Now that's aviation

Gulls.

What first comes to mind? "Ergh," "Ewe," "Humph?" How about the echoing cries of "AIIIIIIIIGGGGGGGGGG" at the seaside?

I must confess. In the urban sprawl of London, I dislike gulls. Ducking and diving for scraps on the roads and pavements, they are up there with our friends the rats in my estimations. (Sorry everyone)

Things change at the wetland centre. For the reason why, there was no better example than when I visited last week - I was greated by a vast number of them, making the cacophony of noise only gulls can. And they were incredibly active. Ducking and diving, swooping and skimming accross the lakes surface. It all looked rather fun.

So for this blog post, the focus is our friends the gulls. Photos are a mix of old and new - enjoy :D

Sitting in the WWF hide (soon I think I will ave left an impression in the bench where I always find my perch...) I turned my lens to trying to capture the skill and pannache that these birds employ while hunting, socialising or just having fun.

The next two photos come under the theme 'verticle.' Its almost as if the bird has been cut and past back into the photo after being rotated 90˚ as even just before impact, these black headed gulls kept their wings extended.

Next up, fishing. Or... Stealing. Or just play?! Nature does not have the greatest of tollerance for sillyness. And sillyness is what I witnessed one sunny morning at the wetland centre. Feeling very pleased with himself, a herring gull had caught himself a fish. "Yum." Thinks he, as he gracefully wings his way accross the lake.

CAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!! Reverie over. The mob begins. Spotted by the flock which was so docile just moments previously, a wall of white wings rises from the lake and mobs our friend and his breakfast. Ducking and diving, the play pans out in a bizarre reverse pecking order: Herring gull loses fish to another herring gull. Herring gull 2 loses the fish to a smaller gull. Smaller gull loses the fish (after much pestering) to a black headed gull. Black headed gull realizes fish is a bit big and after dropping it a few times, surrenders it once more to a herring gull. So. Competing fo food like this is a wise evolutionary strategy? WRONG. After the gulls had spent all that energy, the only chap to get breakfast was a crow. Watching patiently from the sidings, when he perceived the silliness to be drawing to a close, he swooped in, grabbed the fish and was gone. Game. Set. Match.

And finally, to bring this whistle stop tour of gulls to a close. Here are a few pictures from my archive of gulls being gulls. Taken in Cardiff (fishing for minnows) and Henley (the later 2). Enjoy!

10/11/11: An Autumnal affair

"Its getting chilly," I was thinking as I stepped out on a rare day off to scamper over to the Wetland Centre. "But come on, its more or less mid November! It should be much, MUCH chillier. What are you complaining about?!"

"Humph." Thinks I, and casting meterological averages aside I fall back into reality: "I'm chilly".

And whats more, just as I got to the Wetland Centre car-park, my previously 'full' camera battery was now reporting a rather measly 1 bar out of 4. No hundreds of rapid shutter shots for me today then! This is NOT a bad thing. I dread to think what I would have been like if I had discovered photography before digital. "Considerably more in debt" I think would be the key phrase.

So, flashing my card and bustling past mothers with babies, watchers with telescopes and strollers pondering along with autumnal whimsy, I scamper to my hide of choice and make myself comfy.

It was a good day. There were HUNDREDS of birds on the main lake at the London WWT site. HUNDREDS.

Gulls. Ducks of bewildering variety. Lapwings. Grebes (Small and Gr Crested). Herons (10). Cormorants. Coots (angry). Moorhens. Crows (devious). And I'm sure there were many more! AND everyone seemed to be active and on full display for my lens.

The first two of todays photo focus on a rather handsome duck. After much flicking through books I believe he is a Gadwall. It took be bloody ages to realise this because most illustrations show no hint of the dashing auburn flash at his side, and I only confirmed his identity when i spotted the short phrase, "gadwalls also have white and brown colourings but tend to be rather too shy to display them." Not this chap, his lovely hazlenut flash was proudly out for all to see.

Moving on!

This is not that great a photo. But I have a soft spot for little grebes. They look like little balls of fluff when above water, but submerged they are the terror of many a little fish. Here he is in the Autumn sunshine, and again below diving for his lunch.

