Paris by night

The Eiffel Tower from Montparnasse

Wow – A year since I last posted. Must get my act together.

This is from a recent trip to Paris with my Fiancee. Taken from the top of the Montparnasse tower where they are very kind to photographers. There are gaps in the glass surrounding the roof so you don’t have to shoot through a dirty distorting extra lens element! Here I was trying to keep some light in the sky but due to a large storm that came in there was no nice sunset on this evening.

In post I have reduced noise and sharpened and selectively brightened the roadways to make them stand out.

I have used a Fuji XT-1 for this trip. I love the lightness and size of the Fuji system and so will gradually make the switch away from Canon.

Kit: Fuji XT-1 with 50-200 @ F7.1 – around 10 second exposure (bulb mode) @ 70mm ISO 200

Deer Rut

This is a picture of deer fighting during the ‘rut’ that takes place in the autumn. In this time, the stags try to keep control of their harems while the young bucks try to infiltrate. There is often a bit of aggro between males. These two had been fighting right next to the car park and then appeared to strike peace. They both wandered into the lake to get a drink and while in there, it all started again.

Kit: Canon EOS 1Dx EF 200-400 @ f/5.6 – 1/400sec @ 325mm ISO1600

More of my photos can be seen at FLICKR.

Osprey

 

This is a picture of an Osprey taking a Brown trout from a small man made lake in Aviemore, Scotland. There are some hides alongside the water. The hides are set low so that the camera is close to water level. At the point the Osprey lands in the water you have to be very quick to acquire the bird in the viewfinder, get focus and then hit the shutter. Fast focus and many frames per second are key to getting the shot here. If you don’t get it first time you won’t catch up. It is all over in a couple of seconds.

We spent a total of 8 hours in the hide over two mornings. We arrive at 4:30am to go into the hide at 5 leaving at about 9am. We saw a total of 7 birds dive into the lake. All 7 caught a fish.

Kit: Canon EOS 1Dx EF 200-400 @ f/5.6 – 1/1250sec @ 400mm

More of my photos can be seen at FLICKR.

Breitling Wing Walkers

 

This is a picture of the Breitling wing walkers in action at Farnborough air Show in the UK July 2014. In this shot I have dialed the exposure time down to 1/200 in order to blur the propellers out of the shot. A stationary prop takes away the look of speed and causes the picture to look wrong.

I used high speed shooting and took a number of bursts of 3 or 4 frames to make sure i had one that was sharp given this was taken at 560mm focal length.

Kit: Canon EOS 1Dx EF 200-400mm f/4 @ 1/200s (at 560mm f/5.6)

More of my photos can be seen at FLICKR.

Kingfisher

This is a picture of a Kingfisher taken from a hide on the river Salwarpe near Droitwich in the UK. The bird is enticed to the perch by placing a large tray underneath it that has small trout in it however, on the day that I was there, we had 6 visits from him to fish and every single time he dived in (about 20 in total) he went in to the river right next to the tray! He got a fish every time.

The sunlight was full and harsh but the colours on this bird really show up in the light. He has just arrived back at the perch after catching this fish. You get about 1 second before he shakes to remove the water on his feathers so a quick focus push and then click.

Kit: Canon EOS 1DIV EF 200-400 @ f/5.6 – 1/5000sec

More of my photos can be seen at FLICKR.

African Fish Eagle

This is a picture of African Fish Eagle taken at the Hawk Conservancy nr Andover in Hampshire. I go here a lot to practise on birds in flight so that I’m prepared (hopefully) when I am in the wild.

Because I am so close to the bird and using a longish focal length of 500mm, the depth of field is quite shallow. It does give a nice smooth background though. It is vital in shots like this to have the eye in focus (the near eye if two are visible but it is not possible to get them both in focus). The other problem I get with this bird sometimes is the contrast in bright sunshine can blow the white feathers on top of the head but in this one I have been lucky with that. It was in full sunshine (you can see the hard shadow on the side of the head) but there was enough reflected light to lift the shadows under the wings.

The hard part of this shot was tracking the bird. It is very big in the frame so there is not much scope for wobble. In this frame I have cropped the bottom to make the image aspect wider but the edges and top are untouched.

Kit: Canon EOS 1DIV EF 500 f/4.5 @ 1/3200s ISO 400

More of my photos can be seen at FLICKR.

In Steam

This is a picture of 44932 LMS Stanier Class 5 4-6-0. She was one of the “Black Five” locos and is pictured here passing between Hook and Basingstoke in the south of England on its run as the Cathedral’s Express.

Although it is more usual to have to go to restored lines to see steam trains running there are a number that run tours on main lines. Enthusiasts pay to go out for the day and have dinner served how it used to be – On china plates and by silver service.

For the picture a nice cold morning is ideal to get maximum steam condensing into the atmosphere and a good smoke stack. I shot this in RAW as it would be important to get as much detail as possible from the shadows and the highlights. The difficulty was that the dark engine was in shadow while the bright steam was in sunlight!

I use this very helpful site to get info on where trains are running

http://www.uksteam.info/tours/index.htm

Kit: Canon EOS 5DIII EF 70-300L @ f/5.6 1/400th

More of my photos can be seen at FLICKR.

Clevedon Pier

This is a picture of Clevedon Pier on the coast of England near Bristol. I have wanted to do this high key shot of this pier for about 2 years but it has been encased in scaffolding while the deck and legs were restored. The official opening of Clevedon pier was held on Easter Monday, 29th March 1869 and to date it is the only Grade 1 listed pier in the UK (not counting Brighton Pier which has largely collapsed).

To make this shot I took 3 exposures, 1 normal and the other 2 overexposed. I then used photoshop to blend them and adjust the tones to get the smooth transition.

Kit: Canon EOS 5DIII EF 24-105 @ f/14 – various exposures.

More of my photos can be seen at FLICKR.

Swan take off

 

Rooksbury Mill

I pitched up to this little nature reserve in the south of England in the hope of seeing a Kingfisher. While there I had a walk round the lakes early on where there were two swans having an early morning paddle. All of a sudden one of them spooked and made  to take to the air. As anyone who has seen this knows it is not easy for swans to take off. They have a long run at it and make a lot of noise. Luckily for me I was in the right position to get the reflection which is the difference to this being an interesting shot or not.

Kit: Canon EOS 1Div EF 500mm f/4 @ 1/1600s ISO 160

More of my photos can be seen at FLICKR.

Colour Splash

We spend a lot of time in our photography trying to get things perfect. Exposure, focus, composition and all the other things that don’t allow us to just enjoy it.

So a group of us togs have got together and will try to put the fun back into it. This last week-end we found a willing model (April) and a few dresses cheap on eBay. We mixed up some poster paints and set about having fun.

A simple backdrop fixed up to a garage door, one flash each and some helpers to throw the paint.  Just in case you wondered it’s all water based so just washed off the model afterwards (although the dresses were trashed).

Photography is fun 🙂

Kit: Canon EOS 1DIV EF 50mm 1/1.4 @ f/10 1/200 ISO 200

More of my photos can be seen at FLICKR.