AnnMarie's Blog

"Alien Dusk"
for +Julia Anna Gospodarou 's Sea Tuesday

Here's a photo from earlier this month; taken on the beach just south of Llwyngwril, as the sun set on a windy day where I'd been seeking out a cloud break by visiting the coast.

This is a 3 minute exposure using the 82mm Heliopan ND3 filter. The rising tide was being driven in by a strong south-westerly and this helped to add to the translucent satin mist that typifies these long exposures.

Once I'd dried off my feet and then reviewed the image, I immediately started thinking not of the Irish Sea but imagining the boulder strewn landscape of a world yet to be explored.

Hoping that you too, can become lost for a while in this Alien Dusk …

#SeaTuesday #Photography #Wales

One of the many things that I love about Wales, is its variable weather. Yes it does rain frequently but it’s also so changeable; which means it’s rarely boring and sometimes quite dramatic.

Take the last few days for example …

A couple of days ago my photography took me to the coast and we decided to mix business with pleasure by making a family day of it.

The weather was glorious, clear blue skies, strong hot sunshine and a comfortably warm sea as well. Conditions on Aberdaron beach were fabulous.

Jane & Tamsin enjoyed a swim in the sea and a bit of rock pooling whilst I worked on some photography.

The flowers at the base of the sandy cliffs were also enjoying the sun.

I was well aware that a frontal system was approaching from across the Irish Sea. Indeed part of my plan included a desire to catch some interesting clouds over the coastal landscape or failing that, a colourful sunset.

So after a bite to eat we left Aberdaron and drove across to Porth Oer. As expected the north western skies built up and produced a pleasing display.

An added bonus for our journey home was a clear inland sky with a glorious full moon.

So where’s the contrast in this weather? Well that front I mentioned; it has brought us several days of stormy weather with over 3 inches of rain falling in a 24 hour period. This is what Tal-y-llyn looked like at the end of those 24 hours:

With boats a bobbing, water bursting out of its banks and clouds ready to release another deluge.

And now, thankfully, we’re expecting a few finer days again.

You can see more Welsh Landscapes in my galleries over on Nature’s Universe.

RSPB Big Garden Bird watch, it’s amazing how quickly the year goes by.

We chose to do our watch on the Saturday this year and it’s been a beautiful crisp cold day. Most of the expected birds turned up for their daily feed, you can see our results further down this post.

A Nuthatch enjoys a black sunflower seed.

But first I’d like to recount some behaviour of the Pecker variety. To be more precise the Greater Spotted Woodpecker. As those of you who follow my posts will know, we have good numbers of these woodpeckers on the farm and some visit the feeders year round. Currently we have 2 males and 1 female who are regular feeder visitors. Peanuts & Fat balls are their usual preference but one male has developed a liking for sunflower seeds. He is however, very particular about his preparation and eating ritual. Once he is confident that the area is safe, he collects several sunflower seeds from the feeder. Next he flies across to an old post that has a small hole in it. He places the seeds in the hole and bashes them with his beak. This appears to not only remove the hard shell but also pounds the kernel in to fine chips & coarse flour that he then heartily enjoys. This process he then repeats, until disturbed or satisfied. I’ve posted a 2 minute video of this to my YouTube channel, which you can watch at the end of this post.

Now back to the BGBW. As promised our results are in the table below, guarded by Mrs Woodpecker:

Species No. Chaffinch 50 Blue Tit 15 Great Tit 11 House Sparrow 10 Blackbird 8 Brambling 6 Coal Tit 5 Dunnock 4 Robin 4 Song Thrush 4 Pheasant 4 Nuthatch 3 Jay 3 Goldfinch 2 GS Woodpecker 2 Carrion Crow 1 Greenfinch 1 Tawny Owl 1 Summary: 18 species 134 individuals

I’m pleased that some of the Bramblings showed up this year. They have been absent or few in numbers for a several winters but this winter has seen a good number on the farm. They have such fabulous plumage too.

A Brambling perches on a hedgerow twig.

