Proud Day

Our Son Mark's Gradution from University College for the Creative Arts at Mid Kent, Maidstone. The event took place on Friday 4th July at All Saint's Church, and lasted for just over an hour. Group photographs were taken afterwards, before proceeding to the college for a buffet and drinks to celebrate the day. He is now a qualified Graphic designer, hoping to get a job in the music industry.

Mark the graduate

Proud mum Carole

Family Portrait

Orchids

Visited Stockbury on the 24th May to try and photograph some of the orchids. Still good numbers of Lady Orchid, plenty of Common Twayblade. Now for the exciting stuff, still bird's nest, lesser butterfly and fly orchid all were in good condition. Might have changed now due to the rain today. Later in the day I also went to Elmley RSPB and added a few more hare photos to my collection. More photo's soon.....

Fly Orchid

Lesser Butterfly

Brown Hare

Visit to Prague

Old Town Square

My wife and I decided to take a short break to Prague between the 18th May to the 22nd May. Arrived at lunchtime and caught the train to the metro, taking us not to far from our hotel. The afternoon was spent looking around the old town. Next day we revisited the old town, having lunch in the square. In the afternoon we took a bus tour around Prague, which also visited Prague castle. The following day we went back to Prague castle for a longer visit. Our next day was spent by catching the train to Karlstejn, to visit the castle. The last morning was spent in the old town, before going back to the airport. While waiting for our flight the Red Arrows flew down the runway.

Charles Bridge

High ISO Shot

16/01/2008 - Yesterday I went to Elmley and came upon this Kestrel late afternoon. The weather was cloudy and overcast, so I decided to shoot some images at ISO 3200 to see what they come out like. It was also taken handheld with a 500mm lens leaning on my friends shoulder. I think you will agree the image underneath could be used on web site without any problems. I also printed a copy which was also useable, but would not sell on a professional basis.

Kestrel at Elmley RSPB at 3200 ISO

This was purely done as an experiment to show the high iso capability of the D300. The image is a jpeg processed in Lightroom and then sharpened in Photoshop CS2. The image below is a 100% crop from the original picture. Please feel free to email me with any comments.

Kestrel 100% Crop

First Wildlife Photo with D300

Grey Squirrel ISO 800

11/12/2007 - Managed to get out on Tuesday for a few hours, to photograph the squirrels opposite my house. The photo needs more depth of field I know, but I am experimenting with the settings. Even though there is still a lot of detail in the photo. The photo has been tweaked in CS2 a little bit. Any useful comments would be welcomed.

Nikon D300

 

27/11/2007 - Took the plunge today to buy the new Nikon D300 I had ordered from Jessups. I had no problems getting one and did not pre order it. This seems to be an excellent camera, ideal for wildlife photography. As yet I have not had the to chance get out with camera, also I am still wading through the manual.

 

Donna Nook to photograph Grey Seals

25/11/2007 - The morning had arrived, the weather was going to be cloudy with sunny spells, should we set off on a 4.5 hour journey to photograph grey seals. We left at 5.30am arriving at a cloudy Donna Nook just after 10.00am to a very busy car park. This place gets more popular every year with families because the seals with pups are so accessible. Filling up with food, before we donned our wellies and waterproofs for the long walk to the tides edge to photograph the bulls fighting and mating on the waters edge.

Grey Seals Mating

Arriving the waters edge in still cloudy conditions I turned up the ISO and started off we some practice shots. After a short while the sun came out giving us the chance to get some good images. To get good photos you need to lay on the floor at the same level as the seals hence the need for good waterproofs. We stayed with the seals for a couple of hours before walking the long distance back to the car park.

Lazy Grey Seal

After having some more food we did some shots from the dune area, with the pups. They had suffered alot this year because of the very high tides and bad weather. I also got some shots of GBB gull feeding on one of the dead grey seal pups. We headed for home around 3.00pm stopping for some well deserved Kentucky fried chicken. Last images with Nikon D70.

Grey Seal Pup

Shellness

12/11/2007 - Decided to go to Shellness with John to see if we could improve and increase our wader portfolios. We arrived a bit later than I expected and the tide was well on the way up, so we decided to try and photograph snow bunting first. The snow bunting were soon located right next to the footpath feeding on seeds washed off the plants during the rough weather this week. John had some success with a converter but the birds were very flighty and difficult to get close too.

Dunlin

We walked to the end of the reserve overlooking the wader roost, the tide was going to be high as a lot of the birds were roosting on top and not on the slope were they usually rest. I was beginning to think we had wasted our time, but on the walk back near the hamlets there were turnstone feeding between the groins. We stalked up behind one of the groins, settled down and started photographing.

Red Knot

The light was a little harsh to start, but around two o'clock the light changed started to go reddish glow and we were starting to get some good results. The tide was pushing the birds closer, and there were now sanderling and dunlin joining them. We stayed here until the tide turned following the birds back down the beach behind the groin. The birds were slowly spreading out along the shore, I decided to move position for better light which now a perfect reddish orange glow. I was soon joined by red knot, oystercatcher and brent geese, as the sea revealed more beach.

John - Wader Stalker

This was now turning into a special afternoon, I was surrounded by birds on both sides. There was going to be a sunset, we were hoping to get a red glow on the birds and shore. Unfortunately we could not get the right angle on the beach to get the right effect, although I got a shot of the beach with the effect, but with no birds. As we drove down the road at Shellness the sky went reddish orange right across Sheppey, what a beautiful way to finish the day. It was one of those days where it was a pleasure to surrounded by nature and just soak into the atmosphere.

Oystercatcher

The effect we were looking for