Signs of Spring Survey at Paxton Pits

Nothing at all spring-like about the weather today for the first nature survey of the year at Paxton Pits - wet and cold. We recorded quite a few bird singing including my first Chiffchaff of the year and several plants in flower or bud including the Blackthorn, Sweet Violet and Grey Poplar here. The wet conditions has hydrated the patches of Blue-Green algae. Back at the visitor centre, delighted to photograph a Marsh Tit inaddition to Great Tit.

Testimony to the Waterproofing of the Fuji-XT1

On Sunday in a freak accident, I dropped my Fuji-XT1 into a trough of water under a greenhouse bench. It was fully submerged for a minute or so before retrieving it and quickly turning it off and drying as far as possible with tissues. When I removed the lens, there was no water in the main part of the camera with the sensor completely dry but water had got into the view finder, battery and card slots. It was stored in a sealed bag of rice and then dryed in front of a fan for several days. It works fine though of course time will tell if any contacts corrode.
The Zeiss macro lens is also fine though still not quite dry so, as you can see, as it cools condensation appears inside giving a very pleasing soft focus effect. I hope it will also fully dry in time.

Fun at the Disco

On Monday, I photographed a local school disco for their magazine. For most of the time (images 1-6), I shot slow shutterspeed images (around 0.6 secs) with ETTL flash bounced off the ceiling and Rear Curtain Flash set. This meant that some children were caught in the flash but they also recorded while they moved around and if the bright disco lights hit them then this action was also frozen giving a variety of coloured hands etc. Obviously for the magazine, I wanted images that had the childrens' faces, but here are some of the creative ones. Images 7-10 are without flash relying on the disco light to illuminate the scene.

Yearly Spring Markers

Every year around March 21st, I record the flowers open in our garden to get a comparison with previous years - bit late this year. Mostly this year is comparable with previous years. Most spring flowers have a long flowering period so primrose, helleborine, ground ivy are always in bloom at this time plus daffodils. However, there are no flowers yet on the plum tree or buds on the kingcups as last year - an average year rather than last year's earlier one here in Cambridgeshire. It is not as late as in 2013 when snow was on the ground on March 21st, Spring Markers 2013

CCC Start to Finish Creative Day

We enjoyed an enjoyable day at Sylvie's today trying out various creative techniques including closeups of glycerine drops on moss capsules and multiexposure in the camera of subject and texture.

Playing with Shutterspeed etc at The Strid

Thursday was the best day weatherwise of my trip so I decided on a walk at Bolton Abbey up to the cascades at The Strid. I had a 10-stop ND filter with me so tried various long exposures; eg. images 3 and 5 1/4 second, images 4 and 6 30 secs). In some cases, I took several different shots at the same settings and then used the HDR mode in LR to combine them to give a softer image (eg image 7 which is four 1/4 second exposures)

Rest in Peace?

I am staying near Leeds/Bradford Airport for the week and took a walk up to the local cemetery which lies under the flight path of the airplanes. I had my small infrared camera with me which I felt worked well for the subject