As you can read above, Chaffinches are in great abundance and each morning the farmyard is alive with the hubbub of gossip between their various families in the surrounding hedgerows. Despite the fact that they seem to find plenty of food around the stables & barns, they are still very prominent at the feeders each day.

A Chaffinch in the winter sun.

I think the only regular visitors that didn’t turn up for today’s count, were the Siskins. But then they seem to have been staying up in the forestry during cold spells, only coming down to the feeders when it’s damp & milder; so perhaps their no show was to be expected.

Ah, time to do the evening rounds now. I hope your BGBW was successful and if you haven’t done it yet, good luck for tomorrow.

Here’s the Woody video I mentioned:

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Beyond the Sun & the Moon  , some of the brightest objects in the skies are a few of our fellow planets. It is quite reasonable & fun to set out on an adventure photographing them from your own back yard. The photograph below demonstrates how this can be done with a standard camera setup.

The photograph was taken on a 35mm camera with only a 200mm lens attached. Tripod mounted, 1/15sec f2.8 ISO1250 it shows our moon and Venus  bottom left and Jupiter in the top right.

But what if we’d like to be a little more ambitious, perhaps we would like to focus on planet Jupiter and include some of her moons in the photograph. That too can be achieved without much complication. Within reason you’ll need a lens with a bit more focal length for this one, a 35mm equivalent of 300mm should suffice but more would be better. Again tripod mount for stability and shoot away. The next picture was taken at 700mm focal length on a Canon 300D using an exposure of 2 seconds at ISO 400 f5.6.

To my taste, one of the problems with this is that Jupiter is over exposed and so we see no details on her. But if we reduce the exposure by much then her moons will just fade away into the dark night sky.

So if we want to show details on Jupiter and show her 4Galilean moons  in the same image, we’ll need to find a workaround.

The simplest solution is to capture 2 separate photographs one exposed for the Galilean Moons and one exposed for the planet Jupiter herself. However to capture some worthwhile planetary details we really need to up our focal length & our light gathering capability. This is where we ideally need to jump to a telescope and I’d suggest 150mm (6 inches) of aperture is the minimum. An aperture of 150mm is indeed what I shall work with here; in the guise of a small Celestron Schmidt-Cassegrain  telescope.

To further complicate the matter we’ll be trying to focus & photograph at an imaging scale that is greatly affected by movements & density changes in our atmosphere. This ‘seeing’ will vary moment by moment like the heat haze that you see above objects on a summer’s day. A solution to this is to take many individual images, or more simply, to video the scene and process the best frames in a computer afterwards. This allows us to seize the best moments of seeing and to discard the rest. So let’s check what we’ll need:

• Telescope with at least 150mm aperture, more is better
• Equatorial mount to counteract Earth’s rotation (otherwise the planet may move out of our video frame)
• Some sort of video recording camera
• A way of magnifying the image
• A computer to save the video on to

To record the video many people use a modified webcam or a purpose built planetary imaging camera. These cameras simply slot in where the telescope eyepiece would go and so a standard Barlow lens can be added to provide some further magnification of the scene. The modified webcam route is a very affordable option & can yield some good results.

However, in this instance I am going to use a different technique. An excellent piece of software called EOS Movie Record has been developed. This freeware will allow you to record the LiveView image from a Canon EOS DSLR direct to computer and critically for this occasion it can be recorded whilst the x5 zoom is invoked. So I shall be using my 5D MkII with a x2 extender attached to the back of the scope with an adapter. This will provide 3000mm focal length and the resulting image will be recorded at x5mag on to a laptop PC.

Now that we’re all setup the first thing to do is to record a short piece of video with the exposure bright enough to capture the 4 Galilean moons.

Next we want to reduce the exposure sufficiently to see details in Jupiter’s atmosphere. It is important that we only change exposure, any other changes could alter the relative positions of the moons in the previous video to the position & orientation of Jupiter in this video. Once happy with the exposure, record a video of the scene, perhaps 30s – 90s of video.

Assuming that both video recordings have succeeded, we now need to process our captured data. For the high exposure video with moons, I simply captured a good clean frame to still image. For the lower exposure detailed Jupiter video, we need a piece of software to select and stack the best frames from the video. Registax is a freeware program that will do just that for us.

