Red Deer Stags - Scotland

 

Just back from a solo motorcycle tour of Scotland (again).  DSLR spent almost the whole tour tucked away, with pretty much 10 nights of cloud .. blunting my plans of any astro or Aurora photography.  (Another tour when I lug my tripod 2000 miles without ever using it!)  Particularly frustrating when the Aurora monitor app was pinging very high, very frequently, with the Earth being bombarded by a solar flare and photos coming out of Canada were flooding social media. 

Didn't see any otters at all either this time, despite plenty of coastal riding, walking and camping.  Saw a huge Golden Eagle at close range whilst riding a tiny backroad, but predictably, by the time I'd stopped and retrieved my camera it was an entire valley away, despite its effortless cruising flight.  Fantastic experience though!

The two Red Deer stag photos here are from the two occasions our paths crossed and pretty much the only times I got to press the shutter button.  With a sore ankle from running the London Marathon at the start of the month, yomping into the mountains for any landscape shots was, unfortunately, not an option.  

ISO200, 400mm, f/5.6, 1/500s
Single, young stag wandering the Highlands near Loch Ewe

ISO640, 400mm, f/5.6, 1/500s
Mature Red Deer stag bellowing into the still evening air, near Applecross

2021 - an Easter resurrection?

 

Well .. it's been so long that I barely know what I'm doing anymore, processing and posting photos.  I only hope that I can re-kindle some of my photographic spirit in a post Covid world, but that is yet to be seen.  We're coming out of lockdown, I definitely have my adventurous spirit in bucket fulls, my list of DIY tasks is under control - at least for a more sustainable work/life balance and I'm starting to pick up my camera a little more.  The Land Rover Defender is being prepped for some photo weekends away and I can feel that long forgotten glow of excitement on the horizon.

The last few years haven't been entirely devoid of photography, so I will go back and see what things have been left behind, in the Lightroom bucket.

Since this blog looks like it became a bit of a wildlife focussed blog pre-break, I guess it's appropriate that it returns with this amazingly healthy looking fox.  Hunting across the field towards me and passing within a few meters in the setting Sun.  Totally more luck than skill, but at least my muscles haven't forgotten which buttons to press.  

ISO800, 150-600mm Sigma @ 600mm, f/6.3, 1/2000s

ISO400, 150-600mm Sigma @ 600mm, f/6.3, 1/500s

ISO250, 150-600mm Sigma @ 600mm, f/6.3, 1/500s

ISO250, 150-600mm Sigma @ 600mm, f/6.3, 1/640s

Wild February

 

First mini jaunt out with the camera without it either being frozen or peeing down with rain, wouldn't you know it, wildlife was out enjoying the weather too!

 

First use of the Land Rover as a hide (yes, I have a Land Rover 110 now - if I didn't mention that!?) - spotted these fighting Pheasants near the roadside and after parking up and waiting for a bit they carried on their brawling.  Probably helped by the fact that neither wanted to turn their back on the other to scarper, they just cracked on with the proceedings.  Nice and photogenic and a bit of movement kind of portrays just how aggressive they were, elegant dancing this was not!

Unfortunately by the time the decent sunlight came out, they had moved into a nearby farm yard, with in my opinion, not such a nice backdrop.  While bright Sun is usually bad, their feathers really pop in the sun, so I included one anyways.

 

Mid-afternoon errands complete, I snuck of down the canal for a sunset.  Lots of animals about, buzzards, a Red Kite, Kestrel, Deer, green woodpecker .. but it was the trusty Kingfisher that provided the only shots and nothing in the golden hour.  Unfortunately the local dog walkers seem to time their trot down the canal with sunset, trashing any prime time photography, then hanging bags of dog shit on the barbed wire fence.  I'm not a big fan.  Anyways, it was really nice to see so much getting out and about in an early burst of Spring weather.

 

 

ISO1000, 560mm, f/8, 1/500s (100-400mm + 1.4x teleconverter) 



ISO1000, 560mm, f/8, 1/500s



ISO1000, 560mm, f/8, 1/500s

ISO1250, 560mm, f/8, 1/800s

ISO1250, 560mm, f/8, 1/320s

ISO2000, 560mm, f/8, 1/400s

 

 

 



Wild January

 

First post of the year .. what can I say, I no longer have enough spare time to waste these days!

A selection of the photos plucked from the stack I've got piling up to process, including photos from a wedding!? 

 

Top one is a bit of an abstract wildlife shot, the deer was way, way too far away for a photo in usual circumstances, but with the stripes of snow settled in the furrows of the banked field behind, I kind of liked it.  Immediately turned it black and white, but then chose not to, that hint of pale colour actually highlights how bleakly wintery the day was.

