Early Visit to Marsworth Reservoir

Arriving at the water's edge, I immediately spotted a lone Muntjac across the water on the far bank, and just before it returned to the undergrowth managed to grab a quick shot, albeit with foliage and branches obscuring its hind legs, then moments later, a squirrel, scurried down a tree trunk and disappeared into a bush with its mouth full.

The air was filled with the unmistakeable sounds of pigeons' flapping their way through the leaves all around me. The next visitor was far too quick for me, a heron landed momentarily on a high branch of a dead tree, spotted me, and was away back the way it came, in a trice; sadly, never to return that morning. I got to sit down with the camera on a monopod and my hand on the camera with the 70-200mm lens. I have to own up, that was not by choice; I had been careless when packing the case and chose it mistakenly for the 100-400mm, but so be it, it did at least offer an extra full stop of exposure to make up for the far smaller image!

The light was kind to me, it had a softness due to slight cloud cover thereby avoiding the harshness of full sunlight on potential subjects, in this case I was hoping to glimpse a kingfisher. Glimpse was all I got initially, as an orange and blue blur passed across my field of view at high speed, but it was not long before a kingfisher alighted on a far branch, looked around, then dived, and disappeared from view; whether it met with success, I had no way of knowing.

It was quite a while before another visit, so I captured an amusing piece of pigeon life, and it seemed to me as a human observer that a male flew to a branch ostensibly to drink, but in the hope his presence would bring a female admirer, and certainly soon after another pigeon alighted further along the branch, but instead of waiting patiently for a short moment, he immediately sidled along the branch and the second bird simply flew off, he seemed dazed and remained quite still musing on his failure before flying off in the same direction.

I had two more kingfisher visits, and several flybys, together with one quick circling of a bush, and in the lulls, I took shots of some of the fungal growths and the beginnings of autumn in some of the trees, and a charming slim robin gave me the once-over. After four hours I stretched my aching legs and headed for Tringford to meet up with the Water Bailiff, before heading home, but on reaching the turn for Aldbury, changed my mind and took the road heading for Wigginton Bottom.

Fields of Battle 14-18 – Lands of Peace Eight Year Project of Remembrance

Michael St Maur Sheil is the photographer who has spent eight long years on a photographic project that he feels passionately everyone should try to understand just how much was sacrificed by very young men who went to war, and very large numbers never returned, or returned with mental and physical scars that never healed, and of the many families who lost loved ones in just four years at the start of the twentieth century.

Mike invited me to this exhibition that was staged in St. James’ Park on the day that marked the centenary of the start of the “War to End All Wars”. Sadly that was to be over-optimistic. I came along with photographer Geoff Dann, and met up with Adam Woolfitt and his wife Penelope to see this body of work that conveys the history of that conflict in a way that mirrors what happens with the passage of time, and this is aptly described in Mike’s title for the exhibition and an accompanying book that was on sale. These were the fields of great hard-fought battles, yet time has mellowed their shapes, and he has captured for instance the soft beauty of the zig-zag trenches in undulating grassy banks when seen from above as he over flew in a microlight with slanting sunlight.

In others he captured the scene in snow and frost because that was the season in which the men fought. He had brought along the actual football that had been used by men trying to forget the horrors that invaded their long hours in the trenches, and a present day soldier was photographed holding the very ball against a backdrop of the ball in situ that Mike had shot.

The exhibition was opened by HRH the Duke of Kent KG, after Mike gave a short explanation as to how the project came about, and it was pointed out that one of the visitors was a German who was requesting that the exhibition actually be taken and put on show in Germany, which hopefully will show how reconciliation is possible with the passage of time, which was the theme of Mike’s photographs; he does not want them to be stuck in a Museum, he wants this to be a travelling exhibition that is brought to new generations of children, so they may learn what happened a century ago and hopefully to try to pass on a message of the futility of war, and how hard-fought were the freedoms we all now take for granted.

But also it should not go unsaid that Mike shows here a consummate talent for a great photo, I hope in putting together this gallery of images it will inspire others to pay a visit to this exhibition which is open till November 11th, but will travel around thereafter till the centenary of the end of those hostilities in 2018.

The Official Website for the exhibition is here

Harpenden Cricket Derby – Bamville vs Dolphins

I was visiting in order to check out another way of shooting that might obviate a depth of field and a speed issue – I felt that if I could set up my camera on a tripod, manually focus such that I could choose a an aperture to give me the necessary depth of field, set against as low an ISO speed to achieve the necessary quality and use low loss JPEG in place of raw files, that I would then get the best response time, and rely on the live image to keep the mirror action out of the equation.

