The Luck of the Draw

Well today was beautiful light, but - guess what - the tide proved to be not quite high enough to drive the waders off the mud so today we had to settle for single birds (Ringed Plover, Knot and Turnstone) and one small flock of Dunlin.

Waders on the Wash

I would put this as one of the hundred things to do before....... The sound and sight of flocks of thousands of waders passing overhead is amazing.


The rain stayed away more or less for the early morning so we got our time with the thousands of Knot, Dunlin and Oystercatchers that had been driven off the wash mudflats onto the shingle banks by the very high tide.
I tried all combinations of shutterspeed, aperture and ISO and am still not sure I got quite what I wanted so will return tomorrow and hope the tide is high enough to drive the waders off the Wash.

Eye Green Peterborough

We arrived at the Travelodge in Eye Green in the middle of a very heavy thunderstorm so had to wait for 30 mins for the rain to ease off enough to get out of the car and wade to the lodge entrance. Once the storm had passed we took a walk round the local Nature Reserve. Lots of wet pictures.The hawthorn berries made an interesting subject for monochrome conversion using either maximum or minimum red channel

Sunshine in London

Saturday was a bright sunny day in London - very contrasty light even at 5 o'clock when I was crossing Trafalgar Square on the way to the station. The tourists in the square are very different to even five years ago in that they now spend much of the time huddled in threes, pairs or singles reviewing their camera images rather than feeding the pigeons.

Covent Garden was really quiet when I passed through in the morning in contrast to the crowds in the evening.

London Folks

Intrigued by this set of people in Trafalgar square - styles of dress, interaction with each other and especially their feet had stories to tell. The Festival Hall and Embankment was taken over by a Vintage Weekend so lots to see and photograph - again the feet took my eye.

Dragonflies (Again!)

After a week of cool and cloudy days, we were very lucky that the sun shone and the temperature was reasonable for today's RPS Nature Group and CCC visit to Burwash Farm. Each of the six ponds had its patrolling Emperor dragonfly and by the afternoon there were quite a few laying females. I used manual focusing as the constant ripples and movement of the foliage prevented the autofocus picking up the moving dragonflies. I was surprised to find in one of the shots, the Emperor Dragonfly was doing a roll of victory as it passed me.
By the afternoon there were plenty of Common, Azure and Blue-tailed Damselflies.

Enjoying Grantchester

A few images taken around Grantchester Meadows with the infrared camera

Story of a Fox

I have been starting to sort through my Swiss holiday images and thought I would record the tale of the Fox as a lesson on keeping your longest lens on the camera when walking. I had been photographing flowers and was in a bit of a hurry to get the train back to Wengen so did not change to longer lens. Round the corner comes this bold fox carrying a discarded sandwich so the first shot was with the 50mm (fortunately not the 24mm). He came pretty close so a reasonable shot was had before he headed off into the rocks on the left. As I had a hard-boiled egg left over from lunch (dyed an orange colour!), I threw this for him as delaying tactics while I changed lenses. It worked and with my 70-200 mm I was able to get closer photos as he buried the egg and then went back to retrieve more discarded lunch.

On the Tour

A few images of the hundreds of groups that pass through the Wengen area every day - they have one day to enjoy the area before off to Rome or similar.

Goodbye to Wengen

Goodbye this morning - yes it is raining!

Flower Portraits 4

Final day in the Bernese Oberland and a very hot humid one. We walked up from Kleine Scheidegg to Eigergletsch photographing new or attractive flowers. The red campion comes under the latter and is there in its masses. I liked this single spike. Interesting comparison - lefthand with G12, righthand with 5D and 24mm lens. Round-headed Rampions for Tricia.