After stacking the best 500 frames of a 4000 frame video, the image below is what can be seen of Jupiter; the seeing was not particularly good but there are still sufficient details to work with.

Now we need to combine this image with our high exposure frame capture, to include the Galilean Moons.

Any decent image editing program that features ‘layers’ will do for this job, I use Adobe Photoshop. Open both images and copy one into the other as a new layer. Make sure that your imaging scale & orientation are consistent at all times, so that the moons are in the correct  positions. Align the two Jupiters up and then use layer blending & masks to achieve the best result for your image. Apply any final tweaks such as local contrast adjustment and save the final image.

The last thing to do is to identify which moon is which. There are various programs available on the internet, one specifically for this job is JupSat95.

Below is the final image:

After all our capture & processing work we now have a detailed picture of planet Jupiter and her 4 Galilean Moons. In this particular photograph we have, from left to right Callisto, Europa, Jupiter, Io, Ganymede.

If you have access to a larger telescope such as an 11 or 14 inch SCT then the planetary details available to you will be significantly greater than those shown above; but I hope that I’ve demonstrated that even a relatively small 6 inch telescope can yield a worthwhile Jupiter image that can be processed to give an interesting scene.

The recent meteor shower  was a great celestial occasion for both viewing and photography. In this post I hope to explain what causes the ‘shooting star’ displays and illustrate how they appear to radiate from a particular point in the night sky.

I’ve been waiting for a clear sky on the peak night of the Perseids  for several years and this year provided me with the closest yet, almost 2 hours of clear sky with patchy moving cloud. So let’s start with a close-up picture of a shooting star.

40s f4 24mm ISO1600

Shooting star is a colloquial name for the trail of a meteoroid as it passes through our planet’s atmosphere. At this point it is more correctly called a meteor, if any fragment manages to meet the ground it will then be called a meteorite. Meteoroids are solid chunks of material moving through space with a size ranging from a spec of dust up to 10 meters across. When such an object enters Earth’s atmosphere, at speeds up to 40 miles per second, it heats up and usually disintegrates at about 30 miles of altitude. This fiery death happens in a mere second and is what we see from the ground. The colours seen in this display, can give scientists a clue about the composition of the meteor. In the picture above the blue/green suggests copper and the yellow/orange suggests sodium. If the brightness of a meteor in our skies is greater than that of the planets, then it is considered a fireball or bolide. We were lucky to see one such fireball last night, high in the north-east, above Dyfi Forest.

click image for a larger view …

The picture above shows a wider field of view, the Perseid meteor can be seen top left, whilst one of our neighbouring galaxies, Andromeda, may be seen in the bottom right. These images were taken using a Canon 5DMkII & 24-105L lens on a normal photographic tripod. With an exposure time of 40 seconds, this is long enough for the Earth’s motion to cause star trails, which are indeed very evident. To avoid this one could mount the camera on a German equatorial mount, as per the picture at the bottom of this blog post.

A meteor shower is said to happen when many meteors are seen in the sky over a short period of time and they all appear to radiate from the same point. This is caused by a stream of cosmic material colliding with Earth’s atmosphere. The Perseids are just one such stream of material. The comet Swift-Tuttle  travels through our solar system on a 130 year orbit, occasionally it loses matter and this is left as a stream of cosmic debris that our planet passes through in the fist half of august each year.

So why do the meteors in a shower appear to radiate from the same point and can we illustrate it?

Having been dropped by a speeding comet, all these cosmic dust particles are travelling in parallel with each other and at very similar velocities, perspective  vision demands that they appear to originate from the same point. For example, imagine you are standing in the middle of a long straight road. Far in the distance 2 motorbikes appear from the same point. In truth one is on the left of the road & one is on the right. As the motorbikes approach you, they will appear to diverge away from the same starting point and eventually one will pass one side of you and the other will pass the other side of you. The motorbikes have never moved apart, yet they appeared to originate from the same point. This is how it is with the meteors but on a much larger, cosmic scale.