Well that was the theory. It fails because the screen is well-nigh impossible to use in bright sunlight, so setting the focus distance accurately really necessitates the use of a dark cloth! That would be like going back to the days when I was using Five by four and and ten-eight view cameras! The only saving grace being the image is up the correct way! Another negative is the screen is too small for such accuracy. The intention once set up was I would then shoot using a short electronic release and view the scene with the Number One Eyeball.

Cricket aficianados know instinctively that after seven balls there is a change of overs, and that if ideally one is shooting the home team, in this case Bamville, then if they bat first I would be concentrating on the batsmen. But I wish to cover both ends; not too difficult if one is hand-holding the camera, slightly more onerous with a tripod, on a bright, distinctly warm and moist summer’s day.

I went back to hand-holding the 100-400mm lens. As a colleague slightly later remarked: “If it ain’t broke…” I thanked him for his succinct summary! I did persevere, but that meant I missed several exciting moments and more overs, before reverting to using a DSLR as it was meant to be used. This ultimately stems from not having the right equipment for the task in hand, but the 1DX and 600mm are out of my league, but there is at least a record of some of the moments I managed to capture of a match which Bamville did come close to losing as the Dolphins put up a very strong battle towards the end, but I think their push was made too late. Towards the end it seemed the dell alongside the pavilion was a ball magnet, as most of the balls appeared to be heading in that direction, and the Bamville bowler, Simon, seemed to be delivering ever faster balls thereby adding to their terminal velocity each time they were hit!

Caddington – Short Stroll

It was unforgivingly muggy and I had been at the screen for several days, so as my daughter and her two children were coming over, I decided I needed a break, so grabbed my camera and strolled down the main road through the village, taking a close look at flowers and any pollinators that were busy at work.

It was not long before I found subjects for the 100mm macro lens on the 7D. I diverted down one arcing road which starts and finishes simply further along the same main road, and in so doing was rewarded by two displays of a flower I had never seen before – it vaguely resembled a cluster of fibre optics lit by LEDs! I have tried searching for a similar looking flower on Google to help find out its name – to no avail.

All too soon, I had to make tracks back to welcome my grandchildren to the house, but despite a few owners' comments that the displays were not that brilliant I think I captured some reasonable pictures.

The most prevalent species were hydrangeas – quite obviously a favourite of many and there was a variety of colours on display, the first to catch my eye being all white.

I also found several people were more than happy for me to venture into their front gardens, but mostly I only took shots at the boundary.

Bountiful Budliea

Having earlier complained about the lack of hoverflies and butterflies in my garden, Saturday brought the arrival at least of more butterflies, similar numbers of bees, and a hairy hoverfly. They were shot in a couple of short sessions around two Budliea bushes in the back garden

Sadly, one set of far less welcome insects were probably encouraged by the heat — midges! I am sure these also have a psychological effect of creating phantom itches for several hours after!

The challenge for me was to see how close I could come, so that I could observe and capture a record of their pollinating and cleaning activities, whilst trying to do a reasonable job of trying to take the shots with interesting and varied backgrounds, with differing colours and shapes. Since I consider these galleries to be a personal picture library, I often also include variations of framing from landscape and portrait formats as well as often placing the subject, such that there is suitable area left for placing of text or other images to be ,cut in, which may often seem like unnecessary duplication. Lastly, I like to ensure that a gallery of images fill the pages without blank thumbnail spaces. I am limited also in that the Lightroom templates I use do not allow for differing totals of images per page.

Moving in really close to these insects then taking sharp images requires a certain amount of perseverance and patience, and when you do not have the steadiest of hands, it is quite challenging; I hope that the images shown in this gallery convey just how fascinating these creatures are when viewed 'up close and personal'.

One last note; the sun was in and out, there was a gentle breeze occasionally interspersed with gusts, and my subjects work very fast, rarely settling for longer than a few seconds, very occasionally they would remain longer, but in the case of the butterflies, they would not help by keeping their wings open for long, or would choose a location where my flash was shielded by leaves, also they did not take into consideration that I might want a complimentary backdrop, so it was often vital for me to change ISO, Aperture, or in some instances the relationship between the ambient light and the flash exposure, so they kept me on my toes, and sometimes on my knees, and the camera becomes very heavy after waiting patiently for a bee or butterfly to come over the top of the florettes and into view.

Stockwood Discovery Centre Flowers

Having had only a single hoverfly visible in my own garden today, and wanting to try to get ever closer to capture more detail whilst they forage for nectar, I decided on a quick visit to the Stockwood Discovery Centre gardens.

