Wagtail...

Pied Wagtail - Calke

Cold fingers and wagtails. They are an arguementative birds but one I have had difficulty capturing but this morning I have succeded. The light was just right - it still is - and as the wagtails argued amongst themselves I was able to get some great views. Now for the snark - here's hoping.

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www.flickr.com/photos/guthlac

http://simonmarchini.blogspot.com

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I hope you enjoy

Working on the back catalogue....

Autumn - Diminnsdale - Staunton Harold,

My good friend David is working on a series of images of Dimminsdale so I was passing the other month and captured this. In truth it wasn't like that at all. I was going to capture tree sparrows and I just happened to pass by the Staunton Harold reservoir when the light appeared just right. However, I have just started working on some of my backlog and saw this and decided to work on it - as with any time I start working on something it doesn't always workout the way I thought it would. This is a HDR shot just after dawn but by the time I finished it has changed into something different. Is this now a photograph I could display and enter into a competition? Well I guess that depends on the rules but I like it which at the moment is all that matters.

Printing and other things

Birds at Staunton Harold Reservoir Car Park

I got around to installing the printer today.   I had to down load the new 64 bit drivers and they installed no problem.  The printer appears to be very stable but is printing a little dark at the moment.  However, I have got to calibrate my screen yet and this might over come some of this.

As I mentioned a few days ago I have been playing around with creating images of several birds superimposed onto one another to make a montage.  The above effort is my first attempt.  I think this shows great promise.   The question is what type of photograph is it?   Is it a photograph at all as this was created with a great deal of digital processing?   In the end I keep coming back to a question that was thrown at me from one of the seminars - Does is matter?   Well in one sense it does matter - I couldn't enter this as an editorial photograph.  However, as I am not that type of photographer that is not a great consideration.   In the end I like it and for me that is all that matters.

An Idea

Chaffinch Taking Off

I have been toying with an idea since shooting a series of images with my wireless remote.   Superimposing them to make a more impressive shot than one image.   I have done this before with such images as 30 minutes at Heathrow.   I have also made other images of birds but this is different.  This is a single background taken again and again from the same angle.   This has some interesting variations that is worth pursuing.   Only time will tell if it works.

30 minutes at Heathrow

Trial and error

Great Tit

Had a wonderful morning taking photographs of birds at Staunton Harold reservoir car park.   This is one the best places to take photographs of tree sparrows I know.   They hang around a feeding station and give you great views.  The best thing is that when the winter sun is out in the morning then they are beautifully lit.

I also want to experiment further with my new wireless remote control.   The set up was very simple.   Put some food out for birds on a wall and set the camera up to record what happened.  I initially used a very short zoom and this was fine apart from the sound of the camera going off spooked the birds.  I then changed to a long zoom lens and this seemed to over come the noise problem as the camera was further away.  This lead to other problems such as narrow angle of view which meant that I had to ensure I knew the spot where the focus was set up for.  I also wanted to use a fast shutter speed.  This meant that I had to set my 40D to a high ISO - in this case 800.  This caused problems as the camera doesn't perform too well at this speed - too much noise in the resultant image.   Anyway I persevered and appear to have captured some interesting images.   However, I need to reflect on the lesson from today and work out how best to use the remote set up.