The Perseids appear to radiate from a point in the constellation  of Perseus, hence the meteor shower’s name. To illustrate this I took the picture below:

click on image to view a larger version …

This was taken with a Canon 40D and 15mm f2.8 fisheye lens, mounted on an equatorial mount to avoid field rotation and star trailing. A series of 170 35-40 second images were taken sequentially. Satellite & aircraft trails were filtered out, as were cloud laden exposures. The remaining exposures were further filtered for meteor activity and then composited to form the above image. Six meteors can be seen streaking across the night sky. To the left one can see the Plough (Big Dipper) asterism ; to the right the constellations of Cassiopeia & Perseus can be seen. Each of the six meteors’ paths can be traced back to within the constellation of Perseus.

The orientation of the above image is looking directly north, over southern Snowdonia. Bottom left is Foel Crochan, Aberllefenni, with some cloud cover.

I hope you saw some meteors, if not, better luck next time. If you are hoping to photograph meteors, remember that the burst of light is typically only 1 second long and that’s what you’re trying to image. So use a fast lens and maximise the light gathering potential of your camera. Expose for long enough that the sky appears slightly brighter than black. Use a focal length of your choice, wider gives you more chance of catching one, longer may give you more detail.

Have fun.

To view how some of the garden birds approach landing on a feeder, I photographed them at high shutter speeds. The composite image below shows some of the results:

   click image for a larger view …

They each appear to approach at significantly different speeds. The chaffinches certainly seemed easier to catch in frame than the blue tits, who frequently beat my reactions!

Just a brief post for now – its been a busy week

The long-tailed field mouse or wood mouse, as he is sometimes called, occurs across most of Europe including the UK. They are mainly nocturnal, living in woods, fields & hedgerows. Only occasionally will they visit houses and then only when hungry & in the absence of house mice.

This little fellow jumped across the floor of the horse barn as I was shutting up for the night:

   click image for larger view …

They have a good jump on them too, managing up to about 3ft, quite something for somebody who is only 3.5 inches long (excl. tail).

Wood mice live in burrows with separate chambers for breeding, food storage and toilets. Food types include berries, seeds, grain, nuts, snails, insects and any other opportunistic offerings. Only a few survive the winters but if they do, they may live up to 2 years. Predators are many including foxes, owls cats & weasels.

For those of you interested in the photography:

• Auto focus & image stabilisation were turned off – the mouse seemed sensitive to the noise
• I used high speed synch flash at 1/640s to freeze any motion
• Canon 5D mkII with 70-200L and 1.4 extender
• 280mm f11 ISO640

Here are some pictures of welsh birds of prey, from our trip to Nant yr Arian, Ceredigion; yesterday afternoon.

   Click on images for a larger view …

The Welsh uplands have become a stronghold for the beautiful Red Kite (Milvus milvus). There are several places where the wild kites are fed, to help in the continuing conservation effort; Nant yr Arian is just one such place. I have counted 39 Red Kites in the picture above; so the kites obviously know where to come for a snack!

  Click image for a larger view …

This second picture looks a bit closer and the clear reddish colour & forked tail of the kites can be seen as they wheel above the welsh uplands.

I’m still working my way through the images that I took but below are 4 more that show:

• A Kite swooping above a Crow & 2 Mallards
• A Kite talons outstretched to grasp some food, meanwhile a Buzzard stands watching
• A Kite flies past the visitor’s hide at Nant yr Arian
• And a close-up view of a Red Kite in flight

Click any of the images for a larger view

Kite posters will be available from Posters Wales, later this spring.

And finally a short YouTube video of the kites …

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Well its that time of year again where many of the UK’s families get out into gardens & parks to count the number of birds that are there. If you’d like to find out more please visit the RSPB web site. We duly did our count, with the noticeable change being more house sparrows & less goldfinch. We’ve recently had an issue with our supplies of niger seed, so that explains the Goldfinches and its very pleasing to see more sparrows.

