Wildlife Photography across the Water: Late post

Sunday, 10 October 2010

Late post - Trip report sneek preview

I mentioned a couple of posts ago about Autumn Spectaculars and that I would let you know where I have been when I have been.

With a great weekend of weather forecast, Jac and I took ourselves off to Wales this weekend to catch up with the spectacular Red Kites at Gigrin Farm.

The weather didn't do as forecast and was awful on Saturday with grey skies and horrible light.

We started off dropping into a Worcestershire Wildlife Trust reserve at Upton Warren first thing. Lots of Lapwing, Mallard, Shoveller, Teal, a couple of huge rafts of Coot - nothing spectacular to be honest. We did see a Pectoral Sandpiper on the far side - too small to photograph, a couple of Kingfishers - too far and too fast to photograph, and a lovely Green Sandpiper, which I will share on my next post.

As I type this, I am busy downloading stacks of images so haven't had a chance to process anything yet.

Moving on to Wales, the light was abysmal but we persevered. What was quite noticeable was that the 7D AF was far superior in worse light than the last time I went there. Three years ago, I organised a trip for nine other photographers - five of us were using the 1Dmk3, and five of us couldn't get it to work in that light. Well with worse light yesterday, I did work. I also tried the flash with the better beamer, and will share some results of that with you.

Notwithstanding the weather though, four to five hundred Red Kites are pretty spectacular and we had a great time there.

After a stop over at a pleasant hotel we took ourselves back there again today, but not until we had visited a few other places on route and saw another Kingfisher and Green Sandpiper, a couple of female Goosanders, a Peregrine seeing off a Raven, six Bullfinch, six Redwing, numerous Meadow Pipit, a stack of Red Kite, Buzzard and Raven over the hills.

Arriving at Gigrin again, the weather was wonderful - blue skies, a decent breeze for the kites to work with, a few white clouds from time to time and another massive amount of Kites. I kept shooting til I ran out of CF cards and then switched to the 1D and used the SD cards. With bright light, it appeared to work fine, but I haven't checked the results yet.

So it was a fab weekend - knackered now and looking forward to sorting out the good from the bad images.

Hope you all had good weekends too .

Will share the outputs later this week.

Martin

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Bio's

David Courtenay, a self taught wildlife and nature photographer, has been capturing images for over 30 years. He has had a passion for wildlife since early childhood and remembers being glued to the television whenever Survival, Wildlife on One and other natural history documentaries were shown. In the 2006 he swapped his established career for the life of a wildlife photographer, such a move demands a measure of uncompromising passion and commitment.

David has travelled extensively throughout Europe as well as spending more than 7 months in India working with local guides and trackers in search of Bengal Tiger, Asian One horned Rhino and Asian Elephant. He has also photographed Wildlife in Australia, Malaysia, Thailand, Sumatra, Africa, Canada and America. Working closely with Conservation companies he tries to raise funds to help Wildlife that has been put on the endangered list by poaching and habitation loss

Martin Dyer has had a passion for avian wildlife since childhood, particularly raptors. Photography was also another keen interest and it was with the specific availability and control of the whole process that digital offers that Martin was then able to combine the two in 2003. Based in the UK, Martin is a regular visitor to Scotland, specifically the Isle of Mull to watch the Eagles resident there. Other trips to Europe and around the UK are usually part of Martin’s agenda in a typical year.

However, as a firm believer on making the most of the local patch, Martin has spent a lot of time and hard work creating a wildlife garden which is reaping the rewards with many new species and varieties of wildlife. A keen member of a number of wildlife photographic groups, Martin is keen to expand his portfolio into other areas of wildlife, and has already established a wide portfolio of images of fungi.