Sunrise at Portland Bill

As I mentioned here, just after the wedding Jac and I spent a bit of time on Dorset and one of the great pleasures of the trip was seeing the sun come up over the English Channel from Portland Bill.

It was a good forty five minutes before the sun came up that we found ourselves parked up at a chilly exposed car park, with just the rays of light from the lighthouse playing out across the sea.

Finding a suitable spot looking towards where the sun was due to rise, I set up the 5Dmk2, 24-70 on the tripod with the Lee Filter system, mostly using my favourite Blending Filter.  This is a specially made ND grad that transitions from 3 stops at the top through to nothing at the bottom in one big graduation.  I like this filter as it avoids the obvious step in exposure that you get with standard ND grads.

Well before the sun was up the light was cold and blue

As the sun came up the light transitioned through these glorious stages

They have all had a little amount of Photoshop fannying about for artistic effect.....obviously.

With the waves crashing in the rocks and the wind blowing straight at me, I kept the lens covered with a Lee Filter lens cloth in between shots, and generally had to wipe the filter clean in between alternate shots

Turning round directly behind me in the same place was the lighthouse.

Using just a standard exposure resulted in this shot.

Quite pleasant, but nothing really special.

Putting on the B & W 10 ND screw on filter that I blogged about last year, and then fitting the Lee Blender on top gave me these images

A completely different effect.  As I mentioned before, one of the compromises with the 10 x Screw in filter is you have to do all your composition and set up and lock the camera off before you fit the filter and Lee system.  And before that you have to do the exposure calculation.  I usually do a meter reading, and then using fingers and thumbs keep doubling the shutter speeds until I get to what I think is about the right answer.  It doesn't always work out right, but then you can experiment extending or reducing based on your results.

This was the first time that I had used the 5Dmk2 for landscapes and I have to say I am very impressed with it.  Lovely smooth files, which the size and resolution on here will never do great justice to

Martin

Spring-my favorite time

The garden is getting busy with birds consrantly at the feeders, We still have plenty of winter birds around but i am sure that they will move off soon , We have a cold spell for the next week with temperatures in the 50's, Its been in the high 70's so to us it feels cold, The birds are very active and for the first time in the 2 years that i have been here we have bluebirds nesting in out bird box, I have trimmed some thin branches away and will be putting up a nice blossom branch this week and hope to get some 'pretty' images of this colourful bird,
I made the frame up for the pond/pool and now have it staked in and the liner fitted and filled with water, Everything is nice and square and i can now build the edges up with soil and turf to make a kind of infinity pool, It will be a long term project and i hope to get some nice reflections of our garden visitors, I have watched a red bellied woodpecker everyday this week feed on the fat cube so another target to aim for which should not be too difficult, Its a great time of year-my favorite as there will be cubs around soon and lots to aim for

 Dave

Final Part - Slimbridge Trip Report - Part 5

What with one thing and another, I am behind on my trip reports and images, so today is catch up and share the last few images from my Slimbridge trips that I made in February.

My timing was quite good as shortly after these images were taken the Whoopers and Bewicks made their migrations.

One of the Bewicks that made regular fly-by's was 002T as can be seen from its leg ring and neck transmitter.  I am assuming this is either a GPS or radio transmitter for more detailed tracking.  Somebody in the hide said that this bird usually winters in Holland which if that was the case then it was nice to see it over here.  If anyone can give more information on this bird it would be good to hear from you.

A few more for you.  Weather was dry but grey flat light sadly.

The second and third I liked with the juxtaposition of the land.  Shelduck could do with a catch light, but there wasn't one so I ain't gonna add it.  Done that in the past (not on the blog) but will only present wildlife as is unless I tell you that I have removed/added stuff.

Final shot shows a drake Tufted Duck just after a dive as you can see from the mud still on his bill.

Will be back with some Dorset wildlife in forthcoming blog posts including some sunrise/sunset landscapes by way of a change

Martin

I feel the need for speed

I mentioned the other day that i had purchased a SSD hard drive for my new laptop to try and boost the speed and realize the true potential of the i7 processor, Well its in and today i got it back with only Windows 7 professional fitted so a clean install without all the crap that comes with an off the shelf laptop/computer, So i have spent most of the day loading Capture One, Breezebrowser and Photoshop as well as putting in all my website addresses etc, So far so good, Its opens very quickly and things like photoshop are open in a few seconds which is a real boon, When i was in Japan Pete had his super duper MacBook Pro with SSD and was downloaded while i was still booting up programmes, It really does make a difference and is the best bang for you buck for improving PC/Mac performance, The PC has a USB3 port as well so i can this becoming my main PC  for a while and i will upgrade my external hardrive cases to USB3 to get the max out of them, Tiger Direct have the cases for $35 so its just a matter of swapping the drives over, It should make a huge difference when downloading and backing up
This is the SSD that i purchased
Here are the external casings
As you can see the SSD is 120GB, With all my software on there it only comes to about 40GB so i have room to spare, I could have gone for a 64GB or a bit smaller and saved some money but i didnt want it to be too tight, One thing to remember is that ALL images etc will need to be kept on external drives if you dont want to fill your drive up, The bonuses of having an SSD over a normal hard drive apart from the speed is that you cant damage one by dropping it as there are no moving parts and if it does crash you dont loose the information unlike a normal hard drive
We spend far too much time tucked behind a monitor so anything to help is well worth the money

Dave

1000th Post Today

Well when Dave and I first spoke about this blog back over two years ago, I am not sure that we ever had much of a 'plan', and I don't know if I am honest with myself that I ever imagined we would get up to writing this number of blogposts.


