Familiarity breeds success

The good thing about going to the same place many times is that you get to know and when animals and birds will be there, This holds true for me in the bay/Monterey area of California, I must have been 10 times or more at different times of the year but spring for me is the best, When you only have a week to get all your shots in you dont want to be spending time searching areas out, So although i did shoot some new areas i started off on known territory, I know where American Avocet and stilt nest close to the road, I know excellent places for wildfowl and where they fly into in the mornings and if i want to shoot mammals sea otter,seal,sea lion and ground squirrel are guaranteed and i guess that why this area of California holds such an appeal for me, the light is generally very good at this time of year and things are so abundant and every trip yields a surprise or 2, I have realised that i like to shoot gulls and Monterey is a great place for this, there are a couple of places that i visit where gulls come in and land on particular rocks, Gulls being gulls always want the rock that other gulls are on so there are always swabbles, I always make sure i spend a couple of evening shooting the gulls when  i am there, If nothing else its a good place to improve your flight technique as well as exposure,I have visited India many times at the same places for the same reasons, Its very difficult to compete with local photographers when you are only there for 1 or 2 weeks of the year but if you go back time after time and go at the very best times of the year you can give them a good run for their money, I treat my local area in the same manner, Working the same area for some time until i feel i have the best from it before moving on but keeping an eye on the area and returning when things are good,

Dave

Mothing in the Garden

In my second go at trapping in the garden last weekend, I attracted very few moths, but then there was quite a strong moon so I think I am out of sync with the moon on my weekends at the moment, and need to get back to dark nights.  I am going to try to set the trap at least every other week so I can progress the species that visit in the dark hours.

New species included the lovely Cinnabar moth - a very common and usually seen easily enough in daylight hours, but I have never photographed them before so that was a bonus.

The Heart & Dart is a very common species and can be attracted to light in great numbers, and once again there were half o dozen of these in.

The moth that I have labelled as the Tawny Shears is the one I am least confident that I have got right, so if there are any lepidopterists that read the blog, please do put me right if I am off here.

Finally, the Buff Ermine is a lovely moth and this one is a male.

 Cinnabar

 

 Heart & Dart (so called form the shapes on the wings)

 Tawny Shears ?   Nutmeg ( Thanks  David)

 Male Buff Ermine

I also borrowed a Bat Detector from some of the ecologists were I work.  Activity was faint, with recordings of just one Pipistrelle on each of Friday and Saturday night.  will have another go later in the year to see if there are any others about.

In my next blog, I will bring you some butterflies, including new species to me including the Duke of Burgundy, Small Blue and Brown Argus from a day trip I made to Gloucestershire last week.

Martin

Nikon D7000 and the P mode

The Nikon D7000 is a very good camera, Infact for the money i think its excellent, I use it more than my D3s which says a lot but it does have a couple of shortfalls, It has a small buffer-not a problem most of the time but when things do get fast an furious it can be somewhat limiting, The other problem is the mode dial, its far too easy to knock it into another mode by accident especially when you carry the camera over you shoulder or you grab the camera and tripod and quickly move with it pinned against your hip, I had this happen to me in California when i was down on a beach shooting whimbrel and sanderling, I was going through my images the other day when i looked at the exif on a few and noticed that i had shot with the 600+1.4x combo but the aperture was at F5.6, This struck me as strange as with an extender i never shoot wide open, Looking closer i see that i was in programme mode, I do not actually remember resetting the camera to manual but i must have done, The exposures were ok but some where a little darker than the next, not a lot luckily but not the consistent exposures that you get when in manual, Its important to shoot in manual mode when on a beach near the sea as when you have the sea as a background the rolling waves will give different exposures in all other modes than manual, If the sea has any kind of waves, the background will be white one second and blue the next and this will affect exposures unless you have them locked i.e in manual, Anyway i was lucky and i got away with it, I think by looking at the images i was only in P for a few minutes, Thinking back its probably 15 years or more since i last used the P mode, I do know some pro's that will quickly pop their cameras in P when taking a shot at night with flash-weddings etc, The benefit with P over the fully Auto mode is that you can adjust the exposure by compensating and change the aperture, I would advise you to use Manual or if the sun is in and out use AV/ aperture priority and take control of your camera for a more consistent exposure

A couple of P mode images

Dave

Mini Trip Report Pt 6 - RSPB Minsmere - Grey Heron

Grey Herons are one of those common birds that I have never really spent a huge amount of time photographing.  Almost prehistoric looking in appearance and flight, they are extremely graceful and wonderful to watch, but because they are relatively common I have too often overlooked them in the past.

