A Slow Summer

I don’t seem to be getting many breaks with my photography this summer.  I had planned a number of projects, starting with taking two weeks off in June to follow up a couple of those – a visit to the Farne Islands which I haven’t returned to for a couple of years, and something I’ve wanted to try out for a while, photographing the Milky Way, including a time elapse.  Unfortunately both of these required some decent weather particularly the latter of which clear night skies with little wind was a must. The week leading up to the start of my holiday was perfect.  Warm weather, clear skies, then my time off.  A drop in temperature, cloudy, unsettled weather and windy.  No chance of a night shoot and even the visit to the Farnes was continually postponed as every time I prepared to go, the forecast changed to rain.  The last chance of a night shoot was the final Friday of my time off and even that then changed to forecasted over cast last minute!  Of course the very week I went back to work, was back to being perfect, sunny warm weather. Since then the weather has been a mixed bag though remained warm but photo opportunities seem to be few and I have been going through a bit of a slump.  Below are the best of what I have taken.

The Roe Deer above was taken just before I went on holiday.  Since then the weather has warmed up and added rain has meant mosquitoes are out in force now and a visit here now would mean being eaten alive by the little vampires!

The warm weather and rain has also dramatically increased the length of grass.  The week before my holiday the grass at the location was short.  Two weeks later and it was over waist high in places.  I paid a number of visits to a place I will often see Foxes and on each occasion I new they were there due to the noise the Magpies were making but only caught a few glimpses of them due to the ‘jungle’ of grass.  On one occasion a Fox went pass me with metres but I didn’t even bother trying to track it with my camera as I wouldn’t have even have got a focus lock on it.  Most of the time though there could have been one there and I wouldn’t have even known due to the undergrowth. I don’t know if the long grass was an advantage or disadvantage for the number of Rabbits about.  Obviously it was a food supply but whether it made them less easier to find by the Foxes in the same area, I don’t know.  I never saw a situation where both could be seen at the same time.

A few other visits around, including Jesmond Dene and the river Derwent produced mediocre results for landscape opportunities.  I also hoped to catch some Kingfisher images but didn’t even catch sight of one, which is unusual.

A visit to the coast at this time of year can be a nice walk but the harsh light leaves little photo opportunities unless you get up very early for a sunrise on these short summer days. The first image is an example of harsh light on a bright day but the clouds help make for an interesting shot.  For the final two images I did get up quite early in the morning, unfortunately the tide was still low which, although I was expecting, what I wasn’t expecting was just how slippery the rocks were and didn’t want to risk walking the distance to the tidal edge and so had to wait for the tide to come to me, by which time the best of the light was lost.