Hanbury Hall

 Visited Hanbury Hall yesterday - interesting wooden staircases. Lefthand views taken with Sony RX100, righthand with Canon5D.

Leaf Cutter Ants

 When it got too cold on the fingers to photograph out of doors yesterday, I spent some time in the Butterfly House much of it with the leaf-cutter ants. I didn't have a macro lens so it was very hit and miss with the 70-200 mm and big enlargements but here are a few that I liked. The first shows the relative size of soldier ant and worker ant.

Stratford -upon-Avon

 It was very cold in Stratford-upon-Avon today but great skies for setting the trees etc against.

Food and Drink

 Rather a long break from the Blog as it has been a busy time finishing our move into our new bedroom and then coming to Evesham to judge Photo2013. As always hospitality has been great with lots of food and drink t0 sustaon our efforts in judging over 3,800 images. Images taken with Galaxy Notepad and processed with Snapseed.

Other Birds from Center Parcs

 A few of the other more interesting species photographed from the hide at Center Parcs (last image shows the whole area from the hide. I have looked up on the web and can't see any information on Jay eye colour and why it is sometimes blue and sometimes brown. Other images are Marsh Tit, Tree Creeper, Siskin  male and female and Nuthatch.

Coot Aggression

 The coots continually scrapped during our time at St Albans Veralim Park today. The light was very poor but managed a few interesting shots. It often appeared to be the eternal triangle situation. I wonder if they actually drown their opponent ever.

Tits in Flight

 The hide at Elveden Center Parc is the best place I have found to attempt to get birds in flight as the feeders are very high and the background a long way away. Despite two visits and a lot of exposures, I still didn't achieve a really sharp image image where it needed to be. Also, as I was shooting fairly late in the afternoon, I had to use ISO1000 to get an even tolerable 1250th of a sec at f7.1 - more depth of field and faster shutterspeed should be possible in the morning if the day is bright. Unfortunately will have to wait another year to try again.

Tree Creeper

Not a brilliant photo as it was quite gloomy at the time, but a record of a new species for our garden list as this lovely little tree creeper spiralled up the fruit trees.

Anglesey Abbey

The light was very dull and the temperature very cold when I visited Anglesey Abbey yesterday afternoon. The very shallow depth of field seems to work well with the bracket fungi on the log walls. A bit of fill-in flash (Sony RX100) with the second tree helped lift the image a bit and picked out the snowdrops. The light was right for the ivy trunks and the strange figure that appeared.

John Lewis Fish-eye

 A spent a bit of time with the fish-eye lens when I had finished photographing the staff etc for the JL project. Here are some uncorrected and corrected images showing a range of distortions.