A few animal portraits

My final foray of the holiday break produced only a few, but some of my favourite images of the period.  A final visit to the Rabbit borrow required the same patience to get them to come out and relax around me and start feeding.  I trained my lens on one of the younger Rabbits in particular because of where it was.  I always try and notice what is in my viewfinder – not just the subject but also the background and foreground and how this will give the best composition.  On this case it seemed perfect – the light wasn’t too harsh or dark, the background was nice with subdued shades of mostly green.  The first image had the Rabbit placed amongst some some twigs and it was facing the sunlight direction.  The second, even when I was looking through the viewfinder seemed almost like a studio set up.  I was willing it to continue moving to my right as there, was the bottom of the tree, covered in green moss which would have really set the image off, unfortunately, the image you see of the Rabbit standing on its hind legs was due to it being alert as moments later a dog scared it underground.

For the photo of a female Mallard Duck with one of its chicks, I deliberately focused on the chick but kept the mother in the frame but out of focus.  The other way around and I don’t think it would not  have looked right.  The one with the chick by itself is for the ‘cute’ effect.

The final three images of the Warbler, I spent the best part of an hour trying to get.  The air was full of their singing, announcing and fending territories, and watching them you could see that they patrol their own little patch, flying from one bush to another, then another before eventually coming back and starting it over again.  Unfortunately, apart from being a bit skittish of my presence it was also windy so they kept under cover in the bushes unseen.  On the rare occasion they did brave the wind and venture onto an exposed branch I was having problems keeping the lens still in the gusts as well as needing a fast shutter speed to freeze the swaying branches.  Most of the images were either blurred or the bird was looking away from the camera.