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.

Stacked Panorama from Lofoten Islands

I have redone this vertical panorama using PTGui which has done an excellent job aligning the images compared with Photoshop (http://pin-sharp.blogspot.co.uk/2015/02/a-lofoten-islands-norway.html). I have held back on the colours to give more the feel of a soft Arctic afternoon sky. Not sure this will be the final image - still a bit of chromatic aberration to deal with from the shift lens giving a bit of a light halo on the mountain edge. I will try a horizontal panorama or two from the trip before returning to this one

Suffolk Owl Sanctuary

Called in at the Suffolk Owl Sanctuary on the way back from lecturing in Ipswich last night. Very much the off-season but enjoyed those birds that were exercised and also the Meerkats. I had seen some paintings done of Owls etc with textured backgrounds so had a play with four of today's images.

Å, Lofoten Islands, Norway

This image is from the very tip of the Lofoten islands, a place called Å, being the last letter of the Norwegian alphabet. The image is a vertical panorama, photomerged in Photoshop. It comprises four images using the shift lens in raised and lower position and with two images for the central position focusing on the foreground and background, respectively. The images have not quite aligned in Photoshop - I will need to redo at some stage more carefully or use a better merge software - any suggestions.

Oslo

 We spent the final night of our trip in the Comfort Hotel Express Central Station in a balcony room on the top floor (an excellent budget hotel). This was the view in the morning - clear skies so we decided on a trip to Vigeland Sculpture Park as we had heard so much about it. The unique sculpture park is the life work of the sculptor Gustav Vigeland (1869-1943) with more than 200 sculptures in bronze, granite and cast iron.  Certainly an amazing location though I found some of the statues (especially those on the bridge) quite disturbing.  I have chosen some from the granite Monolith platform and from the bronze Wheel of Life.

Last Photos from the Lofoten Islands

I had been wanting to visit the race course in Leknes ever since I spied it on our first day in Lofoten. The leaders declared the grey weather no good for photography and it might snow so most stayed in the hotel but Jane and I found our way to the race course and were rewarded with some trotting on ice. The horses have ice spikes on their hooves and travelled very fast.

Monday it snowed hard and so our afternoon flight was delayed three hours while the snow ploughs got to work.

Another Frozen Fjord, Lofoten Islands

On our way back to the hotel we stopped to photograph this beautiful frozen fjord and all the different ice patterns.