Flowers in Guernsey

 A few flower portraits from my very enjoyable visit to Guernsey.

Many thanks to my hosts Jan and David for making me so comfortable and to Carl and all the Guernsey photographers for making us so welcome. I will be back!

Some more photos to follow when time to process them more thoroughly

Herm Island

 Perfect day to visit Herm with blue skies and light winds. A few shots to show the scenery and then some from a trip on the Bumblebee to view the Puffins in the evening. It was cloudy by then but this gave ideal conditions for some pictorial shots of these birds and Shags.

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.