Well in the final part from my short trip to Minsmere at the end of last month, here are a few photographs of some in different forms for you.

 Just coming into land and it has swept its legs forward and out of sight

Nice to see in amongst and over the reed bed.

Martin

Thinking out of the box-Photostiching wildlife images

When i was in California i had many occasions where i would wait patiently for a wildlife subject to do something or i would just watch and learn, One evening i was on a beach with a sleeping Sea Otter, I waited for some considerable time for it to awake and in that time it crossed my mind that i could make a very large image of it by taking multiple images and stitching them together, Agencies are always after more and more pixels and bigger files so i took 5 images in portrait mode from head to tail allowing extra at each end and i stitched them together in PTgui, A brilliant software that invisibly stitches you images together-seemless, Firstly when doing this you need to set your camera to Manual so that ALL images have the same exposure,Do not use AWB so i set mine to sunny and shoot where each image has an overlap, I shot with the D7000 and after putting the images through PTgui i ended up with a huge 227MB file (8bit Tiff), After cropping etc i still had 150MB file-twice that of a D3X, So the image could be if needed printed HUGE, If your subject is very still then this is a cheap and excellent way of getting big files from a cheaper camera
Click on image to make larger

Dave

Unacceptable Behaviour for Wildlife Photographers

Dave and I have said on more times that I care to remember that the most important thing about the wildlife that we enjoy is that the welfare and well being of the wildlife ALWAYS comes first.  We have linked the Wildlife Photographers code many times, and I have just added it here again.

But with new technology comes new opportunities and it seems that the use of SmartPhones apps for bird calls are now getting the attention in the mainstream media.

Now, notwithstanding the fact that lazy journalists clearly cannot understand the difference between twitchers, birdwatchers, and wildlife photographers, the message here for me in this link from the Daily Telegraph is clear and stark.

The use of bird calls will lure a bird via distress behaviour (Problem No 1).  It could cause it to leave the nest and therefore place it at risk of predation (Problem no 2), so the wildlife has been disturbed in the eyes of the law.

To me this is pure laziness on behalf of whoever the user of such apps for this purpose.  Just be patient, wait for the moment when the subject is prepared to show itself and rely on your own fieldcraft

So if you see, hear or know of anybody that uses this technique, then please remind them of the law, and if they don't, well I hope the law gets them.  In which case that is problems No 3 for the individual concerned.

On a wider note, this sort of behaviour gets the rest of us a bad reputation.  We should guard our reputation jealously.  Our wildlife in this country faces too many other problems from farming practices, loss of habitat, and illegal persecution - it doesn't need anymore problems.

To other blog readers and/or writers, I would be grateful if you could please link this story and lets make sure the wildlife photographic community keeps its sensible head on.

Enjoy your weekend

Martin

Blogger probs part 2

Looks like Blogger have recovered the lost posts as Thursdays effort is back.  That will save me re writing it, thank goodness

Martin

Blogger Problems

Blogger.com are obviously having some problems, There was some maintenance Wednesday night and yesterday i could not post, This carried onto today and i see that Martins post yesterday has disappeared, I am sure that they are working on getting back to normal, My blog today was going to be about the coincidence of Martins post yesterday where he was shooting Godwits and Avocets and thats what i was shooting in California,half a world away, I was about to post the blog when it too was gone, I am in a rush to get out today so i will leave you with the images that would have been in the blog-fingers crossed that this is a small hic cup

I will try and put up another small blog later on using P mode

Dave