Having received my Canon 5D MkII on Saturday lunchtime, it seemed suitable to take some test shots of the garden birds, here’s a blue tit:

  Click any picture for a larger view …

Various members of the tit family were here in significant numbers and so were the ever present chaffinches. This little Robin kept trying to creep up unannounced:

  Shy Robin

I don’t have the hide out at the moment, so these images were taken with the camera & I all camouflaged up but standing out in the open. The setup was 5D MkII on the back of 500mm L with 1.4 extender in place; all mounted on a monopod, to help me support the weight.

  House Sparrow

I always loved the 500mm lens on my 5D but I think it’s even better mounted on the MkII. I just had to try out the video feature so here’s a brief YouTube video for you. Please forgive my slight wobble but 700mm fl on a monopod in a breeze, it is not the easiest thing to steady

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The recent weather, though mainly wet & cloudy, has given some opportunity to capture a few of  the winter colours that Snowdonia can display. I was out walking the other day, looking for interesting macro shots, but couldn’t resist taking this panoramic of Cadair Idris:

  click images for larger views …

150mm focal length wouldn’t perhaps be the automatic choice of lens for a Landscape shot but as a result the full stitched panoramic is over 12,000 pixels wide; making large poster prints possible.

Another view on the walk involved the late afternoon sunshine:

I really must finish the annual accounts, so that I can get back up in the mountains.

Well all good things have to come to an end, as they say. Tonight is twelfth night and for everyone who follows the tradition its time to take down the Christmas decorations.

I like the bright colours and sparkly glitter, so here’s a picture to remember them by:

  Click image for a larger view …

And look forward to putting them up next year

There are many ways to photograph a horse, one classic composition is the facial portrait. Whilst it is possible to use flash lighting & artificial back drops, this is not necessary; rewarding portraits can be achieved with just natural light. This does of course require some patience, waiting for the desired lighting. Today was just such an occasion, the low freezing  murk cleared at lunchtime, leaving a brief sunny spell that was ideal for purpose. Here are some example images, all taken today.

  Click image for a larger view …

The key in each of these shots was to encourage the horse to make a characterful expression. Sometimes it is easier to do this with an assistant but here I was on my own. Of course there are other points to consider as well, such as:

• Direction of light
• Background positioning
• Fast enough shutter speed to freeze any motion
• Large aperture to reduce depth of field & blur background
• Suitable focal length for horse’s confidence / nervousness (all above were taken at 150mm)

The opportunity can also be taken to do some close detail shots of the horse, like below:

Finishing can include the production of Black & White images, colour variations, the addition of vignettes and many other things; its great to experiment & explore.

Happy New Year to all. Well the old year ended with plenty of ice and the new one has begun with fire, so maybe I should have said “Ice & Fire”.

After a very cold night everywhere was covered in a heavy layer of frost – just the sort of thing to test my new macro lens on. The picture below was taken using a tripod & mirror lock up; its of tiny ice crystals on a car windscreen:

Then this evening I was just heading out to check the horses & wish them happy new year when I noticed that the neighbouring village of Corris was having a fireworks display. Only had time to run, grab a camera and shoot a couple of frames but it was still a pretty way to welcome the new year in.

Hope 2009 turns out to be a good year for everyone.

I’ve been in need of a longer focal length macro lens for a while. Today I took delivery of a Sigma 150mm f2.8 APO Macro DG EX; that’s quite a name! Now I usually stick to Canon L series lenses but this Sigma EX has a very good reputation and is quite a bargain at the moment. Anyway took the lens for an afternoon stroll in today’s dull, cloudy and sub zero weather. The lens seems promisingly versatile being suitable for portraiture as well as macro work. Tamsin & her pony, Snowy, seemed like good subjects to take trial portrait shots of. The gloomy afternoon would ensure the use of higher ISO & open aperture, I used only natural light for these shots. Here’s an image of Snowy, taken with the Sigma lens on a Canon 5D:

I am very pleased with the nice bokeh that this lens produces; it is also acceptably sharp from wide open and gives a pleasant feel to the picture. The build quality appears good but perhaps not up to the rock solid build that Canon L series lenses give you. Focusing is quiet and of an acceptable speed for a macro lens but the AF doesn’t feel as accurate as a discerning photographer might wish for. Here’s a sample shot of Tamsin:

Overall, I am very pleased with the lens and look forward to taking more images with it. I expect to use it for macro, portrait (animal & human) and wedding photography. A brief test with both extension tubes & a x1.4 extender promises well for achieving good macro shots with magnification in excess of life size (1:1).

