Windfilled Sails at Brogborough

  The sun and wind were the portents I appreciate, as when the two come together the chances of activity at Brogborough Lake rise, and despite this being on a weekday during Lockdown, the numbers at the Windsurfing Car Park indicate I am in luck. The gates were open, so I drive in and park to decide whether my luck is in.

Fortunately, the opportunity for the taking of photographs of the action on the water was good, as the numbers and activity both onshore and out on the water meant I was fortunately not going to have to leave disappointed. I returned to my car after taking in the scene that greeted me, and readied my camera. The camera for this day's visit was once again the small, but trusty, LUMIX 10002.

One of the first images was of one of the hydrofoil boards used by the Wingsail enthusiasts; to me the most notable feature was the large height that the hydrofoil had compared to the earlier hydrofoils I had seen on the fixed sail versions. The clouds overhead from the start really caught my eye as they were very striking, and as a result feature strongly throughout the ensuing gallery of images. For this reason many of the images show much larger expanses of sky and correspondingly minute figures within, but fortunately the quality still remains due to the high shutter speeds that I was able to employ to capture the images at high quality.

I will also apologise for the delay in putting this gallery up on the blog, as the large number of shots I took at the time due to my settings of multi exposure bursts as the fastest way to work with this camera. It has the downside of having to work through more images, and with a fast filling of my hard drive, which will soon force me to buy another to give me more space!

I am a fan of cloud structures as they offer excellent backdrops for greetings cards with ample space for messages, and certainly to me, inherently carry a happy feeling to convey greetings for birthdays and successful milestones, when used as backgrounds to the textual messages. Clouds set in blue skies always convey happiness and goodwill, never gloom.

More Activity at Brogborough Lake

  School term time is around once more, so the chances of meeting up with my daughters and their families has now dwindled, and my younger daughter was uncertain as to whether she might come over. Edge to edge blue sky and a reasonable amount of wind at least here;  a short distance from the lake at Brogborough, the potential for activity on the lake was therefore high and helped make up my mind to drive over with my camera. I packed both my heavyweight gear and long lens as well as the lightweight alternative, the versatile LUMIX FZ10002.

On arrival at the Windsurfers' Car Park, the gate was open, so I presumed I was likely welcome to enter on this occasion. My surmise that the favourable conditions of sun and wind would be a magnet for members of the club proved entirely correct as for once, after a long lull due to Covid there was a good crowd onshore, and much activity on the water, with yet more preparations under way by others onshore.

I received a call from Lizzy to say they were soon to be on their way over, so that helped decide which camera I would bring out to use, the LUMIX won as it required little preparation, no tripod needed, I would be able to move around at will, and the clincher: the wind direction favoured most of the activity would be close to the near shore.

Within five minutes of my arrival I was shooting from the launch area, and after a while decided to head for the woodland path at the far end of the greensward landing and launch area. I was travelling light so made good headway through the winding path that is often used as a cycle race path, and after a brisk pace in the shade soon arrived into the sunshine and the first spot where I could make my way down the steep bank to be close to the water's edge, and get a reasonably wide angle of view of those on the water.

I stayed here for a while shooting, then climbed back up to head further round with a wider view. I moved to two more vantage points before the call came from Lizzy to say she had arrived, at which point, I stopped shooting, and at a brisk pace, headed back through the shaded woods to my car, to head for home, I did break off for a moment or two to chat to one of the newcomers to foiling, André who  had initially fashioned his own hydrofoil, before succumbing to a professional version. We had a brief conversation, before I drove home and a relaxing time with Lizzy and family. This gallery is therefore more delayed than normal before appearing.

Windy and Sunny at Brogborough Lake

               Sun and wind was forecast for the Saturday afternoon, and for a change I was arriving fairly early, as I expected that combination would attract some interest amongst the windsurfing fraternity and certainly there seemed to be a fair amount of interest, so I set to immediately opening the boot of my car and erecting the heavy Benbo tripod. The camera I chose was the EOS R and I decided to put the 1.5 Converter on the Sigma 60-600mm Sports lens. This combination would allow me to capture a good overall range from the shore to the anticipated distance, judging from those sailors already on the water.

                The first observation I made was that there were at least two sailors who were out on hydrofoils, so this aspect of windsurfing is gaining traction. As I noted that the jetty at the far end was already under water, I decided that working from the shore would seem to be a sensible idea, since with the wind, had I been on the jetty, my camera gear was very likely to be at risk of suffering from waves breaking over the end that was already awash.
I was pleased that the wind direction did give me some opportunities of the sailors heading straight towards me on occasion. I was soon shooting, but after those whom I had seen preparing their boards were out on the lake, I did not see the overall numbers growing, which did surprise me a little, as although what wind there was, was often in short gusts, there was both sun and a reasonable amount of wind for most of the time.

