I week of the life of baby swallows

A good friend of mine phoned me and said get youself and your camera up ere and see these swallows nesting in me entry (in his north derbyshire tones ) so of i popped and had a look at the set up which was very dark and the nest was built at the top of the inside entry ,great this was not going to be as aesy as i thought ,so i had little room to work in and i did not want to frighten mom and dad of so i set my Nikon D300s with a Nikon macro lense 2.8/105m on a tripopd and fitted my Nikon speed light (600) on with a difuser and set the flash at 1 /1 turned to a oposite wall as not to blind or scare the chicks ,i also used my wireless remote control to operate the shutter and got myself out of the entry so the parents would still carry on feeding.I set up at 250sec at f11 and 320 iso and just randomly took a few shots and the chicks and parents carried on as if nothing had happened

4 days later i went back and was amazed how quickly the had grew and how much they had changed and the feedind was getting more often and as you can see they were not spooked by my presence but i still kept my equipment and myself far enough away as not to scare the parents of ,at one point one of the parebts rested on mt flash on nthe camera .

How cute are these

more grubs mom

they are lookong at me wondering what i am doing as i am now in the entry and can see them carring on as if i weren't there which was good as now i could take photos when i could see them instead of shooting blind as i did on my first visit.

Mom were starving

3 days later and just in time they were ready to fledge and leave the nest .

 And then there were two

last feed

on my own

and this was the nlast i seen of them .

All this in just 7 days (fantastic)

A SELECTION FROM BLACKTOFT

 A day out at Blacktoft Sands Nr Goole .My first sighting of an Avocet protecting 3 chicks,and they were not frightened of any intruders including white eagrets,and even Marsh harriers .all photos were taken hand held with a Nikon d300s with a Nikon 80/400 telephoto lense with an iso of 320 in dodgy light ie grey skys and no sun ,as the photos below show the adult Avocet would not settle and flew at anything and if the light had have been better the photos would of been a lot sharper too,but a little work on some levels in photoshop will probably brighten them up.

Here a white eagret enterd into the terrortry and soon got usherd away even though the Eagret was the bigger bird .

Quite a rare bird her the Green shank not as common as the brighter Red Shank

Another different one for me a Spoonbill ,i struggled with this one as i could not get any closer (i need a bigger lense)

Yet another new spot for me a Marsh Harrier taking a paddle or scavaging for prey ,again a bigger lense would of been better as i am pushing my 400 mlense to its limits and also hand held at this distance is no mean feat.

The Red Shank here is more common than the Green Shank  and as you can see the plumage is a lot brighter as are the legs and beak.

A Blacktailed Godwit just mulling around takin it easy .

Red Shank searching in the shallows for food ,like most Waders it was moving around all the time hunting for its next meal.

Another Blacktailed Godwit joins the rest from the back then walks on in to the rest

Redshank

And finally a Female reed Bunting probably my best shot of the day as it composed it self perfectly on a leaf with enough distance in front of the vegitation for me to blur out the background, and capture for me, the best of the day

Here i was trying to capture Gannets in flight

 shot with a Nikon D300s at Bempton Cliffs East Yorkshire.

conditions were excellent with bright sunshine anabeling me to use a fast shutter speed so freezing the image which gave me sharp images

All the photos were taken free hand with panning

At Bempton you are right on the cliff face so making sure you are far enough from the edge before you loose yourslef in your eyepiece or you could be over the edge,a good sense of health and safety is very important at this site and you must respect the rules and obey all the signs and warnings as you could fall a good 2-400ft to the bottom of the cliff which could be fatal,so make sure you read all the signs as they are clearly visable and you must obey them .

You can get really close to all the birds so a standard lense would be ok.

 

Abstract

Here i was trying to capture oil on water as seen in Digital Photo magazine issue 139 Feb 2011.I used my Nikon D300s Camera and fitted a Nikon 2.8/105m macro lense with VR (vibration reduction) and SW (silent wave motor) .I attached the camera to a tripod and then turned the VR off on the lense as the camera was supported enough as not to warrant the VR .

 Here i used a focal lenght of 105m ,ISO200,shutter speed F/3.5.

With the aperture wide open the coloured cards behind the water have merged together giving a pleasing result.

I used a large glass bowl filled with water and placed several coloured cards under the bowl .the lense was set to manual and i placed a match stick in the water and then manually focused on the match's head untill the image was sharp.Ialso connected a cordless shutter release to the camera so when firing the camera their would be no movement to the camera. I opened the flash unit on the camera but coverd it with card and then placed my Nikon speed light 600 on another tripod with a slave unit which would also fire the flash which i bounced of a wall as i did not want a direct flash hitting the water and reflecting the light ino the cameras sensor .if i were to do this again i would take more phots of the set up as it would explain more for other people so if they tried the same experiment they could see the set up.