Compose, Expose, Upload

Water Rail

28 01 2010

What a day! This morning I travelled to Arundel to visit the WWT. The last time I visited it was an ice rink and most of the water was frozen! Thankfully this time the ground and water were ice-free. Before heading to any of the hides, I had a wonder along the reed bed path. It is an amazingly peaceful walk. As I rounded one of the corners wading in the water in front of some of the reeds was a Water Rail! It was what I was hoping to see, well that and a Bittern. No luck on the Bittern but the Water Rail was beautiful and I had a fantastic 4-5 minute encounter. Some of the pictures I took are down below. A few extra ones are on my Flickr account, link on the right. After some lunch, brought from the café at the WWT (very tasty!), I headed on to Brighton for a spot of Starling watching. 20000-30000 Starlings must have showed up! As always amazing to watch! The only downside was that it was cloudy and not the best for photography, still I got some good pictures. I will be uploading the best from my 2 Brighton trips in the near future.

Andy

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Tags: andy, canon, photography, camera, EOS, reeds, nature, wildlife, birds, winter, lens, L series, EF, Andrew R. Hall Photography, Water Rail, wading, WWT, Wetlands, Arundel
Categories : birds, cameras, canon, photography, wildlife

Snow!

6 01 2010

It’s been a while since I wrote on here! I had a very hectic week leading up to and out of Christmas! So as I didn’t get a chance to post before Christmas; Merry Christmas to you all and I hope you had a wonderful time! My Christmas was fantastic, though went by far to quickly! Secondly, Happy new year and I hope you all had a great time on New years eve and day! My new year was also good, my brother was down from Glasgow with his family. It was brilliant to see them and catch up!

On to the main reason for the blog! As I am sure you have all noticed it has snowed! A lot! I have spent the day taking pictures, so there are fair few I am posting today. My first mission was to photograph the birds that frequent our garden to use the feeders. I spent an hour photographing the little birds. They were very active in and around the garden. As has now become my standard exercise, the larger versions of the pictures are on my Flickr account, link on the right!

My second mission for the day was to get some general pictures of the snow. It was great fun walking through the snow! I would have liked to have travelled a bit further but I set out a bit late and the light started to disappear and then the heavy snow started again, so it was back to the house to warm up!

That’s all the snow pictures for now. Though according to the weather forecast we maybe getting more over the weekend, so more maybe coming.

The last bit of news is that I travelled down to Brighton just after the last snow 2 weeks ago to watch the starlings over the old burnt down pier. It was an amazing sunset and a good display. I would have liked to have seen more starlings in the group though, but most of the them headed to the pier a bit further down the shore from me. I should get the pictures uploaded in the next week for you all to see. I am hoping to fit in another few trips in to see the starlings in the coming week, either at Brighton or Slimbridge.

Andy

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Tags: Andrew R. Hall Photography, andy, birds, camera, canon, EOS, L series, landscape, nature, photography, Snow, wildlife, winter
Categories : Snow, birds, cameras, canon, general, landscape, photography, wildlife

Slimbridge and the ‘Great Starling Hunt’

14 12 2009

I took a trip to Slimbridge Wetlands the other day, had a great time. I went to watch the Starling roost in the evening and have a general wonder around. It is an awesome place and I will be heading back when I can! The Starlings were incredible, some 50 000 show up to roost at Slimbridge every evening around 3:30-4. The only thing was that they weren’t in the best place to photograph, so I spent most of my time watching. I meet another photographer (Pro or semi pro I think) on site and he said that it was a wasted trip, as he didn’t get any good shots. To me this is the wrong attitude. I thought the trip was a great success, sure I didn’t get many shots but the starlings are just so amazing to watch that it is always worth seeing them camera or not! I think this photographer was there because he thought he would get some great pictures for his portfolio, not because he wanted to see one of Britain’s best wildlife spectacles and I very much disagree with this. For me it’s seeing the starlings first and pictures second. Which I believe should be the way when photographing any wildlife.

Anyway rant over! Below are a couple of the shots from Slimbridge and one from my trip to Frensham today. I have visited Frensham three times over the last week to see the starling display. However each time I have been the starlings have been nowhere to be seen! I have been to Frensham Great and Little Ponds in the hopes of finding them and I have managed to see a total of 8 starlings in the 3 visits. They appear to have moved onto a different roosting ground and I have no idea where it is. The reeds that they normally roost in look a little thin and beaten up from the heavy rain and strong winds we had a week or so ago. I believe this is why the have moved on. Hopefully they will be back in the coming weeks, but in the mean time if anyone knows where they have gone then please let me know!

The pictures below aren’t my greatest work but I want to share them anyway! The starlings aren’t to clear in the blog sized photo, larger version can be found on my Flickr account (link on the right).

Andy

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Tags: 2009, Andrew R. Hall Photography, andy, birds, camera, canon, EF, EOS, frensham, nature, photography, pond, reeds, roosting, starlings, sunset, trees, wildlife, winter
Categories : birds, cameras, canon, photography, wildlife

Happy Birthday CEU! (Gigrin Farm Photos)

26 11 2009

One year ago today Graham and myself created CEU and wrote out our very first blogs. Since then the blog has seen many pictures Composed, Exposed and Uploaded! We have had plenty of visitor frequent the blog, for which we are very grateful! We are now looking forward to the next year and the pictures that we are planning and the ones we are not planning on taking with great excitement!

Currently we are in the early phases of making CEU something much bigger and better than this simple blog. Early next year (hopefully!) we will have the new CEU up and running. The details of what to expect will be posted here first, so keep a keen eye out for the emerging details as they come.

To mark this special occasion I have uploaded my Gigrin Farm Red Kite photographs below. The Day started well with the sun out and the Kites looked spectacular when the sun caught there colours. Unfortunately the sun went away quickly and I was faced with much more difficult photographic conditions. Still I am extremely pleased with my results for a first trip to the farm.

The Final picture at the bottom I took with this blog in mind. I wanted to try and show the incredible number of kites that were present. All the little dots in the shot are Kites and this was only one of 3 ’stacks’ of the birds around the farm. On top of the stacks, the air above the feeding site was full of birds as well. It was such a wonderful experience and I highly recommend everyone taking a trip to see them.

Before the photos, I have another few pieces of news. I, much to Graham’s delight I’m sure, have created my very own Flickr account (link on the right)! I have been contemplating doing so for a long time, but I am always put off by the time it can take to upload pictures. To solve this problem I have purchased an export plug-in for Aperture (The program I edit my photos in). This plug-in allows me to directly export images straight from Aperture to Flickr with minimal hassle! Hopefully this export feature will mean I keep updating Flickr regularly. On top of this I have realised that I have a bit of a back log in processing my images and I have stumbled upon some really great photos that I took a while ago and haven’t processed yet. Expect to see a few of these over the coming weeks! Also don’t forget that you can keep up to date with Graham and myself more regularly via Twitter, link on the right!