Wildlife Photography across the Water: Strange Parallels

Wednesday, 13 July 2011

Strange Parallels - Nature and Machine

Sitting outside in my garden last week as dusk was falling, I was marvelling at the aerial ballet and dogfight-like flying of the Swifts overhead. As I have said before on the blog, I love to watch these birds fly.

It took me back a few years, in fact all the way back to my early childhood and got me reminiscing about watching Spitfire and Mustangs at airshows and how they jinked and flew about to entertain us.

I haven't been to a decent airshow for a few years now and haven't really missed it to be honest, particularly when you have your own daily airshow each day with the Swifts.

As recent as last night, with the young now fledged, we have had over a hundred flying a few hundred feet up overhead as they flock for the night.

In taking me back to my previous enjoyment of airshows , I was saddened to hear this weekend of the death of one particular beautiful bird, the P51D mustang - 'Big Beautiful Doll'. She was my favourite, beautiful restored and cared few, superbly flown and always a pleasure to see.

Sadly, she collided with anther aircraft and was destroyed in the resulting crash. The good news was that Rob Davies the pilot/owner managed to parachute clear.

Here she is in better times from a few years ago.

Martin

1 comment:

mark wood14 July 2011 at 14:33
Martin I saw the video yesterday - he was very, very lucky to escape.
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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.