Wildlife Photography across the Water: bulb

Saturday, 24 April 2010

Florida diaries 6

Like all good things holidays come to an end, Whilst you will be reading this i will be making my way back to North Carolina. Its been a great 2 weeks shooting the Manatees being the highlight i guess and i cant wait for the winter to return and shoot these magnificent giants again, I got some great images of birds that i have long wanted to shoot like the Skimmer and Laughing Gull and have thousands of images to down load and sort through, This week in Orlando i have still managed to shoot some wildlife at the Gatorland rookery and even in the theme parks i have been surprised at how close you can get to wildlife, In the Animal Kingdom i came across a pair of nesting Spoonbills with chicks, I had written these off of my list as i had visited 3 other places for these images and non had any chicks,I was lucky that the nest was near the path and could easily shoot them with a 70-200 which was the longest lens i had on me, I went to Busch Gardens and Typhoon Lagoon and had birds come close as i was eating and i am not talking about sparrows, I was amazed to see white Ibis and Cattle Egrets begging for food and walking around your feet looking for some crumbs, Last night i made my way to the Magic Kingdom to photograph the firework display, The weather was perfect and the world and his wife decided to join us, I set up hoping to get the fireworks over the castle and managed to get quite a few half reasonable images using a tripod/release and Bulb, On the way to the Magic Kingdom we spotted two armadillos on the grass, I only had a 24-70 with me and even after some careful stalking where i got a good view of this strange animal i spooked it and it was gone, This is now one of my 'wants' as its a great looking animal and you rarely see any images of them, So thats it, A great holiday/photographic experience and one that i intend to return to time and time again, One thing i will say is that the camera gear has been faultless, Its been out in hot sun all day and has not missed a beat, I mainly used the D3 and hardly used the D300 at all as alot of the shooting was in lowish light i.e ISO 400 and over, I took the D3 and a wide lens into the parks and tried it on some of the captive animals-see the cuttlefish, This was taken at ISO 5000 and yet still gives a usable image, The flecks in the water are not grain just water particles, I must say i was impressed when i downloaded it

Along with the Manatees its been an interesting trip, Both above and underneath the water, Birds in flight and on the nest as well as some scenics

Dave

Thursday, 22 October 2009

Keep an open mind and an open eye

The last few mornings have seen me sitting under dark starry Tennessee skies waiting for the gates to open at Cades Cove, I used to enjoy star gazing and thought that i would stop looking and try and get a shot, I put the 14-24 on the D3 and fixed it to my tripod and made sue everything was strapped tightly down, i used a remote cord and set the camera to manual exposure and wound the dial down to 'bulb' Then it was a matter of taking a test shot which meant holding the remote down and counting, i started at 20 secs and worked my way through to 45 seconds, I couldn't see anything through the view finder so i set the lens to manual and to infinity,Orion is very visible in the early morning sky so i made sure to get that in, I made sure that there was some tree tops in the image giving some depth to the scene, there have been lots of shooting stars the last few mornings but i never managed to get one in the image, The line on the image is a plane, If nothing else it gave me something to do whilst waiting and gave me a chance to practice with some long exposure times

Dave

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.