I learned that some poppies had a vast audience of hoverflies, but watching for a while I saw nary a one, and so it was destined to be for the rest of my visit, there were however bees aplenty, and far more interesting flowers, so serendipity took over and I accepted my fate and simply took a gallery of images of flowers instead.

A Second Delve into the Verbena

There is another world when kneel close to a garden bed of Verbena, or move in close to the florettes of a Budliea; when you are close to the Verbena on a warm afternoon like Saturday, you can hear an almost continuous hum from the bees as they move speedily around the tiny flowers, never staying for even as long as a second, since the flowers themselves are far too small. But for the hoverflies and other tiny insects the flowers do offer an advantage to linger, but mostly on this afternoon, a full second was generous to me.

This is a small window in which to move in, focus, and fire, but at least shooting digitally, I can rid myself of my failures in fairly short order. The sun was in and out as if it were a strobe light, which meant a constant re-assessment of my ISO setting, but at least from my last session, I had concluded that setting the Auto correction for the ambient lighting to minus a stop and a third, and the on-camera flash to plus a stop was a good baseline from which to work. I did a fair amount of ‘chimping’ to keep abreast of how I was faring, and I was careful to ensure that the flash was not being shielded by intervening leaves.

I was determined to see whether I could get in ever closer so I could capture the activity of the insects be they butterflies, hoverflies or or a lone ladybird. In this way I was able to note that in the absence of any aphids, the ladybird was not averse to sneaking pollen from the tiny Verbena flowers for a change in diet.

Hoverflies and Other Budliea Pollinators

It seemed cooler outside than in, so lunchtime took me outside with the Canon 7D and the Canon 100mm Macro with its onboard flash. The sun was in and out of cloud cover making it as difficult as possible for me to keep adjusting both the ISO and Aperture to take this gallery of images mainly of the hoverflies, of which I saw at least three different species, and within any specific group there were different ages.

Because some were half the size of the largest, I took a control shot of my thumbnail against a single flower head of the Verbena as most were found feeding on its pollen, with fewer going for the florettes of the Budliea whose size was easier to judge.

The most striking variety was a bright yellow that I had not come across before, and one looked very like a bee. I was lucky to get a few shots where the insect was still in flight, but a couple had just taken off and remained in frame from when I was taking a shot whilst they were static.

I started off with the flash set to one third over exposure and the ambient set to one third under, but eventually I set the flash to a full stop over and the ambient one and a third under with a few changes of ISO from 1600 down to 250 when the sun was fully out and I was shooting around the edges of the verbena clump.

I was reasonably happy with the end result considering how few were around despite the warmth.

Stockwood Discovery Gardens Visit

Having not visited the gardens at the Stockwood Discovery Centre for some weeks I felt that given the time I would pay a visit as the light seemed reasonable and I felt the chances of finding numerous images was good.

Upon entering the sounds of children filled the air, as I strolled beyond the Play Area and entered the gardens. At first there seemed an abundance of green, but not a lot of colour, but this proved to be deceptive, once I could see and hear the destruction of the old diamond-shaped Fountain, I then spotted the wonderful length of Lavender, and the occasional colour of a tall flower to the right.

I took a few preliminary shots then sought out the gardener, Jan and soon spotted her beyond the strewn cuttings of the hedge she was trimming at the far end wall. We chatted a while as she continued to level the top of the hedge, and then she asked whether I wanted to take a look inside the greenhouse.

I learned that it now had a young robin visiting and also a frog. I later did spot the robin, which seemed to lack its customary red breast, but I never saw the frog. I did however find much to photograph in there, and I was soon sweating profusely in the moist heat despite almost the entire length had its windows open. Once I had worked my way to the far end there was a welcoming pleasant breeze.

Once I had locked the greenhouse behind me and walked around in the fresh air, I soon dried, leaving my shirt with a white salt tide mark! I headed for the vegetable area and the lavender to get a few shots of hoverflies and bees, before heading for other sections and leaving. I was pleasantly surprised by the number of images I managed to find.

Tring Reservoirs' Birdlife

Sunday promised fair weather with just a chance of a shower, so I decided that as I had not visited the Tring Reservoirs in a while, I would take myself off there with just the one lens and camera, the 5D MkIII and the 100-400mm lens. I intended travelling very light – not even the monopod.

I went to Tringford initially and met up with a couple of anglers, took a few shots of Common Tern as they swooped and dived for small fish close to the jetty. I did catch a quick glimpse of a pair of kingfishers skimming the water's surface before parting from the anglers and taking a wander a short way along the Trout stream, on the offchance I might catch sight of them there, but all there were were damselflies, a single dragonfly, a butterfly, and a multitude of insects.

