Finally a bright Saturday in 2016! After many grey days at the weekend it was a pleasure to walk around Blashford Lakes Nature Reserve today, and chase some of the elusive wild birds that are there. Well not literally chase, but try and get them in the frame of the lens, not easy, as the birds seem to have a sixth sense that means, once you point the lens their
I have been visiting the hides at Blashford Lakes Nature Reserve over Christmas and New Year – but no real keepers in 2016 until today. Like much of the Christmas / New Year period when I was off, it was grey and overcast – before turning to downpour. Here a the first three still keepers this year. However – despite having no stills before – I did take some video
A Christmas Eve visit to Blashford Lakes, and some very un-Christmas spirit was being shown by a Cormorant, as it attacked a male Tufted Duck.
Not my best video, but I liked the action.
Nasty grey wet weekend weather wise, so not ideal for birds photos. And as it was wet, the only option was to go somewhere with sheltered hides, so I visited my local Blashford Lakes Nature Reserve. I did manage to photograph a male Black-necked Grebe for the first time. Although they are large 50% crops. The advantage of a reserve like Blashford, where you have several habitats, and importantly several
Whilst Storm Clodagh blew through on Sunday, the best location in my mind was to be inside, and the bird hides at Blashford Lakes beckoned. With the adverse weather the light was low and so a higher than normal ISO was required to get a shootable speed. After the tern hide, and Ibsley hides provided nothing close by in relating to wildlife, a short visit to the Woodland hide provided
I was fortunate to come across a very patient and docile Kestral, sitting in a tree on a sunday walk from Tuckton to Hengistbury Head today. I took a shot from the distance that I first saw the Kestral, as normall when you get close to a raptor, it will take flight. However, much to my suprise this one did, not and with these next images, I was more or
This cheeky Robin was a difficult subject to capture on camera today at Blashford Lakes Nature Reserve, but not for the normal reason, it kept hoping towards me and getting too close to the lens to take. However a bit of perseverance by me, in backing off from it I got a couple of close up images of the bird. Having recently purchased Topaz Texture Effects, I decided to have
Whilst up in the Yorkshire Dales in September, a walk on a sunny day, gave me the opportunity to take out my converted Canon 20D camera and take some Enhanced Colour Infrared images. Having now processed them using a variety of methods and several Topaz Plugins ( including Adjust, Restyle , Glow and Texture Effects), I have this collection of Colour Infrared Landscapes from the day.
Over the autumn of 2015, a Juvenille Osprey has been resident at Blashford Lakes Nature Reserve in Hampshire. The Osprey is best viewed from the Tern Hide, when it sits on a perch in the middle of the lake. This perch is a fair way away, so the views are distant, and photos from here need a lot of cropping. These two images I took on an overcast day –
After taking some Autumn Landscapes images at Anderwood in the New Forest last weekend, I used some of my Topaz Labs plugins to create different looks to the original photographs. I did this to Create new looks to the images. Brighten things up as the weather was overcast and dull. Here are 3 different images, processed with various Topaz Plugins, along with the original image in each case for comparison.