I don’t like missing photo opportunities, so it’s rare to find me away from home without a camera. Yesterday was no exception, we needed to pop out to the local farm suppliers to pick up a new rug for Tamsin’s pony, Tarragon. On the way there, we noticed a welsh mountain ewe; proudly standing on her piece of mountain. By now it was well into dusk  and I had no tripod with me. Fortunately I had the 5D & 24-105 lens with me so I upped the ISO setting and fired off an exposure compensated trio whilst the helpful sheep stood still.

It may be no Monarch of the Glen but I think she deserves the title of " Mistress of the Mount".

   Click image for a larger view …

I really love this piece of countryside, the views are ever changing and yet centuries old.

Tamsin has been working on her first attempt at casting a plaster model of a horse. She’s now finished it and so here are some views of her handy work:

  Click image for a larger view …

I’m really impressed with it, there are a few air bubbles and her painting technique will improve for practice but it’s a good start; guess I’ll be sent out to buy more plaster now.

Microsoft have just released their new photo toy “Photosynth” from beta, so when Tamsin asked if I’d make an animation or 3D shot I thought that was a great excuse to have a go with Photosynth. [Given that its a new web feature I guess most people will need to install Microsoft's Photosynth ActiveX control but its just like flash & other such things]. Here’s the synth: (more…)

Last weekend saw the culmination of the Gatcombe Park Festival of British Eventing presented by BETA. We were fortunate enough to be press photographers at the event. The first thing that I must say is that it was a pleasure to be working there, the organisation was excellent and it would be an enjoyable outing for anybody.

We concentrated on the intermediate section, this is where tomorrow’s equine Eventing stars are to be seen. That said, the highlight of the day was undoubtedly the British Open.

Show Jumping

There were plenty of eye catching performances here, with 7 clear rounds. Crucially Oliver Townend, Ruth Edge and Brook Staples all went clear, whilst Lucy Wiegersma had 4 faults. This kept the competition close going into the cross country phase where time was going to be tight on the undulating Gatcombe course. Here are 3 photos from the show jumping (open & intermediate) – click on a picture to see it larger …

Cross Country – Intermediate

The Gatcombe course was looking wonderful and the ground in good order. As you might expect there were plenty of thrills & spills, at one point I even had to abandon the camera, to catch a loose horse. Some had problems with the Gatcombe water monsters but it rode well for others …

  Click image for a larger view …

Lucy Wiegersma had a sturdy clear round on French Leave with 6 time faults, she rode confidently through the water, as below …

   Click image for a larger view …

This was good enough for 5th overall, with Andrew Nicholson & Brook Staples also having only time faults to go 4th & 3rd respectively. The spills kept on coming at the water, with some spectacular falls {I won’t post the identifiable one’s for now }  …

  Click image for a larger view …

Yes there’s a horse & rider in amongst the water, happily all were fine, just a little wet & muddy. Ruth Edge had no problems on the cross country but did incur 8.4 time penalties, which would prove decisive; leaving her in a final 2nd place. This left Oliver Townend with an opportunity or two. ODT Tivoli gave him  damp feet at the water

  Click image for a larger view …

whilst ODT Master Rose looked to risk a bath but recovered well to finish with only time faults. It was ODT Land Vision who put in an outstanding round, one of the quickest, with only 1.6 time faults and thus taking the win.

  Click image for a larger view …

In the open competition Ruth Edge went one better with Mayhem III to take the win on an excellent final score of 27.1. Nicola Wilson & Opposition Buzz were 2nd and Oliver Townend & Flint Curtis were 3rd.

