What’s been happening!

It has been a while since my last blog. Again I have had a busy time at late. Had my first wedding of the year, which went was a huge success! The couple absolutely adored the photos! It was an amazing day to be a part of! Some of my favourites will find their way onto the blog, once I have taken care of what the couple would like produced.

Focus on Imaging 2010 took place last weekend, so I made the 2 hour drive up the M40 to go have a wonder around the show. I was on the hunt for suppliers for my wedding products and it was a fruitful trip. I meet some lovely people on the stands and they were very willing to guide me through their products. Unfortunately I did meet some less willing to help and as such they turned me away from even considering there products. I have now settled upon who will be supplying my products for the next few years and I am in the process of ordering up samples!

While at the show, I also managed to catch Andy Rouse’s talk on his best images from the last year. As always with Andy the pictures were superb! He was also offering charity critiques on the Paramo stand, which I took full advantage of. Showing him three of my favourite wildlife shots. The feed back and advice was fantastic and he gave me some great tips to improve the pictures with minor post processing techniques! Below are the reprocessed images that I took to show him. After the critique I purchased Andy’s new book, Tigers: A Celebration of Life. A wonderful book that I cannot recommend enough. Andy is also giving 25% of the profit from the book to tiger conservation, so get out and buy the book! You can buy the book from: http://www.arwpstore.com/

The last spot of news is the most exciting for me! With the help of Preface Studios, I am completely redesigning my wedding photography website. I no longer feel that the current site reflects my work in the best way and consequently it isn’t selling me well enough to potential clients. We are in the early stages but fingers crossed I should be lunching the new site in 4-6 weeks time! As always I will keep you up to date on the development. I am going to be making a huge push through the rest of the year to really get the wedding and portrait business off the ground!

The pictures below I have posted before but using Andy Rouse’s tips I have reprocessed them and they look so much better! To see the originals then scroll back through some of the older postings! The first three are the ones I showed Andy Rouse and the others are ones that I have redone using new methods!

Andy

Somerset Levels

As I mentioned in the pervious blog, I spent a few days down in Somerset exploring the RSPB reserve at Ham Wall and some of the surrounding area. The main reason to visit was to see the starling roost, which is the largest in the south of the UK. I spent two days on the reserve waiting to see some rare birds, such as a Bittern. However I had no luck in this search. I did manage to see an otter, though only for a second.

I spent the first day on the RSPB Ham Wall reserve and saw very little until the starlings started arriving! And did they arrive! They were flying in in groups the size of the entire roost at Brighton and joining together in the hundreds of thousands perhaps even a million birds! The display was fantastic and they birds swooped and turned together, creating loads of different shapes and turning the sky black at points. Looking at the photos it is possible to make out some larger black dots in the sky. I believe they are birds of prey of for a meal, hence there tendency to swoop together. It was such a brilliant experience and wonderful to watch!

The second day I spent on the reverse across the road from Ham Wall, Shapwick Heath (Natural England). Again I didn’t come across a lot, except the otter. I did meet some lovely people though and had a great chat about the area. As sunset drew nearer I headed back to Ham Wall to wait for the starlings. While waiting I was peering out one of the hides and spotted a Snipe poking around! It was a tad far away and a silhouette, so I tried a different approach to getting a photo, result below. The starlings then started to arrive, however the didn’t swoop and turn like the night before. Instead they just gather on mass and I didn’t get any photos worthy of note. However the consolation prize was an absolutely gorgeous sunset! I had a fantastic time and plan on heading back both in the near and far future! The Somerset levels and nature reserves in the area are amazing and well worth visiting.

So on to the pictures! Below are some of the starlings shots from the first day. There are also a few other shots I took as I wondered around and then some from the sunset on the second day. As usual now bigger version are on my Flickr.

Andy

Brighton Starlings

This blog has been a long time coming! I have been trying to get it written for around a week but every time I wanted to get it sorted something came up that delayed it. The main reason for the delays is that I upgraded to Apple’s Aperture 3 in the week and updating my photo library took far longer than I thought it would. Then I had to update my vault (Aperture auto back up feature thing) which took far, far longer than I thought it would!

Anyway onto the reason for this blog. As I have mentioned in previous blogs, I have been on a starling hunt all winter. Looking for the best places to watch the roost. My quest to find the best roosts have taken to many a place, well 3 places really. Slimbridge WWT was fantastic, however the starlings didn’t really come together. The next stop was the old burnt down pier in Brighton. This roost lacked in numbers but was a great setting and wonderful sunset. The slight downside was that the Gulls also decided that it would be a nice place to roost that night. The pictures from this roost are below. I then travelled back to Brighton to go to the other pier. The number of birds was amazing but the weather wasn’t! The sunset was hidden by clouds and the photos were I tad dull, so I have tried something different with the photos. As there was very little colour I converted them all into black and white. The results can be seen below. My last journey took me to Ham Wall RSPB reserve in the Somerset levels. This was by far the greatest roost I have ever seen! The starlings where arriving in groups the size of the entire roosts at Brighton and Slimbridge and the birds must have totaled in the region of a million birds! The pictures from this roost will be up in the next few days. Below are some of the favourites from the Brighton Piers. As usual bigger version on my Flickr, link on the right. The first shot below was taken while waiting for the Starlings to arrive and some of the black and whites are best viewed bigger on Flickr.

Andy

Water Rail

What a day! This morning I travelled to Arundel to visit the WWT. The last time I visited it was an ice rink and most of the water was frozen! Thankfully this time the ground and water were ice-free. Before heading to any of the hides, I had a wonder along the reed bed path. It is an amazingly peaceful walk. As I rounded one of the corners wading in the water in front of some of the reeds was a Water Rail! It was what I was hoping to see, well that and a Bittern. No luck on the Bittern but the Water Rail was beautiful and I had a fantastic 4-5 minute encounter. Some of the pictures I took are down below. A few extra ones are on my Flickr account, link on the right. After some lunch, brought from the café at the WWT (very tasty!), I headed on to Brighton for a spot of Starling watching. 20000-30000 Starlings must have showed up! As always amazing to watch! The only downside was that it was cloudy and not the best for photography, still I got some good pictures. I will be uploading the best from my 2 Brighton trips in the near future.

Andy