Shuttleworth - Birds of Prey Centre

On Saturday I spent the day at the Shuttleworth Collection with some other members of the CCC, visiting the Bird of Prey Centre and the seeing the first 2011 evening flying of the historic planes. I am still sorting through the 600 or so shots of planes in flight I took, so here are some birds to be going on with.

Lighting on the day was very changeable, and my panning technique with these fast and agile birds is less than perfect, so these are not the sharpest images. But I still like the shapes created by the birds.

Birds And Damselflies At Paxton Pits

I spent the morning at Paxton Pits with the Camera Club Nature group. It was nice to be on a CCC trip that was only 5 minutes away from home. Although, I still wasn't tempted to join those who went on the dawn chorus guided walk, starting at 5.30am.

I don't really have a decent enough long lens to do serious bird photography, but I did get a couple of shots of the black headed gulls that I quite liked.




Later in the morning I was able to concentrate on Damselflies, for which my 105mm macro lens is ideally suited.

Sand Patterns at Wells

On Friday I spent the day at Wells-Next-The-Sea. Despite the lovely sunny weather, for some reason hardly anyone was on the beach all morning. This meant the sand was undisturbed, so I spent a lot of time looking for patterns in the dunes.

Blurred Bluebells

Today, I made my annual trip to Ashridge for the Bluebells. I love this place and would happily go without a camera to to walk in the woods. But since I am a photographer and have a camera, I might as well take it. I have been there so many times it is hard to do anything different. I try to set mini projects. Last year it was wide angle shots, a couple of years ago it was landscape pictures using a 100mm lens. This year I decided to try some in-camera pan and zoom blurs.



I also tried some more subtle blurring by using a 10-stop ND filter to give me 8 minute exposure times, allowing the wind to soften the beach leaves and flowers. I don't think this worked as well.

Early Purple Orchids

There are a good number Early Purple Orchids in Waresley Woods at the moment.

Hayley Wood

Cowslips and Greater Stitchwort at Hayley Wood. I went back the next day to try and shoot the Cowslips in better light and they had started to turn overnight.

Brampton Wood

These images were actually taken a fortnight ago. The day after the Points of view shoot in Cambridge. Sadly, the last couple of weeks have been hectic with work, finishing up a silly little NVQ, and getting to grips with Lightroom and Photoshop CS5 (a student card having been the big benefit of the NVQ).

But now I have a nice long break, spring is moving fast and it's time to concentrate of shooting the abundence of flowers now in flower.

Brampton wood is my closest wood and one I visit often. It is particularly good for primroses and two weeks ago they were at their absolute best.