                It was good to see that the numbers of hydrofoilers was rising, and amongst their number they were gaining experience of staying aloft for longer in the turns. It will be interesting to see whether the numbers will rise still further as the year progresses.

                On this visit, I tended to shoot more, due to the quality of the light, and cull far more shots back here when I was putting the gallery together. Also, I only shot from the same spot as I did not fancy a trek through mud to select a different viewpoint.

                I did not stay all that long as I knew that I would not get through my editing in good time if I stayed too long taking many more shots. I hope they give as much pleasure to those whom I captured as they did me in their taking.

Further Test Using Sigma 60-600 with 2x Converter

I wanted to check out the main uses I might put the 2x Converter to in the situations I might encounter when using the EOS R and I find I need the extra throw. Could I benefit when using my 70-200 f/2.8 for example. Well, I answered that positively by handholding that lens and photographing butterflies on my Buddliea in the garden. It was challenging certainly, and I had to make a decision beforehand as to the distance from my subject if I was to use the autofocus and, butterflies tend to be pretty nippy and do not hang about for tardy photographers! The result was favourable, so next was using the 60-600mm and on a tripod; the subject this time was to be windsurfers on the nearby Brogborough Lake. I tried to capture a successful gybe whilst staying aloft, which was just about there on occasion.

On the first occasion I had been lucky to find one windsurfer on a hydrofoil board, and though my visit was brief that proved a success, so I paid a second visit with more than just a lone sailor, so that just left the planned trip to a different lake to attempt to get more shots of the resident woodpecker. Today was this second windsurfing lake, and I had three sailors on this occasion, and managed some images with two aloft in the same frame, which had been my aim.

One problem currently, certainly in my experience with the full-frame EOS R, is when panning, as the longer the sequence of images the harder it is to keep the subject where you want it in the frame, due to the lag, which increases over time. To maintain the subject in frame, I opted for taking my finger off the shutter after a short burst and the returning it and giving another burst. My reasoning being that I also use my dSLR 7D MkII and I find my panning with that camera is now second nature, and if I tried to second-guess how to pan using the Mirrorless and succeeded to master that, it would make returning to the 7D difficult to adjust, whereas a temporary lift and return to keep an updated image on screen would simply be a  new separate skill to acquire. I could be completely wrong here, but it seems to work well in practice. When Canon employ a separate processor for Saving and for Viewing, perhaps this issue will disappear!

This reminds me of another snippet, the view within the eyepiece is a movie, it is possible to design the image capture such that upon pressing the shutter the start point of the recording is not taken at time zero, but time minus a set period of time; put another way to record capture from the stream from the sensor from a point in time before you pressed the shutter! Apparently I am informed that there is a higher tax on movie cameras than still cameras, and were this feature adopted, it would prove to make still cameras prohibitively expensive. Taxmen!! This reminds me of when my father told me that the Taxman just sat on his backside and earned a fortune, to which I apparently replied perhaps I should become a Taxman — he looked very worried, and said: “Oh no! What have I done? Son, just forget I said that!”

My Maths skills would have precluded my ever achieving that ambition, which fortunately I never did give it serious consideration.

A Photographer and Two Lakes

Many photographers tend to avoid others of a similar persuasion, I have noted this from my own career, that is not to say it is a characteristic of all, but certainly a goodly number. The irony is that several photographers with whom I can call friends, and with whom I can relate predominately avoid the company of those with whom you would consider they had the most in common, and therefore the greater chance of sharing interests. On Friday, one such came out to meet up with me, and in general he would admit that he tends not to seek out the company of other ‘Smudgers’ — a term historically used to describe early photographers, however I am tolerated. Perhaps I am too thick to perceive that he humours me and does not wish to hurt my feelings.

I will not embarrass him by giving his name, but he accepted my invitation to venture into the environs of Marston Moretaine, and I just wanted to take him to some of the venues I attend in pursuit of photography now that Social Media has largely decimated our careers as practising photographers. It meant that when discussing places I frequent in my insatiable desire to preserve in images that capture places, atmosphere, beauty, creatures, sports, curiosities, buildings, people, whatever… there would be at least some idea of where or what these might be.

Having travelled from London, we first had a sociable cup of tea, then drove to Marston Lake, where I wanted to see whether the bird life had returned after the apparent visit from some Mink, but there was a single swan, so the Grebe pair I had earlier captured on a nest in the reeds, had left, as had fortuitously, the Cormorants which must have pleased the Anglers.

