Local Patch - Warwickshire

Sitting in The Old Schoolhouse at Smethwick Photographic Society, I am totally surrounded by photographs today. The Midphot exhibition is being unpacked around my ears and I have just sat through over 250 prints and soon to be starting on more than 500 digital images of the RPS Nature Group Exhibition judging. Has been great to see some fantastic work in there.

Anyway, on to the main theme of the day, my fortnightly local patch update.

The cold weather with sharp frosts and snow has provided some challenging conditions for our local wildlife. The garden birds have cleared us out of a sack of sunflower hearts and another one of mixed seeds since I last wrote. We have regularly seen up to 30 Blackbirds and even more House Sparrows on a daily basis. Grey Wagtail is still regular, and staying for lengthy periods now. We had the occasional visit from Fieldfare and Redwings during the harshest conditions which was a pleasant interlude. Song Thrush is now a regular morning caller for us too. I am always happy to be woken by it's song.

On a rarer front, we were thrilled to see a Male Reed Bunting on the ground feeder. We had only previously seen this just the once, the image was take last year on a feeder, through glass, so just a mere record shot.

Sue rang me up this last week to tell me that we had also had a beautiful female Kestrel in for a while too, on the ground and posts, much to the consternation of the little birds who dived into the air raid shelters to hide.

Further afield, there have been regular Diver sightings at Draycote Water and Bittern at Brandon Marsh. Details can be found from BirdGuides.

Journeys to work these last two weeks have seen more very early sightings of a number of raptors as they have struggled to find additional food in the snow, including very early Buzzard, Kestrel and Barn Owl, and a few sightings of Tawny Owl too.

Right I had better get back to work here now

Martin

News - a couple of odds and bods

Just a short news week round up from me. It has been a busy week preparing images and prints for various entries to exhibitions. Last week was my digital entries to the RPS Nature Group and the FIAP Small Print Circuit, a new circuit of four exhibitions for A4 unmounted prints. This is a good format to help keep down the costs. I have put some work in the Natural History section so we will have to see how that goes. Apparently there are over 5000 entries to all sections so it has been very well subscribed. At a local level, we had Merit comps at both Stratford Photo Group and Smethwick Photo Society, and got my butt firmly whacked in both by my partner Sue. Must try harder!!.

This weekend I will be finalising my prints for RPS Nature Exhibition. I will be writing a future blog post on my experiences with the Canon Pixma Pro9500 now that I have received the ICC profiles from Permajet. I have to say that I am blown away with the quality of the papers, I have used so far, so watch this space for a more comprehensive review soon.

I will update the Local Patch series on Sunday with more news and updates from round here - one or two new items of interest for you I hope. I shall be out hopefully tomorrow to see if I can get some images of the local Fieldfare, as these have eluded me so far.

Keep your eye on the weather as it is supposed to be going very cold again, and keep those food and water levels topped up in your gardens. I did the RSPB Big Garden Watch last weekend - quite disappointing in terms of the number of species seen during the hour I made available, and of course Sods Law dictated that the next hour saw masses of bird back in.

Martin

News and a few views

Just a short update from me today, having just got back from a meeting with a few folks from the RPS Nature Group as we get ready for the 2009 Exhibition. Images from last years exhibition can be seen here. My partner Sue is this years Exhibition Secretary and so we now have a house full of printed work, and stunning it looks too of the some of the work submitted so far, and I am sure that the digital entries will be stunning quality too, with the anticipation of increased numbers this year.

On the news front, this week has seen Canon updated the firmware for the 40D - who said it was superseded then? I occasionally steal Sue's 40D so will get that updated in a couple of weeks time. I like to leave any firmware updates for a couple of weeks before updating, unless it is a specific problems that I am experiencing. There are plenty of people who will be the beta testers for me, and the forums are full of problems , real or perceived soon enough. The only area where I didn't follow this was when I was going through the traumas of the 1Dmk3 AF issues last year.

To follow up the the 5Dmk2 recent upgrades, posted here, Adobe have released Lightroom v2.3 and ACR 5.3 as release candidate status. This was a new one on me but apparently means they are seeking further 'community' testing, as set out in more detail in DPR.

I finally bought into the Lightroom way of life over the Christmas holiday period and am getting to grips with it slowly. My main reason is simply for the Digital Asset Management (DAM) capabilities, as this is one area that I am sadly lacking and having had a good friend Andy Page show me some capability I can see where he is coming from, pity it cost me though.

Finally, there was a thread last night on EOS Forums pointing out that Calumet were selling the Canon 800 f5.6 IS L lens for just over £900. Well worth a punt I thought, but as to be expected there was a prompt email in my inbox this morning explaining the computer error. More like operator error!!

If you haven't done the RSPB Big Garden Bird Watch today, then you have still got the opportunity on Sunday' We would love to hear of your sightings so please do leave some comments with what you have seen.

Dave will be back tomorrow with an update from his garden and local patch since we started blogging.

Martin

Views - Subject comes before Photo

Now clearly for the majority of wildlife photographer this is stating the blinking obvious, but trawling forums and other places in web land, there are a remarkable number of people who are not aware of the Laws, certainly here in the UK.

The Wildlife Photographer's Code of Practice is compiled by the Royal Photographic Society Nature Group in conjunction with the RSPB and the three Statutory Nature Conservation Councils. So it is worth a reminder that many bird species, including such birds as the Kingfisher and Barn Owl are Schedule 1 species and require the appropriate consideration of the Law when photographing at certain times of the year. Ignorance of the law is no defence as we all know so please familiarise yourself with the relevant points as we head towards nesting season in the next couple of months or so.

Last year on Mull, a photographer disturbed one of the White Tailed Sea Eagles nests, resulting in the bird abandoning the nest and subsequent failure for that pair for the year. More details here. This sort of behaviour is completely unacceptable and causes more problems for other photographers afterwards.

Mull is a fabulous place to visit, with wonderful wildlife throughout the year and a place that I try to get to every year to see my friends Pam and Arthur Brown who run Discover Mull Wildlife Tours.

Anyway, I'll step off my soapbox now, but if we do really care about what we are trying to photograph, we will make sure that their welfare comes first, tempting as that shot of lifetime might be.

Martin