Saturday, 23 February 2013

Spring?… Well, not quite!

Beginning of the Week

A rare bout of wall to wall sunshine brought me out of the doldrums to see what wildlife was on offer. An opportunity to photograph two birds in particular that have eluded my previous attempts – the Bullfinch and and the particularly pretty Long Tailed Tit – were too much to pass up. The former seems to nowadays be rarer than I remember them to be during my childhood, where they seemed to be quite common. The latter just seems to always stay hidden away.

The bright, almost spring like sunshine helped bring the best out of the images with a fast shutter speed enabling me to ‘freeze’ them as they didn’t stay in any one spot for more than a second and I resorted to pre focusing on one spot where they would stop briefly.

End of the Week

Within a week, winter had returned with a fall of snow blanketing Tyneside. Still, I can’t resist the temptation in going out in this kind of weather.

SMP_9044

A post of mine wouldn’t be complete without some kind of rant at dog walkers. A sign at the entrance of this nature reserve saying ‘dogs to be kept on lead’. Of the dozen plus dog walkers I saw, only one had bothered to adhere to this rule. kudos to that one individual. (not the individual in the picture who had just walked past that sign!)

Tuesday, 22 January 2013

Just a Few Birds

by Frank Anderson

With no luck in my attempt to get some ‘iconic’ images of Deer or Foxes in winter settings, I turned to the more and relatively easy option of birds to photograph. Relatively easy, because, though easier to find, photographing small birds that are constantly moving and in very poor lighting conditions, put photographer and equipment to the test.

All images below had to be shot wide open to get the fastest possible shutter speed. This meant a very narrow depth of field and along with a shutter speed usually not fast enough to avoid a combination of freezing the action and avoiding camera shake, some two thirds of the resulting images were out of focus.