Best laid plans etc. I didn't expect to get round to working on the Skomer photographs for a day or so. However, the sorting out of the Landscape Photographer of the Year submission was a lot easier than I thought - the reason for this that I broke the short list down into individual shortlists for the categories. Once I did this the selection seemed to fall into place. I am leaving it a day or so to see if I want to change anything.
So back to puffins. They are a wonderful and charming bird - perhaps the most photogenic creature there is? Maybe, maybe not. However if you want to up close and personal then Skomer is one of the best places for this. The birds are so unconcerned by the people they walk quite happily amongst the crowds on their way to feeding their chicks. Click here to see the latest photographs.
I had set myself two aims for the shoot on Skomer. The first was take some really close portrait shots - not difficult given the birds behaviour. However the second proved much more difficult. I wanted to capture the birds in flight. This was proving unsuccessful until I walked back to the landing site on the harbour at South Haven. Here the birds just zip past you but without their nervousness they have at the Wick. Only later did I discover that this too didn't work out. After a lot of head scratching and reading the manual I found that the 1D's focusing only works really well with lenses with an aperture of f2.8 or larger. The 100/400 zoom has an max aperture of f4.5 - this clear contributed to the high failure rate. Big lesson. Fortunately I had sufficient images to satisfy me. However it was a painful lesson.
Whilst on the island there was a camera from the welsh language channel S4C. It was fascinating to hear the Welsh language spoken as a first language. It is strange and very beautiful language to listen to. I latter spoke to the presenters about the welsh language and the fact that there were so many common English nouns. They reassured me that when specking welsh they didn't use the common English noun but rather the welsh. This was rather undercut when a young volunteer spoke to them and very quickly it was clear that she certainly didn't appear to have difficultly using English nouns in the welsh language. Of course this is no scientific sample, and also o reflection on the girl in question, but I still have difficulty believing that common English nouns would be replaced by welsh ones. You only have to examine the development of the french language to see how English creeps in even when officially frowned on. This doesn't get away from the fact that the welsh langauge, when spoken in a relaxed manner, is a beutiful, poetic langauge of rythms and harmonies that english simply cannot approach.
One final thing. I watched the programme they were making the other day and I say my tripod leg on the screen. Fame at last!
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