
Typically it turned into a sunny and slightly windy day for the Macro course. Ideally we would have had some cloud, but it allowed me to show a few ways of over coming the light and weather conditions. We had a great choice of floral subjects with Ramsons, Bluebells and Wood Anemones, amongst others, in bloom. Unfortunately insect life was limited to one bee and a few flies, but bark textures and back-lit leaves gave some variation. Roger spotted some resin oozing out of a felled tree trunk, which on closer examination had a myriad of colours reflected in it, from the blue sky above to the orange of the underlying wood. It shows that with your eyes fully open to the opportunities around you, the macro world is a great place to spend some time!
A quick demo of the portable field studio, my portable “cloud” i.e fold up reflector and the use of extension tubes were the only interruptions, apart from lunch in the Gower Inn, Nigel, Malcolm, Jeff, Sandra, Rhian, Steve and Roger who joined us later had to put up with while they took their own pictures. I only took about 10 images, so haven’t got a huge variation to choose from, but these are some from the field studio and how to take macro pictures without a macro lens demonstration.
The different tones of green this time of year make an interesting subject in their own right and hopefully a few more images will be possible for my dominant image colour project.

(For those of you wondering on how to take macro pictures without a macro lens, it requires extension tubes and ideally a fixed focal length lens to make life easier. Images above taken with 300mm F2.8 lens and stacked 36, 20 & 12mm extension tubes)


































WWT London Wetlands Centre & London Wild Bird Watch
Well London Wild Bird Watch has come and gone. Congratulations go out to all involved in the organisation. I’m sure if it runs again next year it will go from strength to strength and areas will be tweaked and developed further. I know the weather wasn’t too kind on Friday, but Saturday was busy and I’m sure the sun on Sunday helped attendance. Loads of activities and presentations had been set up, so I had prebooked a ticket to see Simon King presenting on the Wildlife Whisperer stage. On arrival I headed out straight into the reserve to see what was around, plus I was trying to avoid the temptations placed in the exhibitors centre.
As you can see from the photos, Robins were singing away all around the site. I hadn’t brought all the photo gear as I was travelling light, but the birds were happily ignoring all visitors and carried on singing away. After another look around the exhibitors and having a chat with the folks at Sigma, the Sound Approach, Aigas Field Centre, 5.11 gear on the Wildlife Whisperer stand, Benro, Giotto, Gitzo and finally Nikon with a look at the new D800, I waited to listen to sound recordist Chris Watson’s presentation.
Chris did a great presentation on the dawn chorus, with a slight twist. The dawn chorus starts on the north east coast of Scotland and sweeps across the country with it arriving in Cornwall just over 1 hour later. Chris had taken this and played the dawn chorus of various habitats from north to south but had included the underwater worlds, both sea and freshwater. Presented in 8 channel surround sound, it was a great demonstration of the power of sound.
After a quick bite to eat and the pleasure of bumping into an old friend off to the Amateur Photographer Photography Workshops (Hi Andy!), I went to Simon King’s presentation. Based on the theme of Urban wildlife he presented web camera images of Peregrine Falcons nesting on Charring Cross hospital, foxes in a city garden combined with video shorts of Simon setting up the web cameras plus the showing of a a live peregrine in the theatre. As you would expect from Simon, it was well presented with lots of information and entertaining. The final prize draw of £2000 + of telescope and other gear was a surprise, especially to the 5 year old winner. Her Dad was happy anyway!
Kate Humble was popular, with a large number of (unsurprisingly) men and some ladies queuing for her book signing and later a presentation for the WWT on the Spoon billed Sandpiper Project. Kate is a popular and vocal supporter of the WWT, which can only help them get their message across.
It was a really enjoyable day and I hope it runs again next year. A lot of work went into the event and I hope the organisers feel that it will become a regular annual event.
Well done Simon/Wildlife Whisperer and WWT!