I crossed the road and took to the path between Marsworth and Startops End reservoirs, stopping occasionally to capture more Common tern, black headed and common gulls. Eventually I took to the reeded area to patiently wait to see whether I might catch sight of a kingfisher at the far end of Marsworth reservoir. I was in luck, as after forty minutes a pair actually circled a bush on the far side from me, before beating a hasty retreat back across the main lake.

 I waited another twenty minutes before getting another chance when a singleton landed on a far bare branch before flying off; I just managed to capture a shot on the edge of my frame as it disappeared, and that is the shot that heads this text. More than an hour passed before I made my way back towards Tringford and capturing a few more shots of the gulls and tern.

Sussex Saturday

The weekend of the Goodwood Festival of Speed, I spent with a charming couple I have known since I first spent time with them in Bormes-les-Mimosas in Provence, as the Friday would be spent with the two Peters at the hill-climb.

Saturday morning however was going to be more relaxing with a walk along the beach with Rosie and Tilly, the golden Labradors. Sunday would also be a walk, though a different location but with the same canine company. I would naturally take any opportunity to take photographs, and the two galleries are the result.

Saturday's Gallery, (same location as linked from the Title above)
Sunday's Gallery

Festival of Speed 2014

Once again, I was lucky enough to be invited to the Festival of Speed at Goodwood, and on this occasion I was joined by two Peters; one being my primary guest, and the second a good friend of the first whom the first Peter was inviting as a thank you for a spell on his boat in Antigua. The unexpected bonus from these arrangements was an invitation to the Gurney Pavilion courtesy of Ferrari who provided us with excellent hospitality, food and drinks during the day.

We had set off from Birdham and encountered heavy traffic on our journey into the venue, and misdirected by some miscreant switching the colour coding at one of the main roundabouts which resulted in our having to drive through one of the Public Car Parks to reach Gate 4, and our designated parking.

We visited the Super Car area first before heading for the Gurney Pavilion where we collected our extra passes and some programmes. The seating at the front of the Ferrari area proved to be an ideal viewing position for the right hander before the straight in front of the House, especially as it was sufficiently elevated to be clear of the straw bales at the trackside. It also provided a fairly clear view to the wider area before the bridge where many stunts were to be performed such as burn-outs, doughnuts and bike tricks.

Once again Lord March had excelled himself with the installation in front of the House; on this occasion the support structure curved over the roof of the house itself, to support two silver Mercedes from past and present eras. Despite forecasts of a high likelihood of showers we were blessed with warmth and much sunshine throughout the day.

I just love to capture the detailing of the vehicles on show and marvel at the curves that the designers achieve for both the production and concept cars that were on show, and I hope this comes across in the shots that I have taken and that appear in the galleries from this year’s event. Equally, I am amused by the ludicrous ornamentation that can be seen on American cars from a bygone era. The quality of the engineering to be found all around the Festival is awe-inspiring, and proves to be a wonderful hunting ground for photography.

The atmosphere at both the annual motoring events I have been lucky enough to attend over several years is the epitome of friendliness. On the Peugeot stand I was keen to take photos of the concept car, and the Designer himself, Dominique Larcher invited me within the barriers so that I might get better shots of the details of the car, and also his PA kindly took hold of my camera with its long lens, because he was concerned it might brush against his creation, which made my task far easier. I hope I did justice to his creation in the subsequent photos.

I cannot thank Lord March for the invitation and Leslie Walsh of Ferrari enough for the wonderful hospitality he gave us in the Gurney Pavilion, and the wonderful company I enjoyed ‘avec les deux Pierres’.

The headline text links to just one gallery – Cars on Track, but all can be found in this list:

The Installation
Cars on Track
Bikes on Track
Statics
Bike Stunts
Aston Martin Concept
Maserati Concept
Peugeot Concept
The Aircraft

Cluster Gathering at Colosseum

I had hoped to use this meeting to attempt link CamRanger to the big screen after we had listened to the guest speaker, but it all went wrong from the start as Peter and I managed to arrive late, so missed the start of Syd Nadim’s  interesting discussion of various of their incentive ideas.

However we did not miss a minute of the fascinating story from Tom Evans about the family of products that he is steadily bringing to market, and the various interesting hurdles he had to leap to reach his goal after leaving his agency and gathered several experts together to make his dream into reality, and the skills he himself had to acquire as he successfully used KickStarter to reach, and exceed, his funding target.

