Lent Bumps in Cambridge

A man balanced on a tight rope across Jesus Green and boating crews with greenery in their hair - a typical Cambridge afternoon. The Lent Bumps are rowing races held annually on the River Cam in Cambridge; they began in 1887. At the start, signalled by a cannon, each crew is separated by a distance of about 1½ boat lengths (approximately 30 m or 90 ft). Once the race has begun, a crew must attempt to catch up with the crew ahead of it and bump (physically touch or overtake it) before the crew behind does the same to them. A crew which bumps or is bumped must pull to the side of the river to allow other crews to continue racing. Any crew which bumps then swaps places with the crew that it bumped in the following day's racing and picks foliage from the bank to decorate themselves.. The process is repeated over four days, allowing crews to move up or down in the overall order of boats. 

Reflection Sculptures at Wimpole Hall

Wimpole Hall has a series of sculptures in their gardens by Theo Gayer Anderson. Certainly a change from the classical sculpture and fun to photograph. We didn't find the fifth one - another visit?

Cambridge Rugby Union Football Club Scrape a Win over Southend (26-19)

At the end of full-time it was 19-19 and raining. CRUFC then got a penalty that they missed - look at the faces! but the sun came out and, in the n'th minute of injury time,  James Ayrton (our CCC sponsored player) broke away (Chris can confirm this) and passed to Corey Hircock; here you see him about to score the winning try. Other images for my reference as using 1.4 extender with 100-400 mkII lens on 5D III. Looks like DOF shallow enough at f8 (minimum for this combination)

Addenbrookes Charitable Trust is the Main Charity for the September Dragonboat Festival

This morning, ACT organised a 'race' between a Scudamore's punt and a Dragon boat on the Cam by Magdalene Bridge. Started fine but the rain soon set in. Undeterred, the ACT staff, including their Chief Executive Stephen Davies, took to the water in the Dragon boat. The festival itself is on September 12th at Fen Ditton. Rest of images on FlikR
https://www.flickr.com/photos/28596054@N07/sets/72157648578937244/

Squabbling Coots

A selection of images from a morning spent with squabbling coots. They really go for each other but there are no apparent signs of injury at this stage in the season. The bright sunshine helped with the shutterspeed and ISO but did give problems with contrast on such dark birds

Sunlight at Fowlmere RSPB Reserve

Beautiful sunny afternoon at Fowlmere shared only by some Greylag geese, a few ducks and moorhens and a very obliging Heron.

A couple of images playing with shutterspeed and timing to get the moment when the goose head is completely enveloped in a skin of water like this swimming image shared on facebook today 

Here to try and stop the wing beat of the myriads of flies rising from the reeds. This is 1/5000th second.

Wicken Fen - RPS Outing

As so often, the weather let us down a bit at Wicken, especially for the bird photographers. Although, in the morning the skies were interesting for landscape work, there was not enough light generally to do the landscape justice. I used the full armoury of graduated filters, stacked panoramas (image 4) and HDR (5) to try and get a feel of the vastness of the reeds and skies at Wicken. The image I liked best was the simplest - reflections of two reeds in the water. In the afternoon, we settled into the Broadwalk Hide to wait for the Hen Harriers and were rewarded with 3 hunting Barn Owls, a murmuration of Starlings, 2 Marsh Harriers and several Hen Harriers but by then it was too dark for my camera.