Birds on Lihou Island

 The causeway was exposed yesterday afternoon so we walked across onto Lihou Island which is at its best at the moment covered with bluebells and thrift and full of breeding gulls and small birds. Linnets were everywhere singing from the tops of brambles. We saw both Rock Pipit (dark legs) and Meadow pipits (pale legs). Three nesting species of gulls, Greater Black Back, Herrng and Lesser Black Back (yellow legs) all have eggs or chicks at the moment. There were also Oystercatchers and just on the mainland a hunting Marsh Harrier.

Low-light Photography Guernsey

Here are a few images from our low-light photography evening. We started at Jerbourg point walking out to the Peastacks for the evening light and then into St Peter Port to wait for moonrise by the bathing pools. At 21.00 hours the moon rose but looked more like a setting sun. I took a shot to show that it was the moon. Sarah kindly did a bit of light painting with torches. Once completely dark, I did a few shots using the night setting of around 30 secs at f4 800iso. The last shot is my favourite with all the stars and still waters taken at 46sec f6.3 800 iso  It was impossible to focus so I went for infinity and hoped with this one.

Further HDR Trials

 These are further experimets with HDR Darkroom as I still have a trial version. It is very easy to use and produces a realistic to a more surreal effect depending on the settings.

Guernsey

For the first time, used the ferry to travel over to Guernesy for a week's workshops. We went from Poole to Guernsey on Conder Ferries in 3 hours.The weather changed from dark clouds to sunshine for our arrival.

Early Purple Orchids

 I made a quick visit to Hardwick Wood as I guessed it would be about the last time to find the Early Purple Orchids in good condition. I added Bugle, Wild Garlic and Yellow Archangel to the photoshoot.

Leigh on Sea

 A sunny and relatively warm stroll in Leigh on Sea before a visit to their Camera club. The elevated walkway over the railway is showing signs of weathering but the lines are still attractive for a few pattern images.It was high tide so not much scope for capturing the bathing pools.

Cambridge HDR with FX100

 I am still trying to decide if the in-camera HDR on the sony FX100 is worth using - it certainly does a good job on high contrast scenes but I am not convinced it is better than doing HDR from a single RAW file. Three separate exposure images recombined with HDR Pro would probably give better result but this is not an option when a tripod cannot be used as in Cambridge Colleges. The left-hand images are the best adjustments from a single image (jpeg), righthand are the HDR output from the camera. I need to do a raw image as well as the in-camera HDR.

Madingley War Cemetery

 I had never looked at the stone used to construct the Amereican War Cemetery until I visited today with David. With his interest in geology, we found some wonderful textures and objects in the Portland limestone. It invites use in montages of the views and structures at the War Cemetery. The general view was taken today and shows how easy it is to make autumn out of spring colours.

Ashridge Bluebells

 The bluebells are just about at their best at Ashridge Estate - maybe a couple more days to open the remaining buds.

Kingfisher Dive

A composite from today's kingfisher watch