It has been a pleasure to share our experiences of the things we enjoy - the wildlife, the photography, the technical and the It side of things.

From my perspective, I am sure there are lots of things that I do that many (most) of you do differently , but one of the things I have learnt is that there is no right or wrong way - there is only your way.  If we have helped others that is great, if we have amused and entertained anyone, that is all a bonus.

It has rarely ever felt like a chore, and regular readers will know that when time is a bit tight trying to fit the blogging in, the post might be pretty short.  I have got lots of recent images to share with you and will get round to it over the next few posts hopefully.

Over to Dave for his thoughts

Well how time fly's, Over 2 years and to hit our 1000 blog is a real mile stone, There are many people doing blogs and they will know how tough it can be to not only write on a regular basis but to keep going-many have fallen by the wayside, As Martin said we never really had a plan and still dont i guess, just to keep it up and try to stay fairly fresh, I personally would like some input from our readers-likes and dislikes and some ideas or questions are always welcome, I am in the process of building a small pool in my garden-water is the best way of attracting wildlife so i will carry on with that now and report back in a few weeks



Heres to the next 1000 posts

Martin and Dave

Frog Blog'11 - Part 5 - All croaked out

Activity of spawning continues in the pond as I type this on Tuesday night, but it has tailed off now.  There are still about ten pairs at it, and there are now over thirty clumps of spawn.  I guess it really will be a bumper year.

Checking out the pond last night with the torch, the Smooth Newts are very active now, and I will be checking out for their eggs very soon, now I know where and how to look for them, having done an Amphibian Surveying Course last weekend with the Warwickshire Wildlife Trust

Here are a quick couple of images that I took with the new 5Dmk2 and Canon 180 f3.5L - a really stunning combination of quality and sharpness.  I am really looking forward to this years 'close up' season.

You can see the fruits of his labours just in front of him just under the water surface

Martin

Bonus Images

When ever i go away on a trip i always wonder what will be the unexpected or bonus images, We all have expectations of what we want to get, In Japan i expected Cranes, Eagles both Stellers and White Tailed and of course the Snow Monkeys which we did get in abundance, We thought that fox would be easy-they weren't and it was the last day and just about the last shots that added fox to the list, The real bonus i guess was the Blakiston's fish owl-biggest and one of the rarest owls in the world, We nearly missed out on it as you could not use flashguns this year and the only lights were horrible colour casting spot lights and it was kinda expensive but we had come a long way and if it meant just to see one then that was good enough, The other bonus images came in the way of wildfowl, Not only did we see some very nice ducks but managed to get full frame images of them in good light, I like to observe behaviour and things like the crest going down on a goldeneye normally means its about to dive and i had some fun shooting the bird as it dove down just getting its tail out of the water
like this

I have tried to get decent Goldeneye images for years, The best i managed was in Switzerland and although the images were OK thats all they were, In Japan we not only managed excellent close ups but also ducks swimming in mini ice packs and in good light which is important for birds with iridescent feathers, Times like this do not come often, In Japan it was basically just a few hours when the ice in the harbour had broken up so you have to be an opportunist and make the most of the situation which i think we did.

Goldeneye

Harlequin Duck (juv)

Scaup

Pin Tail

Fox

Now take a look at these 2 images taken a second a part of a Goldeneye Drake

Notice the eye, Certain ducks have a 'floating iris' which was look strange and or blurry even after processing, After you have sharpened the image i would then draw around the eye with the quick selection tool in photoshop and add some extra sharpening just to the eye, It can make the world of difference

Dave

The Butterflies are back

It is wonderful what a difference a couple of warm sunny days back.  Followers of my twitter feed @martind01 will know that I saw my first butterflies in my garden of the year on Saturday.

Well on Saturday we had two Brimstones, three Commas and a single Peacock.  Yesterday, we went a bit better and had four Brimstones, three Commas again, two Peacock and a single Small Tortoiseshell.  So four species by March 20th - a good start to the year.

I will send my recordings into the Warwickshire Butterfly Conservation team site.  Why not check out your Counties site by checking out the national site here and sending in your recordings.

I currently have a glut of photos to share with you from a number of outings so will bring this to you in forthcoming blogs.

Martin