And finally, and without further adoo as I need to make dinner for some friends... Here are 2 fun photos of a (Black headed?) gulls. Neat.

Blogging reborn in black and white....

Ok, so I have a number of appologies to start off with. Firstly, and largely to myself, I am sorry for not blogging in so very long. Sadly this is largely due to my camera lying dormant on my bedroom floor gathering dust, while I was a tad overwhelmed with work.

Secondly, the post that follows is not the normal focus on the nature of London that would normally fill this page - In fact, the shots arent even from a captial... BUT, what i have for your delectation today is a foray into the world of black and white, and I hope you enjoy :)

 

So, these pictures are a short sequence from my recent trip out to Vietnam. In the past, I have generally stayed clear of black and white photography - largely because it is completely new to me. Havng toured a few galleries, it occured to me that black and white can very easily make a picture look good - deep contrasts and a sense of monochrome romance - but to take a great photo in black and white that stands out in the crowd is no mean feat. 

Experience lacking, I have used this skirmish with B+W to practise the things that I had been working on last time to went to the WWT centre. Along with my bird photography, I have been aiming to improve my compositions, bringing more depth and atmosphere to my photos. The subjects that attracted me in Vietnam were the markets. Walking through them was like wading through humanity - alive with sounds, sights and (of course) motorbikes. There was huge contrast not only between individuals, but between calm and chaos - These are the things to wanted to capture.

 Pictures 2 and 4 are from a little town called Hoi An. The town itself is frozen in time - designated a heritage site, the old architecture of centuries of trade have been preserved, leaving the only real change being the change from traders of the old world commodities of asia to those of the new world, i.e. the trade of the tourist.

The photo below is one of my favorites. When I was perusing this stall, the lined features of the man behind the table really caught my eye. It seems I want alone with my interest in him, as the little girl in the darker background also sits watching him. This is the picture which really sums up the Vietnamese markets to me - goods of all shapes and sizes, sellers of all ages.

The next photo is the last from vietnam for the blog. Taken without tripod, propped against a building to try and steady my hand, this lantern shop really shone out of the darkness late in the evening in Hoi An.

 Last, (and possibly least!) this was an earlier experiment with B+W that I thought i would tag on. Taken at HORR in Putney, it shows the Imperial 2nds coming back in to the boat house after a very sucessfull race. The 1sts were already landed and dry and I wanted to catch the rowers as they passed the bundle of oars on the foreshore. Sadly, in my haste, the end of the oars was just cropped out of the photo by my zoom. Humph.

Anyway, I hope you enjoyed the pictures this week. Next post (which will be soon!) Will be back to wildlife with some shots from Singapore. If anyone has any advice or comments in general, please write them below :)

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year one and all! Now, for some reason my blog is not allowing me to arrange the photos in this post, so the best will be saved until last!

To get the ball rolling, here are a couple of (heaven forbid!) landscape shots. I took these before Christmas whilst walking through the South Bank Christmas Market :) The winter sunshine was really bringing out the colours around the sights and I snapped these two in passing.

The London Eye

View of parliament

So that was 2010, now on to 2011 and more familiar photographic subject teritory for me! A sunday brought the first crisp, sunny day of 2011 for which I was back in london and free to wander up to the Wetland Center for just an hour. The late afternoon winter sun was really highlighting the main lake to creat a wonderful atmosphere to photograph the wildlife.

The first highlight of the afternoon was some activity on the islands as a new heron flew in to join his compatriots roosting in the reeds. i caught this shot as he drifted in to land.


And now the highlight. I suddenly realized my time had run out and i needed to head home when a juvenile grebe popped up from the reeds directly in front of the hide. One further dive and he surfaced with a catch. His timing was impeccable, I had not yet packed up and I fired off a stream of shots as he consumed his afternoon snack.

Autumn rays

Photos from the capital has been a desolate dessert of inactivity for far too long! So, just as the clear blue September skies were forecast to come to a close, I managed to catch the last afternoon of radiant sunshine before the rain drew in.

This post comes with three themes of photos. First up are a couple of examples of me playing with my circular polariser. Im still playing with this bit of kit, but i'm continually amazed by the quality it lends of any reflective surface. These first two photos show two angle of polarised light. The first, with the swan, I turned my filter to bring out the blues of the water, to crisp up with beautiful ripples across the lake surface. The second (below) was a different angle which seemed to excentuate the browns and greens of a passing teal and the foliage behind. I am still am amature with this filter so any advice/suggestions are very much welcome!