The result is the group of products that can be seen at: http://www.bleepbleeps.com

After the talk we gathered around in groups to discuss what we had listened to and partook of pizzas and drinks and Claire Wilson tried to help me set up her laptop to attempt to bring the pictures that I was planning to take now we were in the networking stage, but it was not to be. However, it did demonstrate Claire’s patience and tenacity for which I was very grateful, but it curtailed the number of images that I managed to capture, so it was at least fortuitous that the summer evening offered another opportunity to capture some of the surroundings, and the cloud formations.

My Toe Hurts, Betty!

I set off for me, very early, and arrived on the banks of Marsworth Reservoir around a quarter past seven, and sat down to wait with my 5D MkIII and 100-400mm lens on a monopod. I was hoping to catch sight of a kingfisher, but the first hour passed with a visit by a curious Mallard male and countless midges. The air was filled with birdsong, but the owners of the songs were unknown to me beyond the distant call of the cuckoo and the passing calls of magpies, and the nasal moans of pigeons.

I did hear several splashes and plops of fish jumping in a pool beyond the fallen tree branches, but again the name of the species was not part of my vocabulary, and the angle and distance precluded my getting shots that might help me find the answer from an angler – I was amazed by the size of some of their number and just how many were swimming in that small area. A heron passed overhead at one time, but with the camera on the monopod, there was no chance of my getting in a shot.

It was while waiting for the main attraction that a disembodied voice called out: "Do you hear the call of the wood pigeons?" At first I assumed it was someone calling to a nearby friend, but when the question was repeated I realised it was aimed at me, I replied "Yes" and a man on the far bank in a red or orange shirt glimpsed through the branches and yellow flags by the bank said: "It sounds like 'My toe hurts, Betty!' I chuckled and said yes it does, and asked whether he had ever caught sight of a cuckoo? But my question remains unanswered as by then he had disappeared.

With those words repeating in my head I continued my wait for the equally elusive kingfisher. Before I continued in earnest I decided I would take a swig from my flask of coffee and had no sooner packed it back away having quenched my thirst, that coming close to two hours my patience was rewarded; a kingfisher alighted on a branch to my left and I took a few shots, it was less than a minute later that it dived and successfully caught a tiny morsel, moving centre stage to swallow it with much head shaking. Before departing he moved to another branch and dived again, but I was disappointed in the small size of its catch and how shapeless it was in its beak. He must have thought the same as he departed soon after.

I did stay on, but apart from another pair of Mallard, a lone coot, numerous pigeons, a few crows and spells of melodious but unknown birdsong, I saw no more kingfishers and four hours astride an uncomfortable log proved as much as I could endure, so I returned to the towpath of the Grand Union Canal and wandered to Tringford reservoir and its anglers, hoping to meet up with its Water Bailliff, but he was not there; I will catch up with him later.

Cambridge Letters

Catherine invited me to Cambridge for the Saturday, and I arrived the night before, so we had some time together, rather than me rush on the day, and we would visit Cambridge for a stroll around the City Centre. We parked near Newnham and walked through from there as the sun began to break through and dry the grass from the earlier showers in the morning.

Catherine had one of my cameras, and I another, and she challenged me to capture images that spelled our names, I felt she did somewhat cheat as she chose Katy, whereas, well – see whether they become obvious. Trying to chat, window shop, not bump into the people who thronged the streets and capture the letters was an interesting task, and whilst trying for a striking ‘D’, I was challenged by a charming and attractive girl who inquired what precisely was I doing?

It turns out she was the manager of the enticing sweet shop outside which I was about to photograph the bootscraper set into the base of the wall to the left of the shop entrance. I then explained she need have no fear, I was not from the council photographing the structure as she seemed to be wondering, but more prosaically trying to photograph the letters of my name, and had spotted an excellent ‘D’. I then told her I was also needing an ‘I’ and she kindly provided me with another letter! However, I could not leave having only taken a tightly cropped image of her eye, so I include the whole face by way of thanking her for being such a good sport, and I also found a ‘K’ inside and duly bought one of my girls a lollipop, and left with a smile, and three more letters! I was a happy KID! I wonder how Catherine got along? I have yet to see her shots.

I committed a heinous crime later, photographing policemen, who were keeping a watchful eye on a Badger Cull demonstration in the Market square. Altogether the day’s photography covered a wide range of images that caught my eye and provided me some amusing family shots of my twin grandchildren as we enjoyed ourselves in the park where we chose to relax after our snack lunch before Catherine and the twins set off to watch the film Maleficent, and I headed for home.