mm lens with him to Germany, so instead of struggling with the 200mm, I decided to have a play with the macro (70mm) lens.
Sitting on the teasels was a slightly ragged Painted Lady butterfly. I sneaked up on it with the camera, and it wasn’t bothered in the slightest.
A bit further along there’s a big bank of thistles, and they were covered in bees! I saw at least four different types of bee, although I wasn’t able to get decent photos of all of them.
I’ve been lucky enough to have a very positive response to my photos since I’ve been using a digital SLR. I do have some up for sale in my Etsy store, but I thought I’d simplify the process even further and make a page right here when you can buy prints and canvases in a number of different sizes.
Up at the top of the page, there’s a shiny new tab marked “Photos“. Have a look, and let me know what you think!