Handa Island is a Scottish Wildlife Trust nature reserve located in the far north west of Scotland, and is home in the height of summer to close to 100,000 seabirds gathering to breed including guillemots, razorbills great skua and puffins (Information as published on the Scottish Wildlife Trust site). The reserve is accessed by a pedestrian ferry service that runs from Tarbet on demand during the visitor season. Tarbet and
To start the New Year 2015 – A short photo study of a Male Teal. These small pretty ducks are always nice to see up close, and with the sun out look at their best. Taken at Stanpit Marshes Nature reserve on the a small pool.
A wandering walk from Tuckton, over towards Wick on a dullish but dry day saw me keep three completely different types of picture. Firstly a contrast in size shot of two birds on the river bank. Further round I found a bouy tied near to a post. I took this intentionally to play with Topaz Glow later, as well as some of some reeds which did not work so well.
On a post Christmas visit to Blashford Lakes, to try out a Pro Viewfinder Loupe ( a loupe that fits on the LCD screen on Canon Cameras that enables easier videoing, as it acts as an eyepeice ), I was fortunate to see a very beautiful kingfisher. Not only was the kingfisher fairly close to the Ivy North Hide window, but it stayed around for a fair while, enabling me to shoot some photos of the bird, as well as video it.
The Loupe worked very well and I was able to use my Canon with a 300mm F4 Lens, plus 1.4 x Convertor much easier in video mode, as I could hold it up to my eye to video & not have to have it at arms lengths.
Here are a couple of photos of said Kingfisher.
Today I had a further look at the Topaz Glow plugin after reading a quick tutorial on the TopazLabs Blog. This time I tried a more radical effect on a shot taken last weekend at the Lower Test HWT reserve. This one is using the preset – Natural Neon III. The blend mode I changed from the default to Hard Light. The result The original This next shot is
These are some pictures taken of Starling Murmurations at Blashford Lakes from November 2014. Additionally the videos on this page, also feature murmurations. Videos
These are a selection of the Starling Murmuration videos and images that I have been taking recently at Blashford Lakes Nature Reserve, nr Ringwood during December 2013. Images I call this one, the A-Bomb The Bird… Videos The first two are highlights of the best video I took over the 2013 murmuration event. In all I had taken over 2.5 hours of footage over various days. All
Yesterday I went to Blashford Lakes with my brother on a bright sunny winters day. It does sort of sum up the trial and tribulations of an amateur bird photographer, as well as the final high. Went in the first hide – the birds were on the far bank -miles away….went to the what I call the Bittern hide (South Ivy Lake I think it is) – it was
Up until recently I would never normally shoot shots of wildlife above ISO 400. Preferring that ISO as a maximum that I would get away with. On my 50D I would occasionally go to 640 at a push, but found them fairly noisy, so kept 400 as my normal max. However with some recent posts on the forums and especially some on the Pixalo.com, I decided to try out higher
As a macro and infrared enthusiast photographer, what better way than to photograph when combining the two photographic disciplines ! So on a recent visit to Alners Gorse butterfly reserve this summer, I just went armed with my Infrared Converted 20D Camera and a 100mm macro lens and a tripod. (A slight lie – I took a normal colour camera too – just in case of something special). My 20D
