Mark Wilson has just published his first impressions on the Lightroom 4 beta on the new WildPhotoForum Digital Darkroom blog. There are lots of new features in this release including new video options, Maps (think geo-tagging) and Books modules and some extensive changes to the basic adjustments in Develop. Check out the link to the first impressions article for more.
Poppies are the most beautiful of flowers. I always keep an eye out for them in summer; I am forever cheered by the sight of a Poppy by the roadside, or in a field margin.
I haven’t seen as many Poppies as usual this year but a couple of weeks ago, I managed to find some very close to my home. Whilst I was walking our dog, I spotted a moderate scattering of Poppies, across a valley within my local nature reserve. I could make the red flowers out clearly, through breaks in the tree cover on the valley, but I couldn’t tell how many there… Continue reading
If you want to learn all about setting the exposure when photographing birds in flight, check out Part 2 of my Bird in Flight Photography Tutorial, which I’ve published today. It took longer to write than I anticipated because I kept thinking of yet more information that I found hard to come by when I was learning these techniques.
In this part of the tutorial, I provide an in-depth view of how to control exposure when you’re photographing birds in flight. In Part 1 of the tutorial, I emphasised the importance of using manual exposure mode and now I… Continue reading
Part 1 of an in-depth tutorial on how to photograph birds in flight is now available.
I’ve been working on this for a few weeks and it’s grown into a very comprehensive guide, full of advanced tips for serious bird in flight photographers. As it has grown so much, I have decided to break it up into four parts, to allow me to publish it as soon as possible.
I will actively maintain this tutorial, updating it as new information comes to hand. I would appreciate it if you could share your own experiences to help me to continually improve… Continue reading
Is there such a thing as green photography? More specifically, what about green nature photography? Did the move from film to digital make any difference in how green photography is?
One of the great things about being a nature photographer is that certain aspects of it feed my ravenous guilt complex. I am a hugely self-critical person and so I never pass over an excuse to punish myself for doing something “bad”. In the case of nature photography, it’s the travelling that is “bad”.
Worry-wart or Green Photography Crusader?Two years ago, I started to worry about the carbon I… Continue reading
I am fortunate to live within a moderate distance of a pretty stable population of Water Voles (Arvicola terrestris) and I managed to capture some interesting images of them last Summer. Water Voles are also known as the River Rat and if you look at the first image, you can see why: perched in the brambles, the tail is partially visible and it is indeed rat-like. But the Water Vole has a more rounded, snub-nose, is generally fatter than a rat and has rounder ears. You can see some of these physical differences quite clearly in the photos that show… Continue reading
The Brown Hare (Lepus europaeus) is one of my favourite British wildlife species because they are so dynamic. I am surrounded by open countryside in which Brown Hares thrive, so I frequently encounter them when I am out with my camera, or walking the dog.
Popularly, March is considered to be the best month in which to view Brown Hares because that is when they are in the peak of the breeding season, when the females box their male suitors to fend them off, until one who is worthy presents himself (hence ‘mad as a March hare’).
Personally, I tend… Continue reading
I’ve just published a natural history photo gallery that contains all of the images which I have published in my nature photography blog. This gallery will be updated whenever I publish a new article on this website so that you can get to my most recent images quickly and easily (avoiding the blurb if you’re a ‘looker’ rather than a ‘reader’). Enjoy!
I had an opportunity to watch a Barn Owl (Tyto alba) last weekend, whilst staying in Norfolk, with friends. It’s one of a pair raising chicks in the vicinity of where we stayed, and it wasn’t the least bit shy.
On our first encounter with this Barn Owl, it almost flew into us as we emerged from woodland, onto a path, which the owl had apparently been following. Quite leisurely, the owl quartered two fields, seemingly unruffled by our presence, before flying directly towards us. It approached head on, hovering and quartering intermittently, until it was within 20 yards or… Continue reading
Whilst visiting Gigrin Farm last week, I was fortunate to see the two Leucistic Red Kites (Milvus milvus) that live in the vicinity. Leucistic birds have largely white plumage but they also have patches of normal colour pigmentation. The difference is quite startling – compare the birds in these images with my mantling Red Kite shot from a few days ago, in which the kite has normal coloured plumage.
Some of the Red Kites carry wing tags, which naturalists fix onto them to aid identification; whilst they don’t exactly help the nature photographer in his quest to create beautiful, blemish… Continue reading