 

Shot on the same day, the hare photo is a happy coincidence, rather than a carefully stalked shot.  Again sat in the middle of a field, however I was able to hang around, just chilling out together for a bit until the sunset light started beaming out, just to add something to what is again, not a composition that is exactly going to set the world alight.

 

.. and a couple of Robin shots I've managed to pick up along the way.  Top one is quite nice and clean, getting my elbows dirty to get down low.  While the second has hale stones pinging off the Robins head, just for a slight comedy edge!

 

 

ISO400, 560mm, f/8, 1/640s, +0.3ev



ISO400, 560mm, f/8,1/640s, +0.6ev

ISO5000, 400mm, f/5.6, 1/320s

ISO5000, 400mm, f/5.6, 1/320s, -0.6ev

 

 



Remembrance

OK, so we're about a month late with this one, but I was in Cuba getting my yearly dose of culture shock while Nov 11th was passing us by.

Taken a little earlier in the year at a field over toward Salisbury plain.  It's damn hard photographing a wide open field of poppies.  One of those things that looks amazing, but really needs to just be a backdrop for a focal point, maybe I'll try and get kitted out with WW1 uniform next year for a tribute self portrait.

Things are pretty hectic .. blah blah blah .. weddings, holidays, Christmas, new car, one motorcycle crashed and the other falling apart .. no end of stuff competing for my time.  However .. Cuba photos are coming.. soon(ish)!

Alternate Landscapes in mono

 

 

 

 

 

Little Owl

Had a bit of a potter about Sunday evening, seeing what was about.  Plenty of rabbits, deers and hares, but no Barn Owls unfortunately.  There was however, our local Little Owl once again perched photogenically in one of the old (medieval?) barn slit windows.  As probably the same as previously, poor lighting and high ISO due to the orientation of the barn, but I can never resist this shot.

 

Hopefully, if all goes well, off to Wales this weekend for some hiking and photo opportunity grabbing.  Half a mind on the lack of Moon-age and the potential dark-sky combo, leading to some late night sky photography, if the weather plays ball.  We will see...

 





Little Owl in barn window
ISO1600, 400mm, f/6.3, 1/200s, -0.7ev, stabilised against a tree, noise reduction
 

Garden Pics

Life is emerging at full speed ahead in the garden at the moment.  Dragons are emerging from empty nymph shells, honey bees have taken up residence in a nuc hive (in preparation for a full on hive soon), frogs still frequent the pond and general colourful happiness prevails.

The honey bee hive project is likely going to hijack this blog somewhat, although I also hope it will push forward some more photography too.  Having completed a beekeeping course and had quite a few invaluable practical sessions with the local beekeeping society, we are officially rookie beekeepers and potential saviours of the planet.  Having learnt all the diseases and problems they have to contend with, I'm surprised we even still have honey bees at all!

Suffice to say .. stand by for more bee, hive, honey, honeycomb tagged posts fairly soon.

Honeybee on our lavender
ISO400, 105mm, f/4.5, 1/500s, -1ev, flash

Dragonfly nymph shell taken from the reeds in our pond
ISO400, 105mm, f/4, 1/100s, flash

 

Emerged dragonfly, drying its wings on a plant near the pond
ISO400, 105mm, f/4.5, 1/200s

Bumble bee on our alliums
ISO400, 105mm, f/7.1, 1/160s, flash

Periscope up!  Funny how animals don't sense danger when you hide your face behind the camera.
ISO100, 105mm, f/3.2, 1/200s, flash

Just nice light and hippy bits.
ISO320, 400mm, f/5.6, 1/400s

Steaming

 

OK .. lets get clearing out some of these pics from the last 6 months that have been sat around .. see if I can't start getting some time to myself, so I can waste it doing exploring, landscapes, star trails and sunrises ... well maybe not sunrises, but anyways.

 

Three images of steam locos taken locally .. as much as I love seeing them, I'm a little over photographing them at the moment, however, plans to electrify the local line and stick massive ugly steel pylons everywhere have spurred me on to make the most of it before it's all ruined.

 

Top two are Tornado on a lovely rainy summers day, not exactly the best, but hey, it's Tornado and anything that shakes the ground like that gets me excited to stand next to!  (without trespassing I may add - since there have been many reports of stupid photographers of late) 

 

The bottom one is, unfortunately, a photo mash up in photoshop.  I spent ages planning, mapping, ephemerising, timing and figuring out a cool location for what looked like a gorgeous Flying Scotsman sunset shot.  All went exactly to plan and my carefully planned and timed backlit sunset glow lit the valley amazingly .. of course being a Scotsman, it didn't co-operate and didn't turn up on time until after shadows had descended over the valley.  So gutted by the near miss, that I took photos anyway and disgracefully merged them into a vision of what could have been.  Oh well, maybe next time ....

