It's now been nearly a year since my last post! I really must try harder.

I've been nominated by my friend Danielle Connor (http://danielleconnorphotography.zenfolio.com/) to do the Black and White Photo Challenge and I've decided to follow her idea to complete the challenge in blog format. The original idea is that you post five images over five consecutive days nominating a friend/photographer with each image. Mine however, will all be in one post.

 Here are my five images.

 

I photographed this Cygnet at sunset, shooting towards the low light so that it lit up the downy feathers. Underexposing the image caused the feathers to outline the bird against the dark water behind.

I'm generally not usually much of a plant photographer, but I quite liked this shot.  Shooting with a dark background on this dead dandelion gave a nice shadowy look to the image.

I used a head-torch as a form of back-lighting on this Early Thorn moth.  Again, I under-exposed, to cause the moth to be silhouetted against the light.

This young Heron was sitting in bright light, which meant I could get a dark background making the bird stand out.

 

I generally don't stray from nature photography, so I was out of my comfort zone with this shot.  It was taken from the bottom of Tower 42 in London - taking the image in portrait showed off its height.

 

So that's my five entries. I'd like to thank Danielle for the nomination, and nominate Caleb Knight ( https://www.facebook.com/CalebKnightWildlifePhotos) to also complete this challenge!

 Thanks for reading

 

I must apologise for the lack of posts recently.  But I've been a bit busy, and admittedly I haven't had too much to write about on here.  I have a couple of projects underway at the moment so I'm sure over the coming months I will update more frequently.

 

Where possible I always try to take 'different' shots, I especially like the creativity you can get from backlighting.  So on Saturday at Kensington Gardens, I was happy to have a Cormorant on a post around 20 feet from me.  With backlighting, so I couldn't resist a few shots.

This first shot was taken just after it came out of the water, and as Cormorants do it opened it's wings and gave them a shake.  The dark background and backlighting helped to show up the water droplets as they were shook off the bird.  If I'd had time I would have preferred to have used a slower shutter-speed to show the movement in the wing shake and water, but it was over very quickly.

 

I tried some slightly more abstract shots as well, here I under-exposed so that the edges of the bird were highlighted but the rest of the bird was totally black as was the background, so the highlighted areas stand out so that you can still see what the image is of.

Where the sun was hitting the water behind the Cormorant it through up some nice Bokeh which I made the most of, by getting a higher angle than I used in the previous two shots I had the water in the background but also the black of the other side of the lake which was in shade which made an interesting contrast in my opinion.  The black background also helped define the edges around the head of the bird, but in this shot unlike the previous one you can still see some detail in the face.

I didn't just try abstracts, when the sun was behind the clouds and I could expose the  whole bird correctly I tried some standard portraits.  As would be fitting I used a portrait style crop.  This I thought would help show the long neck of the bird.  The slight back-lighting that was still there also gave a nice edge to the upper mandible of the beak.

All images taken with:

Canon EOS 7D, Sigma 150-500mm, Hand-held.

 Settings, all were taken at f/8, at 500mm, ISO 400, and between 1/400-1/2000.

 

 Once again I hope you enjoyed reading this, please let me know what you think in a comment.

Thanks!

Hi,

This is my first blog-post on my new website. As some of you may know I have another blog (http://earlywormbirder.blogspot.co.uk/) however that blog is more for the birding side of things. And slightly less serious.  This blog I hope to be slightly more informative. An insight on the shots I get.  How I get them, what equipment I use and perhaps even the settings I use. 

 I thought a good place to start this blog would be with the Red Deer rut.  I, like so many other wildlife photographers at this time of year went to Richmond Park for this spectacle.  Here, the Deer are more used to humans, which allows you more time to create the images you want, whether portraits of individuals, shots of herds or even some habitat shots, although there is a limit on how much habitat you can show before signs of the park environment come into the images.  That could however be what you want.  My plan however was to get some pleasing images of the stags bellowing.

 An early start meant I was there for sunrise. The sun being low in the sky made the light  fantastic!  I'd already found a stag whom I focused on for the greater extent of my time there.  This individual was among the bracken which gave the images a more natural effect.

After photographing him roaring for about half-an-hour, he decided to take a rest in the bracken.  This gave me an idea for a shot.  Getting a low angle and composing the image with just his eye and antlers as the focus point and framed by the bracken gives you a kind of Deer's eye view.

I spent most of the rest of my time there photographing different individuals, and had a fairly successful time.  Below are some of my favourites. 

 

TTS Photo Design

Sarah-and-Jason-Nellcote-Chicago-Wedding-by-Sprung-Photo-243

All photos taken using the following:  Canon EOS 7D, with the Sigma 150-500mm mounted on a Velbon Sherpa 200R.  All shots at Aperture f/8, ISO between 400-1000.

 Thanks for reading, I hope to update the blog again soon, so keep an eye out for the next post! And feel free to tell me what you think in a comment.