Compose, Expose, Upload

What’s been happening!

Andy — Sun, 14 Mar 2010 17:12:43 +0000

It has been a while since my last blog. Again I have had a busy time at late. Had my first wedding of the year, which went was a huge success! The couple absolutely adored the photos! It was an amazing day to be a part of! Some of my favourites will find their way onto the blog, once I have taken care of what the couple would like produced.

Focus on Imaging 2010 took place last weekend, so I made the 2 hour drive up the M40 to go have a wonder around the show. I was on the hunt for suppliers for my wedding products and it was a fruitful trip. I meet some lovely people on the stands and they were very willing to guide me through their products. Unfortunately I did meet some less willing to help and as such they turned me away from even considering there products. I have now settled upon who will be supplying my products for the next few years and I am in the process of ordering up samples!

While at the show, I also managed to catch Andy Rouse’s talk on his best images from the last year. As always with Andy the pictures were superb! He was also offering charity critiques on the Paramo stand, which I took full advantage of. Showing him three of my favourite wildlife shots. The feed back and advice was fantastic and he gave me some great tips to improve the pictures with minor post processing techniques! Below are the reprocessed images that I took to show him. After the critique I purchased Andy’s new book, Tigers: A Celebration of Life. A wonderful book that I cannot recommend enough. Andy is also giving 25% of the profit from the book to tiger conservation, so get out and buy the book! You can buy the book from: http://www.arwpstore.com/

The last spot of news is the most exciting for me! With the help of Preface Studios, I am completely redesigning my wedding photography website. I no longer feel that the current site reflects my work in the best way and consequently it isn’t selling me well enough to potential clients. We are in the early stages but fingers crossed I should be lunching the new site in 4-6 weeks time! As always I will keep you up to date on the development. I am going to be making a huge push through the rest of the year to really get the wedding and portrait business off the ground!

The pictures below I have posted before but using Andy Rouse’s tips I have reprocessed them and they look so much better! To see the originals then scroll back through some of the older postings! The first three are the ones I showed Andy Rouse and the others are ones that I have redone using new methods!

Andy

Somerset Levels

Andy — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 23:12:45 +0000

As I mentioned in the pervious blog, I spent a few days down in Somerset exploring the RSPB reserve at Ham Wall and some of the surrounding area. The main reason to visit was to see the starling roost, which is the largest in the south of the UK. I spent two days on the reserve waiting to see some rare birds, such as a Bittern. However I had no luck in this search. I did manage to see an otter, though only for a second.

I spent the first day on the RSPB Ham Wall reserve and saw very little until the starlings started arriving! And did they arrive! They were flying in in groups the size of the entire roost at Brighton and joining together in the hundreds of thousands perhaps even a million birds! The display was fantastic and they birds swooped and turned together, creating loads of different shapes and turning the sky black at points. Looking at the photos it is possible to make out some larger black dots in the sky. I believe they are birds of prey of for a meal, hence there tendency to swoop together. It was such a brilliant experience and wonderful to watch!

The second day I spent on the reverse across the road from Ham Wall, Shapwick Heath (Natural England). Again I didn’t come across a lot, except the otter. I did meet some lovely people though and had a great chat about the area. As sunset drew nearer I headed back to Ham Wall to wait for the starlings. While waiting I was peering out one of the hides and spotted a Snipe poking around! It was a tad far away and a silhouette, so I tried a different approach to getting a photo, result below. The starlings then started to arrive, however the didn’t swoop and turn like the night before. Instead they just gather on mass and I didn’t get any photos worthy of note. However the consolation prize was an absolutely gorgeous sunset! I had a fantastic time and plan on heading back both in the near and far future! The Somerset levels and nature reserves in the area are amazing and well worth visiting.

So on to the pictures! Below are some of the starlings shots from the first day. There are also a few other shots I took as I wondered around and then some from the sunset on the second day. As usual now bigger version are on my Flickr.

Andy

Brighton Starlings

Andy — Sun, 21 Feb 2010 15:05:36 +0000

This blog has been a long time coming! I have been trying to get it written for around a week but every time I wanted to get it sorted something came up that delayed it. The main reason for the delays is that I upgraded to Apple’s Aperture 3 in the week and updating my photo library took far longer than I thought it would. Then I had to update my vault (Aperture auto back up feature thing) which took far, far longer than I thought it would!

Anyway onto the reason for this blog. As I have mentioned in previous blogs, I have been on a starling hunt all winter. Looking for the best places to watch the roost. My quest to find the best roosts have taken to many a place, well 3 places really. Slimbridge WWT was fantastic, however the starlings didn’t really come together. The next stop was the old burnt down pier in Brighton. This roost lacked in numbers but was a great setting and wonderful sunset. The slight downside was that the Gulls also decided that it would be a nice place to roost that night. The pictures from this roost are below. I then travelled back to Brighton to go to the other pier. The number of birds was amazing but the weather wasn’t! The sunset was hidden by clouds and the photos were I tad dull, so I have tried something different with the photos. As there was very little colour I converted them all into black and white. The results can be seen below. My last journey took me to Ham Wall RSPB reserve in the Somerset levels. This was by far the greatest roost I have ever seen! The starlings where arriving in groups the size of the entire roosts at Brighton and Slimbridge and the birds must have totaled in the region of a million birds! The pictures from this roost will be up in the next few days. Below are some of the favourites from the Brighton Piers. As usual bigger version on my Flickr, link on the right. The first shot below was taken while waiting for the Starlings to arrive and some of the black and whites are best viewed bigger on Flickr.

Andy

Water Rail

Andy — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 22:22:43 +0000

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

Snow!

Andy — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 18:37:10 +0000

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

Slimbridge and the ‘Great Starling Hunt’

Andy — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 18:16:26 +0000

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

Happy Birthday CEU! (Gigrin Farm Photos)

Andy — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 16:57:48 +0000

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!

Larger version can be found on my flickr account, link on the right!

Andy

Portraits

Andy — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 13:24:11 +0000

Here are a few of the pictures I took at a recent photo shoot. The pictures are for Flik’s portfolio for dancing and modelling. It was a great shoot and a lot of fun to capture the dancing jumps!

Portraits make great Christmas presents for the family or other half, so if you are interested in some portraits then please do contact me. Shoots can be at the studio (like above) or outside in my local area. Studio shoots start at £60 for 2 hours and outside shoots at £30 for 2 hours.

Andy

Hawk Conservancy

Andy — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 15:42:34 +0000

Some of the pictures from my trip to Andover Hawk Conservancy a mouth or so ago.

More pictures coming soon! Had a wedding yesterday, went very well despite the crazy wind and rain! Had to take nearly all of the pictures indoors. Got some really good shots and will share some of my favourites once I have sorted through them all!

Andy

Twitter

Andy — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 23:58:19 +0000

You can now follow my going on’s a bit more closely if you wish, via Twitter! I Twitter under the amazing original name of @MrAndrewHall!

Hawk Conservancy pics will be up soon, hopefully Thursday!

Andy

- Edit: I (Graham) am also on Twitter under the name @GBY