Pochard at Welney

After a very grey dull start the sky cleared a bit at Welney and gave some lovely light on the male Pochards. Apparently most of the females have the right idea and winter in the south of France or Spain leaving the males to freeze at Welney etc.

Photographing Rugby

One of my first attempt at photographing the game with the odd-shaped ball. Not easy as the game alternates between very static scrums, line outs,which need a vertical format, and sudden dashes with the ball. I will certainly give it another go - thanks for inviting me, Chris.

Trip to Wicken

It was such a beautiful bright afternoon, I couldn't resist a trip to Wicken for the bird feeders and Burwell Fen for the Owls. The Woodpecker and Goldfinch are from the Roger Clarke Hide. There were still 6 Short-eared Owls in all on Burwell Fen that I counted, one of which flew so close to where I was sat in a ditch that it frightened itself as well as me. This is the first image and it is not cropped!! After that it hunted a bit away from me giving a wary look every time it passed.

Moscow Night Shots

I am slowly processing the shots from Moscow. I took a lot of night shots and many of these really come alive with a bit of Lightroom and Viveza magic. These were taken with the G12 and, except for strong birefringence, compare well with the 5D that I used for most shots.

Botanic Reflections

A visit to the Botanic Gardens today in very flat lighting produced some interesting patterns in the leaf shapes and the reflected trees in the lake. I could see all manner of faces in the first image - especially for Tricia (I hope the ankle is less painful in the airboot).

Moscow Daily Life

A bit of a break as my broadband has been down for a few days. I am continuing to process the Russian trip photos in spare moments. Here are few images of everyday Moscow life - the Metro, cars, trolley buses and buses along with street scenes and shopping.

Monochrome Portrait

I don't often post portraits but I am especially pleased with this one of Sadie, which I have converted with Silver Efex.

Monochrome Flowers

I am preparing for a talk on art and nature, as part of the RPSPermajet day at the end of the month at Smethwick. Here are a few monochrome conversions of spring flowers which I think work well.

Cambridge Night Photography

Club outing to Cambridge last night to practise taking images in full night conditions away from artificial lighting as far as possible. I have colour corrected using the darkest part of the sky and this gives a good representation of the colour of the light sources in the image. My favourite is the last of King's College with a sprinkling of stars.

Frosty Morning

A combination of frost and infrared gave some very gentle images - taken on my usual dog circuit round our village in Cambridgeshire.

More from the Moscow Metro

Nik Viveza Software

Three pairs of images to show the power of Viveza (Nik Software) to put life into backlit subjects or night images. The left image has been processed with Lightroom to get as much as possible into the shadow and highlight areas of the raw images. They were then processed with Viveza and show the strength of the software to adjust difficult images. The final stage will be clone out the street lights in the Church image.