 

 



Italy Tour - Sunflowers and Gondolas

Italy Tour - Panoramic

50mm test #2 - portrait of Lord Dowding

 

Sigma 50mm Art lens test outing number two - not exactly a portrait, but kind of ..

the Battle of Britain memorial steam locomotive from 1946, the Lord Dowding.

Named after the Commander of Fighter command during the Battle of Britain,

he was undoubtedly one of the key figures who stopped us all having to blog in German.

A West Country Class locomotive, defined as a "light" class, but weighing in at 90 tons and as we found out, capable of shaking the ground from about a mile away!

 

Unfortunately, despite it being a beautiful sunny day up until this point (this spot had dappled light from nearby trees), it suddenly clouded over just before the train arrived and made the lighting a bit flat.  However, as always, it was a great experience to get so close to such a powerful and elegant machine in full flight, the photograph is only a token snapshot of the moment.

 

Technically, the cloudy conditions pushed the ISO up to 400 to let me stay at f/6.3 - my chosen depth of field (~35m) - and 1/500s to minimise motion blur as it moves past.  This shot has slight motion blur on the engine already and since the locomotive was at full steam ahead, any consequent shots would have been really hard to pan to keep sharp, so I think the settings were about right for the kit, location and available light.   Shot at +0.6ev exposure compensation just because the foreground was so murky and I didn't want to have to brighten dark shadows (I knew the engine was black and dark green) at ISO 400, with the clouds brought back down to probably about -1ev in Lightroom.

 

The 50mm actually has a pretty distinct vignette with in camera lens compensation turned off on a full frame body (DxO Mark rates center to corner as -1.5ev difference), however this image is a slightly tweaked version of the natural vignette (but perhaps not as tweaked as you might think).

 

Enjoying the lens so far and really looking forwards to using it in it's natural habitat next month when we have our next wedding shoot.

 

 

ISO400, 50mm, f/6.3, 1/500s, +0.6ev

 

 

Garden life #1

 

 

 

Pond life in the garden has taken a very sudden jump in the direction of Spring arriving!

A flurry of frogs, a flapping of flippers, a ripple of .. ripples .. and hey presto we now have a pond chock full of spawn.

 

That combined with it still being light when I get hope - HOORAH!!  - and we have ourselves some photography to grab!  .. and .. you may have to sit down for this, but I'm actually blogging it the same day!!?!   CRAZY!  What is this odd behaviour?

 

Not taken on the new 50mm, but the 135mm and cropped in a fair amount at f/2, also with a fair amount of Lightroom noise reduction, since while it's light, it's not exactly blazing sunshine either!

 

Also seemed like an opportune moment to drop in a Heron shot from a few months back - the enemy - this one taken long the local canal and hopefully won't be visiting the garden anytime soon (for the sake of the frogs) - although I'm sure there are baby Herons somewhere who would be grateful of our frog-ling farm supplies.  Photo is ok, some nice dynamic back lighting and shade, but was waiting for it's time to be blogged, unfortunately it ends up being a co-star to the frogs. 

 

 

Proud parent on frog-spawn guard duty
ISO800, 135mm, f/2, 1/125s, cropped, noise reduction (leant on a bucket next to the pond)

Backlit Grey Heron on the Wilt & Berks canal
ISO320, 400mm, f/6.3, 1/400s, cropped, noise reduction



Primal 50

So, for the first time in quite a while, I have a new lens!
With less landscapey pics going on at the moment and not being able to afford any kind of prime 600mm wildlife lens, it is my second prime lens purchase (to go along with my Canon 135mm f/2.0) .. a Sigma 50mm f/1.4 Art series lens.

So.. since I swapped to a full frame sensor, my 16-35 is now super wide, even at 35mm ... and I miss some of the old ~25-50mm range that the lens had on my old APS-C sensor (1.6x crop factor).

This new beast is also f/1.4, so super fast, even compared to my f/2,8 lenses - which I always considered reasonably fast anyway.  The pay off for being super quick, super sharp and super sexy? Weight!  It feels like a solid block of metal - since surely not even glass can weigh this much?!

Anyway, all that lovely sharp quickness (no-one said this was going to be a technical review!) is going to be just perfect for street wandering, event snapping, wedding capturing and low light gathering.

See full size demo image below of Weston-Super-Mare pier for sharpness at f/8.

I'm off to start saving for a 600mm prime wildlife lens!....

ISO100, 50mm, f/8, 1/200s

Italy Tour - Alps

Light and shade in the high peaks

Matterhorn in thin air.  Some dislike polarisers at this height,
I think it shows how thin our atmosphere really is.

Looking back North at the storm that chased us from the Alps 

Stars of the North face of the Eiger
Complete with the climbers refuge (crest) and window to the trainline inside the mountain (half way up)