The Kittiwakes are doing well at Mumbles Pier despite the heat. Check out the photos of fellow Gower blogger, Adam Tilt HERE to see how they coped in the higher temperatures. I revisited last Sunday as it had become a bit cloudier which helps with the contrast in the images. By the time I got to the pier and with an opening time of 9am, the clouds had cleared and the sun was out. Luckily where some of the birds nest is in the shade so I was able to make some images. I was trying to get some images of the chicks, but as they don’t do too much at the moment, plus a lot of the adults are still brooding them, I had limited success. I tried a few variations, some of which worked, but I also decided to make a quick video for those of you who are not able to get to the pier.
A few comments on the video. The audio makes it sound that it is quite noisy in the colony. It is actually relatively quiet for a gull colony, compared to those I have spent some time around on Skomer & Skokholm Islands off the Pembrokeshire coast. The editing just seemed to make it appear as if birds are calling all the time when they are not usually. For those of you who think they can detect the sound of a pressure washer at some stage, you will be correct. The crew of the RNLI lifeboat, which is stationed off the same pier as the Kittiwakes, were cleaning the lifeboat down while I was trying to make the video. It didn’t seem to matter if I stopped filming and started again later. The pressure washer always seemed to come on when I pressed record. I now appreciate after trying sound recording on my course with Wildeye last year how difficult it is to get a clean sound recording like we are used to hearing on TV etc.
A bit of a cliche photograph this, but with all the rain we had recently there were plenty of opportunities to make this image. I hadn’t actually noticed this web in my back garden until it rained!
I was going to post some images of the Glossy Ibis that are present near the old Pembrey Docks, near Burry Port as today I spent nearly all afternoon photographing this unusual and rare visitor to the UK. Birders present stated that it was the first sighting of the Glossy Ibis in Carmarthenshire since 1910. The rings on some of the birds have been identified as from the Camargue region of France, which is closer to their Mediterranean habitat. At this time of year the birds start relocating to Africa to over winter, before returning to the Mediterranean in spring.
The title of the post refers to the fact that I was using my new Nikon D300s to photograph the birds, and it was only when trying to download the images into Adobe Lightroom that I remembered that Adobe hasn’t updated Lightroom yet to read files from the D300s yet! Bother! I will have to wait till this comes out before posting some stills. This leads nicely onto the reason I bought the D300s. I can’t post stills, but I can post some VIDEO! The little video that follows is a really quick edit in Windows movie maker. Some of the images need to be sharper or better levelled, so hopefully this will come with practice. As a first effort with the camera I am pretty pleased. Lastly I would like to thank Adam Tilt who posted on his blog and via Twitter the position of the birds.
Nature and natural history photography are the main focus of my photography, but haven’t always been so. I have gone through phases with my photography over the years, sometimes depending on my location at the time. I started my photography taking landscape pictures in Black and White, moving onto street scenes when I moved to London. I progressed from Black and White to colour and from street scenes to fashion and glamour model portfolios and then finally back to landscapes and natural history. Now I am temporarily going back to portrait photography.
You may wonder why I’m stating all this. I have signed up to the HELP PORTRAIT programme that is the brain child of American photographer Jeremy Cowart. Please watch his video explanation of the scheme below and join in if you think you can help. Contact me if you are interested in teaming up in the Swansea area.
Please help someone less fortunate this Christmas and please spread the word using the buttons below or just tell your friends and other photographers, hairdressers, make up artists, charities etc. Thanks.
I made this video from my compact camera video mode so the quality is limited. I will post some images I made at the same time in another post. I thought it would be good to show what Ilston valley is like this time of year. The bluebells are fully out, but the wild garlic is not at its peak yet. I use the valley for one of my Gower Photography Day Courses. Although it is only a small valley it has a great selection of habitats – deciduous and pine woodland, open grassland, a small stream and regular hawthorne, bluebell and wild garlic flowerings. A path runs the length of the valley from the back of the Gower Inn in Parkmill to Ilston Church so access is easy, although it does get muddy at times.
The bird life is great and Kingfishers have been seen on the stream. The photographic opportunities for the kingfishers are difficult, they usually see you before you see them. Wild flowers are present throughout the summer, but some parts of the valley get quite dark under the tree canopy. In Autumn there is some good colour on the trees and fungi on the valley floor. Winter is also a good season for imaging with frost coating the stark winter plant growth, and this is an ideal time to use black and white in your images.
A change from the usual subject – HELP PORTRAIT
Nature and natural history photography are the main focus of my photography, but haven’t always been so. I have gone through phases with my photography over the years, sometimes depending on my location at the time. I started my photography taking landscape pictures in Black and White, moving onto street scenes when I moved to London. I progressed from Black and White to colour and from street scenes to fashion and glamour model portfolios and then finally back to landscapes and natural history. Now I am temporarily going back to portrait photography.
You may wonder why I’m stating all this. I have signed up to the HELP PORTRAIT programme that is the brain child of American photographer Jeremy Cowart. Please watch his video explanation of the scheme below and join in if you think you can help. Contact me if you are interested in teaming up in the Swansea area.
Please help someone less fortunate this Christmas and please spread the word using the buttons below or just tell your friends and other photographers, hairdressers, make up artists, charities etc. Thanks.