• Birds at Bempton

    The ghost of last year’s disastrous day trip to Bempton Cliffs has been laid! Last year, the forecast of early mist, lifting mid-morning, had been wrong and thick fog became even thicker by lunchtime with no prospect of clear weather – we could hear birds but not see much. To add insult to injury, trying to follow the birds that we could see made me motion sick. The saving grace of that day had been a visit to Rodley nature reserve, near Leeds, in the afternoon. I have discovered that I cannot work with a macro lens or with a long telephoto lens without becoming motion sick (not much chance of getting…

  • Exposure, the 18% grey card, and the fluff in my tumble dryer

    This article was originally written about five years ago but was never published on my web site, so I have slightly updated it to publish now. It is not a complete guide to exposure, which is a big subject, so I have included some links to simple and clear articles on various aspects of exposure and controlling depth of field on the excellent Cambridge in Colour, Luminous Landscape and other web sites. What is exposure? To beginners, exposure may be just a word, a strange concept that they haven’t come across in the context of their new hobby, so here is a simple definition (based on digital capture): “Exposure is the amount…

  • Great Crested Grebe and Moorhen families

    I was very lucky to be able to watch a young family of Great Crested Grebes last week in a local pond. By the time I had found out about them, the chicks were over a week old and becoming independent in getting around the pond, though they did occasionally hitch a ride on either mum or sometimes dad’s back. Unfortunately they were at quite a distance from the shore on both days that we went down to watch them, so taking photographs was a challenge. Closer in, near the edge of the lake were two families of moorhens darting in and out of the reeds and it was possible, from time…

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