Ok, theme two. This is a continuation of me trying to develop my photographs as a whole. A little while ago (see a prior post), Lindsay commented that many of my photos lacked any sort of depth as I tended to capture subject against either sky or water. So in the next series of 3 photographs, I have tried to incorporate various backgrounds/reflective patterns to give a more wholesome photograph. Subjects are a little grebe, a teal, and a gathering of a teal a lapwing and a snipe, respectively.

And the final few. These are more for my own enjoyment. First up is a product of a long time sitting, waiting and nearly missing the moment when a snipe finally flew across to a new island. Largely due to luck, I managed to capture this shot as he drifted in to land.

The final couple are of some old favourites of mine. Gulls never disappoint in providing acrobatics that are a challenge to photograph, but give some great results. The first picture is saddly blurred, but i thought it was cool - I think this is as close as you get to a handbrake turn under wing power?!

Lastly, I really love this photo. It was early in the day when I was playing about with settings, but somehow I managed to really capture the colours of this gull. I love the orange of the beak against the blue of the wings.

Here's to hoping there will be some more clear weather soon!

A Holiday from the Capital

As the summer begins to wain, I finally returned to the capital.... and promptly left again! Going straight from a busy year studying graduate-entry medicine to a full time summer job and straight back to year two was perhaps a bit ambitious, so I decided a mini-break was in order!

I am fortunate enough to have family recently moved to the Netherlands in a beautiful area between the Hague and Amsterdam. To compliment the scenery the sun also turned out for a one day performance between fronts of rain - thank goodness I decided to take my camera with all its frills/lenses attached!

So, to business. It may be a new location for my blog photos, but the usual subjects came out in force. They put on a good show for me to practise with some new toys too - I recently went on a filter splurge and have a shiny new circular polarising filter for my 70-300mm lens. Im very much learning as I go with this one, but it is already showing its worth in adding extra quality to shots over water.

These two shot of a coot in flight and a fishing grebe were taken from a boat on a beautiful lake. It was quite windy and the choppy water adds a lovely depth to the shots.

The gem of today, however, did not come in bird form. Early in the morning, I walked out of the house and caught a glint out of the corner of my eye. A dragonfly was hanging in the midst of a bamboo hedge in full sun. Que a surge of over-excitement and a dash for my camera. Snap-snap-snap-snap. I had a field day, the dragonfly was most obliging and hung motionless throughout. I even had time to dash inside to replace my 70-300mm lens with my father's Nikkor macro lens and snap a couple in incredible crispness with this fantastic bit of kit. All in all I was a very happy photographer :)

ps - Ive been trying to Identify this dragonfly but to no avail. If anyone has an idea please let me know!

Finally another post!

What a busy Summer this has turned out to be! Working full time to save up some pennies has meant that the majority of the good weather passed me by with very few clicks resounding from my D40 shutter :(

It was last weekend when I finally found an excuse for some photography when I managed to zip off to Rutland water en route to a friends wedding in Loughborough. For anyone unaware of this gem, it is a lovely part of the world to wander around. When I was young and lived in the area, my parents used to take me for walks and pottering around picking up fossils from the beaches.

This time I was there for birds though. In terms of variety, the selection was very similar to the LWC - Ringed plovers, Lapwings, a selection of waders. Some new faces for me as well though - notably the appearance of a few little egrets. The number of terns was the most striking feature - Many were flying over the lakes hunting for the many young scattered over the islands. Here are a few of my better shots from a very brief spell before heading off to see my friend get hitched!

And now for something completely different. Staying in Husbourne Crawley for the past few weeks, the night sky has been wonderfully free of light pollution. Standing with our necks tilted right back, some friends and I saw a whole host of shooting stars and satellites crossing the nights sky. Photographically, I couldn't resist the challenge of some nighttime photography. Though the prize of a decent meteor pic eluded me all the way until my battery died, I have popped the photo below up to recover some sense of pride - In the bottom left hand corner is a very small little trail of one of the meteors that teased me by darting just out of my frame.