Failure is the Key to Success

Since we’ve had our bikes, we have been out on them most weekends and have been up to Marston Vale several times. We have also been back to the RSPB at Sandy on a cooler day as well. What we have noticed at Marston Vale is the changes week on week of the plants in flower. This week it was the dog roses, a couple of weeks ago the hawthorn was in flower. I have uploaded photos into 2 more galleries RSPB Sandy 31st May 2008 and Marston Vale 8th June 2008. This year I have seen much so far including dragonflies, damselflies, blue tits, great tits, black capped warbler and a yellowhammer.

I find it amazing how the same place can be so different each visit.

Tags:marston vale,yellowhammer

Walkers Crisps are running a promotion called BritTrips. This is to promote the fact that there are many things to do in the UK without having to go to the airport for a holiday. There are codes in bags of crisps that you register online to get points. You can exchange the points for partial or full payment of a selection of days out, meals, holiday accommodation etc.
Anyway, last Saturday afternoon we took the bikes out to Marston Vale again and cycled round the other bit of the cycle path. I was really good, as my son can now ride without stabilisers and this was the first time out since he had first managed.
On Sunday afternoon we converted 5 of our BritTrip points into a voucher for entry/parking at the RSPB headquarters in Sandy, which is about 45-50 minutes away from us. It was a really hot day, which was a shame in a way, as the birds were staying out of the way, at least they were on the heath trail that we walked. Part of the way round the heath trail is a pond that has been established for Natterjack toads and there were loads of damselflies and a couple of dragonflies flying around. I managed to get a photo of one of the damselflies, a male Large Red damselfly as I found out when I got home, and several photos of a female Broad Bodied Chaser dragonfly, also found out when I got home. There was a cuckoo in the woods further over, I can’t remember if I have ever heard one before, if I have it was a long time ago. We called it a day after about 1.5 hours as everyone was getting tired.

Tags:broad bodied chaser,dragonfly,rspb

I got hold of a Nikon mount for my Tamron lenses just over a week ago and tried taking some photos last weekend. I tried my 60-300mm f3.8-5.4 SP and my original 80-210mm f3.8-4 with and without doubler to see how practical it would be to use a totally manual lens on a digital camera.

First impressions were that it seemed a lot harder to hand hold a stable image than it had been when using film, but that could have been down to exposure settings. Also, there will be a degree of guess and bracketing to get the correct exposure. I managed to get shots which were correctly exposed, but to be honest, I was disappointed with the image quality. The shots seemed very soft and not as sharp as I had been used to getting using the lens on my film camera.

I didn’t get back to looking at it until yesterday afternoon, when I put my 80-210mm lens on my camera on a tripod and shot some flowers and a magpie in the garden. The images were a lot better, but still softer than I would have liked. The magpie was shot at 210mm which is equivalent to 315mm on a 35mm camera. I really needed to repeat this with the other lens (60-300mm) that I had used more recently, but the weather hasn’t been good this afternoon. Maybe tomorrow.

Tags:manual lens,tamron lens

For the last few months, the cre8Buzz photography community have been running a monthly photography assignment. I borrowed Jo’s camera and entered the November assignment, which was food, with my cheese and crackers photo. I wasn’t overly happy with this shot and didn’t get time to enter the December one.

Anyway, the January topic was Candles and last Friday afternoon I spent some time photographing our candles and then cropping and choosing the best image, which I uploaded later that evening. There have been a few entries this month, and although I have had comments left for me, I haven’t left comments for any of the other entries. I must do that soon.

I had a difficult choice between 2 of my shots and eventually decided for the second one over the first one.

You can click on each picture for a bigger image. Let me know what you think.

Tags:candles,cre8buzz,Photography

I thought I’d take advantage of the dry weather this morning to get some early morning photos, so I was out before sunrise (about 7:40 actually). It had been a clear night, so I had to scrap the frost off the windscreen before I could go anywhere.

I first went up onto the Dunstable Downs, overlooking the gliding club, but decided that the location wasn’t what I was looking for, combined with the fact that I didn’t have any money for the car park. I drove on into Whipsnade,past the zoo and stopped in the car park on Bison Hill, where I took some mediocre shots before deciding it was too cold to hang around and driving back through Whipsnade to the car park at Whipsnade Heath. I had never been to Whipsnade Heath before, it is an area of shrub and woodland that has overgrown the commonland. I got some good shots here and it was a lot warmer, about 3′C. I got a bit muddy on the circular path through the trees, but it would be well worth coming back in the summer, as it supposed to be good for butterflies. The gorse was in flower, but although I took some shots, I didn’t get good ones.

I’ve put some of the photos I took in a new gallery, Around Whipsnade Jan 2008.

Tags:Whipsnade Heath

I hope everyone has a great year in 2008.

We went out to the zoo yesterday afternoon to stretch our legs and try out my new camera. The weather was a bit cool, but not too bad. We found when we got there that the carpark was closed and you can take your car in for free between November and February, so we were able to make our way around the zoo including the ‘Passage through Asia’ which is for cars only. It was so quiet in there that we were able to stop and take lots of photos. I have put the best of my photos up in a Zoo_31_December_2007 gallery on my picture gallery.

Some of the pictures I was quite happy with and some of them, I need to understand the impact of the settings and specifically how to adjust the autofocus area mode. The default is for still images and so I missed out on shots where I was following movement, like when one of the lions decided to stalk and pounce on the others.

It could be the lighting or the settings, but the images look a bit soft to me, I’ll have to play some more.

One thing I did miss was the longer focal length. A lot of the photos I have taken over the last couple of years have been at the longer end of my 60-300 Tamron lens with a doubler on. It seemed very strange to only have a 70mm (105mm equiv) instead of 600mm, but I’ll get used to it or get an Tamron Adaptall Nikon mount and use the 60-300 manually.

Tags:nikon d80,whipsnade zoo,zoo visit