Winter Birds 1

The first photo of a series of bird photos that I took over the last couple of weeks.

Today's is a Redwing migrant feeding on the neighbours apple tree with snow providing a nice pale backdrop. The five foot fence that divides our gardens doubled as a hide and tripod, very handy.

560mm (100-400mm lens + 1.4x teleconverter)

1/1000s, f/8, ISO800, +1/3 ev

Levels, curves, saturation and noise reduction.

Christmas 2010

Hope everyone had a Merry Christmas, best wishes for a great new year!

With a bit of a backlog of photos to get through I've decided to upload a special Christmas multi-panorama post today. Without really noticing, I appeared to have taken several over the last few weeks. If I'm being philosophical, then I think it's because the snow has led to scenic panoramas, but since I live in a pretty flat area, it's naturally lent itself to this format. The cynical part of me argues that it's lazy and an easy way out of not finding "proper" landscape spots, but I kind of like them anyway...

Winter Sunrise at Lacock

Oakfields at Whitley

St Marys in the snow

The Snowball Stand-off

More to come soon as and when time allows...

Busy-ness

Frosty morning walker

Been very busy the last week decorating, so had no camera time at all. Not such a torture since the snow and ice has disappeared too, but I'll try and make an effort if it returns at the end of the week again. This is a photo from a week or so ago, shot directly into a misty rising Sun to give a nice backlit glow, catching the walkers breath and casting long, mirror-image shadows of both the walkers legs and park bench legs.

ISO250, 210mm, 1/400s, f/5

The Lunchtime Winter Photo Challenge

With it being dark outside work hours, I set about a (slightly extended) lunch-break challenge to go and snap some winter scenes while the weather was nice and in-clement! With the scenic village of Lacock just 5 minutes away, I headed over and did a lap of the area in record time..

First shot was luck, but then you got to be out there to get lucky! A buzzard settled in a snow laden conifer tree as I was walking down the road. Taken at 400mm at ISO1600, I've had to do some fairly heavy noise reduction and cropping, but still a nice blog worthy image I think, if not great technically. ISO1600, 400mm, 1/250s, f/5.6

First landscape style shot was also taken with the zoom lens, a scene that I've driven past many times and thought would make quite a nice composition, looking out over the village cottages and church. To be honest, it has looked better with a bit more fog and snow about, but the snowy trees just about make it wintery enough and the chimney smoke is a nice bonus!

ISO500, 135mm, 1/250s, f/9

Frozen reeds. Taken on tripod at f/22 to smooth out the water and get some motion in the reeds. I almost chose to convert this to black and white, but then changed my mind as I do like the contrast of the warm and cold tones. Foreground levels tweaked. ISO100, Tripod, 16mm, f/22, circular polariser, 1.3sec

One of my favourite bridges in the area, this time photographed surrounded by frozen trees and grasses. Straight from camera. ISO100, Tripod, CircPlrsr, 31mm, f/22, 0.6sec

Followed by a quick drive back to work to defrost.

Overall I am pleased with the results, considering. Just shows what you can capture in such a short period of time. Looking forwards to the next one...

December

There's been some fantastic weather for snow-scapes and winter sunsets recently if you're lucky enough to be able to get out in them! I've driven through some great looking parts of England the last two weekends, but not had much chance to photograph them unfortunately. This is a snapshot taken a while back, down the Kennet & Avon canal.

Urban Snow

Not had a gritty urban shot for a little while, so here's a recent shot taken in Bath.

All the elements fit nicely into a neat composition, with the bonus of the snow making the bridge railings really stand out. Usually I go mad with dodging, burning and selective curves on these type of images, but this one is just desaturated and a small dose of curves over the whole image.