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.

PHOTOS FOR PRINTING

Heron eating a rat

These were taken at Attenborough Nature Reseve were i was looking through a screen as this Heron was starting to hunt for food ,i waited for 5-10 mins and it caught a few small fish but nothing worth keeping in my album when it turned its attention to the edge of the reed beds,it had seen something  that i hadn't and then it caught what seemed like a vole or rat.The Heron then turned back towards me  with its prey firmly in its beak were upon it kept submerging the rat/vole under the water as if it were drowning it ,it did'nt take long for the rat/vole to stop struggling and then the Heron ate the rat/vole in one swallow which you can see in the photo's below ,I have never witnessed any thing like this before and found it quite amazing and to have my camera with me at this time and to witness what was happening will stay with me for ever as i thought they only ate fish and frogs.

The photos were captured with my Nikon D300s with a Nikon 80/400 lense set at f7.1 at 1/200 sec with an ISO at 320 at 400m hand held,

ASSIGNMENT 211

Here is a website offering  printing of all sizes and on a good selection of printing surfaces at reasonable prices

This 2nd site has a lot more options plus a calculating gadget which gives you a price on screen which i find quite handy,they also print on glass 

and you don't have to be too critical with the size of your image as there software analyses your image and shows you possible sizes you may choose and if your ideal size is incorrect it can not be printed so you will not waste any money on duff photos,another point is they automatically print your print with a boarder which you can trim or leave on 

Here are a selection of ways i would present my images.
Depending on the project i would be doing ie calanders ,post cards or just framed photos for individual clients who like my work.

Firstly i need to decide on the image size wether it be portrait,landscape or panoramic,then change the dpi to 300 and the size in inches ie 8-10, 10-12 or perhaps 36-12 for landscapes or panoramic,but my bird photos could be portriat or landscape depending on the shot.Here are a couple of examples in portrait and then landscape.The picture below would be in portrait as a landcape picture of this image would never work.

fThis 2nd photo would be landsape and not portrait .

One of the first things i do is to download my photos onto my PC then i resize them and crop out any none important parts of the photo or any thing that distracts your eye away from the main image as i want your eye to leed you to the image or were the the image is going .

here i have rezised my image to 30cm by 90cm with 300dpi which would work perfectly well with this image at this size .

Here the image has been reduced in size which allows you to upload your photos a lot faster.

Having decided on the size and shape of the print i then need somewhere to get the print printed ,so after copying the image to a memory stick i then go to Costco in Derby (or you can send them via e'mail and they then text you to tell you when they are ready).If you call at store depending on how many images you need printing they are usually pocessed with ih an hour or 1 day if doing calanders but a single picture about 1 hour,The type of paper is your choice wether it be on matt ,silk ,closs or even on canvass ,they also print on washable vinyl but that does take longer and it will not fade even in bright sunlight were photos do ,also some of photos would look really good on canvass especially the Curlew above as the textures would blend really well on Canvass.

Attenborough part 2

Just a couple of hours to spare so a quick trip to Attenborough with my Nikon D300s and fitted with a Nikon 80/400 telephoto lense i was of .and as usual i should of taken a tripod as the birds were posing perfectly and i was Not properly prepared and the white throat here in the first 3 photos was quite happy to let me get close enough to take these hand held

Wow,all i could hear was this little fellow calling out for his mom to get more insects and it took me a while to pin point him as the nest was not easy to see but once i had spotted it the the woodpecker kept looking out and then dashing back in .i did not hang around as the parents would not come in to feed the chick. as i had no camaflage or a hide to hide in and the parents were going mad .so a few shots and a lot of noise of mom and i left so they could get back to normal as i was interfering and i would not want to be resposible for this chick not getting fed,if i had the time to go back i would of set the camera up on a tripod and and retreated back to a safe distance and got well camoflaged and then use a pair of binoculares and a remote for my camera and then get some photos of the chick being fed but as i said earlier i only went for a stroll so travelled light.