Spectacular!

Last October we took a trip to North Norfolk for a night to go and see the Snettisham Spectacular.  It certainly didn't disappoint, spectacular by name, spectacular by nature!  If you intend to visit I strongly recommend staying overnight to avoid an excessively early start, depending on tide times, as naturally an early morning or late evening display is best for photography so pick your date carefully and hope for good weather! I would also advise getting there early as there were a good couple of hundred people lining the shore when we were there and you don't want to end up with a line of blurred heads in shot, or maybe you do...

The spectacular comes about from a quirk of the geography around Snettisham.  Snettisham sits about 10 miles north north east of Kings Lynn on the North Norfolk coast.  The reserve is a fairly long, but easy flat walk from the car parks and consists of a couple of lagoons protected from the sea by an earth bank.  Good shots can be had of some of the participants in these lagoons after the spectacular is over.  It is what is the other side of this bank that is the interesting part however!

The area sits right at the bottom of The Wash and as such has some huge mud flats.  When the tide is out mud flats can be pretty boring, but it's what happens when the tide comes in that makes Snettisham special.  As the water levels rise the waders that were once spread out across the mud get pushed into tighter and tighter areas that are closer and closer to the beach.  As these areas shrink more and more birds get squeezed in running towards dry land and eventually taking flight as they are scared by predators or run out of mud in mesmerising displays.  A good pair of binoculars allows you to get a good view of the waders running in what appears to be organised chaos, but, given the right light, when they take to the air binoculars can be ignored and the display of light on the birds as they twist and turn in marvellous synchronicity provides a truly amazing sight!  I only wish that I had a good quality video camera to truly capture the spectacular and so that you could hear the noise of thousands of birds passing over head.  Unfortunately I don't, so it will have to just be photographs!

Both images were shot with the same EOS7D and my Sigma 150-500mm lens at f9 1/400th ISO320.  I think I should have dropped the shutter speed and upped the f-number to make the whole image a little sharper.  I was more interested in trying to watch the spectacular display and capture the motion of the flock than making sure all my hundreds of images were pin sharp!  I think I managed to capture the motion nicely by using the way the light played across the flock as it twisted and turned.  Post processing involved spot healing to remove a couple of birds that were not fully part of the flock and in the case of the second image cropping to remove someones head!

Hear me roar!

Just near to where we live is Woburn Abbey, it was here that we were lucky enough to watch the red deer rut in October 2011.  After a few nerves about whether we would be able to find deer on the limited footpaths we were treated to some excellent views and some close encounters.

This magnificent specimen was in full vocal flow as we walked along one of the few paths you are allowed to follow on the estate.  I loved the way he was framed by the trees and so I heavily cropped the image in the dark room to accentuate this natural framing.  I have also carried out a small amount of sharpening as I seem to struggle getting pin sharp images at range on my super-telephoto.

This was shot using my Sigma 150-500mm lens at a distance of some tens of metres at 500mm.  Even so the image has quite a large amount of wasted space, hence the crop.  It was shot at 1/160s f6.3 (perhaps a source of the soft focus) at ISO160.

If I were shooting this again I would try to increase the ISO setting to allow for a smaller aperture to try to improve the sharpness, although I am very happy with the focal length so this would have to be a small adjustment.

"Twixt sea and pine"

As for the last couple of years our summer holiday has been to the North Norfolk Coast.  The light railway is a must during our holiday to this area (more on this at a later date) and this year we got the chance to see the railway from a different perspective during a visit to Sheringham Park. This shot showing the famous pines and sea of the quote "Twixt sea and pine", a catch-phrase of the North Norfolk Railway shows both the Coastguard Cottages and Weybourne Mill.  I took this from the top of the Gazebo in Sheringham Park on a very overcast, but quite bright, day.  I used a graduated filter to add interest to the sky and captured the steam train as it passed over the coast road with a good head of steam up as it chugs up the hill towards Weybourne Station.

It was taken using my 18-55mm kit lens at 53mm, f11 1/125s ISO400.  In post processing I have straightened the horizon by a couple of degrees and cropped to try to fit better with the rule of thirds and remove some distractions from the foreground.  If I were to change anything (other than picking a nicer day!) I would try to reposition myself to cut out the annoying tree top in the bottom right and try to work a bit better on the framing to get closer to the ideal thirds.

First share!

So, for my first share I thought I needed something special.

A few weeks ago now my girlfriend asked me if I would like to join her checking some dormouse boxes with the Bedfordshire dormouse group.  I must point out I was accompanied by a licensed dormouse ecologist, had permission to take photos and permission to be on the land we were using, which for obvious reasons shall remain secret.  Dormice are an endangered species and very rare, so please do not go looking for them without being with a suitably trained person, otherwise you could face a hefty fine!

Now, to the photography:

I took the image at 1/60s, f6.3 at 50mm with my 18-55mm kit lens on an EOS7D at ISO400 in aperture priority.  I chose the lowest f-number of the lens to blur the person in the background whilst keeping the mouse in focus.  Naturally I didn't use flash.  In post processing I have done a small amount of fiddling with exposure and a tiny bit of sharpening.

If there was anything I would change it would be to re-take the image a little closer remove the tips of the fingers which I feel are slightly distracting.