This was as much a check on whether the birds had returned, as enlightening my colleague. We then drove on to my more frequently visited lake which was home to the Windsurfers — Brogborough Lake, and I was pleasantly surprised that despite only a mild breeze, did have a few sailors visiting. What was even more encouraging was that Jeff, a seasoned windsurfer had finally been tempted to give hydrofoiling a go, and Sam who runs the place had updated his hydrofoil, and both were due out on the Lake. This meant our trip was about to go up a gear, and I tentatively got my friends acceptance to take a few pictures. Yes, I had brought along my gear, but only on the off chance, so readied my tripod, EOS R and 60-600mm Sigma with its 1.4 x Converter for action. After some shooting, mainly of Jeff and Sam, I felt my time was up, and started to pack it all away, when suddenly it looked as if both hydrofoilers were actually going to be reasonably close together for me to get both in one shot, but that decision to stop had made I missed a fabulous shot of both aloft, and with one sweeping in arc behind the other, but I did get some with both in close formation, so with that I did dismantle everything and we left.

We headed back to my place and then walked to the local church with its separated tower, and its legend of the Devil separating each! We had some more tea and biscuits before my successful photographer friend headed back for London, and I set in motion the task of creating a gallery of images to put up on the blog, which went live in the early hours of Sunday morning after I had completed this narrative of our time together. One thing we did discuss was to rekindle our effort to produce photographic images that graphically display puns or ‘double entendres’. In the past we had created ‘A Glass Half-full’ and ‘Burning the Candle at Both Ends’. Back then I had made a list of ‘Bon Mots’, but since at the time we both had plenty of work these all fell by the wayside. However, I would very much like to rekindle the idea, as photomontage is something I enjoy.

Breezy at Marston Moretaine, Less so at Brogborough

Upon arrival at the Car Park at Brogborough Lake, it had become obvious there was far less wind here than where I had just left, so I did not immediately go to the boot and pull out the tripod or camera to set up for shooting, I simply walked to where several of those who would be out on the lake were chatting. There was no sense of urgency to be out on the water, since the prerequisite for windsurfers lies in the name! I did learn that here a while there had been a reasonable blow, but it had dropped, hence the relaxed atmosphere.

I did spot that Richard McKeating was now with a hydrofoil on his board, which prompted me to forego the chatting and get back to the car and set the Benbo tripod up, and mount the EOS R with the 60-600mm Sigma Sports and 1.4x Converter attached.

By the time I reached the shoreline, he was out on the lake. However the wind had not the enthusiasm needed for lift-off, but if anyone could make the most of what wind was on offer, I was going to be ready to capture that separation of air between surfboard and water! What I did notice was that Sam Barnes was no longer the sole sailor with a hydrofoil, and so though I never captured  three foilers airborne in the same frame, I did find them in the same shot; all on the surface!

By the end of the time I was lakeside, I had captured two out of three aloft, which considering the conditions was a good proportion, and with the possibility  of wind forecast later in the Bank Holiday weekend, I may well be making a further visit later…

To show just how versatile this Sigma lens is, not only was I able to capture action close to the Bank as well as close to a distant shore, but I turned the camera towards the reeds, and was able to get a shot of a mating pair of damselflies by swivelling through 90 degrees, (and a tight crop admittedly!) It does however point to the incredible versatility of this lens, and on this occasion because there was good light, the Sigma 1.4x Converter was in place throughout; a real tribute to the designers at Sigma, and also Canon for their full-frame mirrorless body.

Breezy at Marston Moretaine, Less so at Brogborough

Upon arrival at the Car Park at Brogborough Lake, it had become obvious there was far less wind here than where I had just left, so I did not immediately go to the boot and pull out the tripod or camera to set up for shooting, I simply walked to where several of those who would be out on the lake were chatting. There was no sense of urgency to be out on the water, since the prerequisite for windsurfers lies in the name! I did learn that here a while there had been a reasonable blow, but it had dropped, hence the relaxed atmosphere.

I did spot that Richard McKeating was now with a hydrofoil on his board, which prompted me to forego the chatting and get back to the car and set the Benbo tripod up, and mount the EOS R with the 60-600mm Sigma Sports and 1.4x Converter attached.

By the time I reached the shoreline, he was out on the lake. However the wind had not the enthusiasm needed for lift-off, but if anyone could make the most of what wind was on offer, I was going to be ready to capture that separation of air between surfboard and water! What I did notice was that Sam Barnes was no longer the sole sailor with a hydrofoil, and so though I never captured  three foilers airborne in the same frame, I did find them in the same shot; all on the surface!

By the end of the time I was lakeside, I had captured two out of three aloft, which considering the conditions was a good proportion, and with the possibility  of wind forecast later in the Bank Holiday weekend, I may well be making a further visit later…

To show just how versatile this Sigma lens is, not only was I able to capture action close to the Bank as well as close to a distant shore, but I turned the camera towards the reeds, and was able to get a shot of a mating pair of damselflies by swivelling through 90 degrees, (and a tight crop admittedly!) It does however point to the incredible versatility of this lens, and on this occasion because there was good light, the Sigma 1.4x Converter was in place throughout; a real tribute to the designers at Sigma, and also Canon for their full-frame mirrorless body.