Highly Commended!

Today the International Garden photographer of the Year announced the winners and runners-up of the competition. 

I was pleased to find that I was given Highly Commended for my frog image, in the Category: Wildlife Havens.

http://www.igpoty.com/competition05/winners_wildlifehavens.asp?parent=winners

There were some amazing images entered this year and it seem the standard grows higher each year. I’ll be sure to be entering the new competition which started today.

Rats in the reeds

The rats were nowhere to be seen in there usual spot today. Instead they were foraging around in the reeds. They kept returning to one spot and swimming around amongst the reeds, making it a real challenge to photograph. It was nice photograph them in a different habitat to the usual. It was rare occasion to be able to focus on the rats without other reeds getting in-between the rats and myself. 

More rats!

The rat’s put on a good show today. There were three of them and i even had a GoPro camera to record some there movements. They were tempted out with the use of bread and some porridge oats, which seems to work a treat. I should also add dead frogs! I though it would be interesting to lay a dead frog that was found amongst the reeds, outside one of their exits and see what would happen.

Check out the video below!

Lost and found

Here are few images from a Florida trip a couple of years ago. You know when you take a special photograph during a trip, as it sticks in you head until you get home and finally get to edit it. It a shame as most of other images you took don’t really get a look in. But from time to time, I will scout though them again and seen if any more will leap out at me.

Willet (above two)


Anhinga 

American Alligator 

Burrowing Owl watching aeroplanes 

Down with the rats!

The local duck pond is a perfect place to see all kinds of creatures. These rats which I found earlier today prove to be interesting subjects. If you cant see them, you can pretty much hear them as the squeak and rustle in the undergrowth. Photographing them proves tricky as a lot of the situations are cluttered and distracting (in terms of photography).

I’ve decided to give myself a mini project, and study these interesting creatures a little more. More details soon!  

Estes Park, Colorado, gateway to Rocky Mountain National Park

A panorama that I took whilst in Colorado. It consists of five images stitched together. Images like this are great but almost wasted on websites and blogs as you really need to zoom in to really appreciate the detail.

A better version of this panorama can be viewed in ‘Recent Images’ or 'Portfolio’ within my website.

Food for thought

The other day I took up the challenge of doing some food photography. My house mate, Will Rouse was in contact with the head chef at Falmouth Beach Hotel who wanted a portfolio of his dishes made.

Will and I spent a few day’s practising and researching the art of food photography. We then felt confident enough to take on the challenge.

 

This is the setup we used. One softbox and a reflector. We had a backdrop, but decided not to use it.

Below are some examples of our results.

Problems we did face were, trying to eliminate reflections, such as in the knives and forks. This is something that we need learn how to control much better in the future. For now I will have to try and deal with it in photoshop. 

Can you tell what it is yet?

Many of your are probably wondering why i bothered to put this image up. Half of me is thinking the same thing. But the other half of me likes it. I think its the vast emptiness of the sky and this little plane struggling through the forces unseen.

Same place, different perspective

The old mines, scattered around cornwall are great subjects for photography. There are so many ways of photographing them. Like most landscapes, being in wide open spaces means the weather and change dramatically in a very short amount of time. Sometimes you have to work with what you get. I’ve always wanted to photography these amazing buildings with the stars, but being a forty minute drive away means the weather can be totally different from home than it is on location. Usually resulting in overcast sky’s, rain and high winds, what with it being on the cliff top’s of the north coast.

Somewhere different

I decide to venture out along the north coast this week. There weather appeared sunny and looked promising. I managed to take out a Hassleblad HD3 and a 80mm lens from the University. I thought i would take full advantage of these types of things, before my final year is out.

This is a image of one of the buildings at Wheal Coates which is just along from Chapel Porth.

Not for the faint hearted

Upon returning to my car from a shoot, I noticed a large white object on the otherside of the car-park. I didn’t remember seeing anything there before. On further inspection I realised that it was headless rabbit. I questioned how recent it was, but there was only one way to find out and that was to feel how warm it was was. From this I could definitely tell that it was a recent kill.

I decided to move my car around and position it so i could wait and see if its killer would return. After about ten minutes a couple of magpies came down to check out the situation.

This is what i observed.

A buzzard (a likely suspect) came very close to landing, but was spooked off. Possibly cars in the car park or by the fact that i had a large lens sticking out of my window.

Hard on the outside, soft on the inside

A shot of a really strange creature, the Armadillo. Aramadillo is a Spanish word meaning “little armoured one” and refers to the bony plates that cover the back, head, legs and tail.

This image was taken on my florida trip a couple of years back.

When hunger strikes!

This image shows a kestrel that had just caught a slow-worm. The kestrel managed to swallow it whole in one go. It’s interesting to see slow-worms out so early in the year. But today the weather was the nicest it had been in a long time, obviously encouraging them to emerge early.

Mussels

More often than not i will turn to the rocky shoreline for subject matter. I find the shapes and patters that are formed by living creatures a big interest.

After seeing this cluster of common mussels before, i decide to go back and photograph it. I thought taking a reflector would be a good idea, to fill in some of the shadows and give the overall image a bit more of a punch

Here is the image. 

Onwards and upwards

Starting a new year is always exciting. Thinking about what the the next twelve months in photography will hold.
Seeing the empty 2012 folder on Lightroom is like a fresh start, so hopefully this year fill it less rubbish and start taking better pictures.

Anyway, it’s off to a good start this year as I managed to get one image, “Hidden amongst the leaves”, through to the next round of the ‘International Garden Photographer of the Year’. March holds the announcements for winners and those highly commended, so I shall look forward till then to see what happens.

Title: Hidden amongst the leaves
Category: Wildlife havens 

In the last few days i have been going down the local Reservoir, to try my luck with the wildlife there. Not so much activity this year which is a shame, so didn’t really get any great images.

But you can always rely on your own garden to produce something. So here is a Nuthatch.   

This footage was captured last night at 5.17am. I set a trail camera on a post several feet away from a entrance to an old victorian drainage tunnel that runs underneath my garden. There were signs of definite tracks around the entrance which encouraged me to place the camera there. No baiting was involved as i wanted natural evidence of animal activity.  
When i collected the camera this morning i was sure i caught something on camera as there was muddy smears on the lens and sensor, as if something had a good sniff at it.

Any way here is the video, the password is Badger.