Supporting Entertainment

The main ring provided a place for many more carry ons, some are detailed below:

The dressage to music was informative and a sublime relief from the excitement of the cross country.   Click image for a larger view …

Next:

	Next up was Ye Olde Red Tail Falconry display, which was simply wondrous, as well as funny! I love birds of prey and it was fantastic to see Peregrine Falcons, Harris Hawk, Black Kite, a Vulture & an Eagle Owl.   Click an image for a larger view …

Then we were treated to an amazing performance by The Devil’s Horseman as they carried out a Cossack style display.   Click on any image for a larger view …

Their performance had the press box full of cheers & yells, many coming from the supposedly quiet & invisible Tamsin. A really exciting display that I recommend you to go & see.

The closing finale was provided by the Shetland Grand National, which pretty much speaks for itself …

An excellent day at a great venue, but boy was I tired by the time we arrived home.

Shameless Plug

If any editors require images of Gatcombe or need a commission fulfilling, please get in touch with either Jane or I.

Equally so event organisers & individuals should feel free to call on us for our photographic services, see more by visiting to our web hub and following the appropriate links.

Sun, clouds, lightning, rain; yes it’s a British summer! The night of the 27th clear spells gave way to a hot (27C) & humid day yesterday, with very little breeze. That’s just what I needed to demonstrate an answer to Tamsin’s question … How do you take the images of the tree canopy that I see in magazines?

So off we trundled with tripod, camera & fisheye lens, we took 4 differently exposed views of the tree canopy & returned to the computer to process the 4 exposures into one high dynamic range (HDR) image. Whilst walking the conversation turned to "How are zoom lenses made?" – hmm, this daughter keeps me on my toes Anyway the resulting image is below:

The full res image (not posted here) shows details of leaves & bark whilst retaining plenty of sky detail, all in all a good recommendation for HDR technique.

As evening came any ideas of a night’s astrophotography were blown away by rather ominous looking thunderclouds. An opportunity for an early night? Well maybe not, 2am found me sat in the bird hide watching some beautiful lightning & being lulled to sleep by the patter of rain on the canvas. Naturally I had a camera with me …

Lightning occurs when droplets of ice & rain, circulating in the thunder cloud, build up electrostatic charge. The charge created can be huge and an equal but opposite charge is induced in the ground below the cloud. The highest electrical field exists on the tip of objects such as tall trees, electrical leaders form that eventually connect cloud & tree top and it is then that a huge discharge leading back up the ionised air, into the cloud, takes place. This is the bright flash that we most often see. Most lightning strikes are a discharge of negative charge from the cloud with a typical current of 40,000 amps; potential difference may be several hundred thousand volts. However lightning strikes that emanate from the top of an anvil cloud can result in a positive discharge, these bolts carry significantly more energy and are both rarer & more dangerous.

Lightning storms in Wales are rarely viewable without a large amount of associated rain, so trying to keep equipment dry, whilst photographing the view, can be a bit tricky but well worth it I think. So Aberllefenni & Corris had a stormy night, but all seems fine today.

Trivia: Did you know that the path of a  lightning bolt may only be 1 or 2 inches wide but 1 mile long.

My apologies for having failed to post in over a month, I’ve been a little busy with work. I do however have several posts in the pipe line, so watch this space.

Now down to business, Early in May I had my first proper chance to try out the modified Fuji camera in bright sunshine with fresh foliage. The session was brief & all from home but here are 3 of the resulting pictures:

  click picture for larger view …

This first picture is a classic use for IR photography, bright foliage with dark skies & shadows. This type of photography can produce high contrast output, although noise control can be something of an issue.

  click picture for larger view …

Next is a portrait of “Hob Nogglin” one of our youngsters, he’s a 50/50 cross between TB & Welsh Section D. Oh and he loves cameras, he just can’t wait to give the lens a big smeary lick! This picture has a light sepia toning applied to it.

  click picture for larger view …

This final picture was taken as I was walking back up to our house, the sun had disappeared behind some evening cloud and the high contrast of IR imaging picked up the ‘ray’ effect beautifully. This final picture has been give a duotone effect.

We took a trip to the beach on Tuesday. I needed to work on a photographic project and the weather looked good for Jane and Tamsin to have some seaside fun.

Whilst there I decided to do some work on panoramic imaging in high dynamic range or HDR. On the expanded section of this post I’ve included a highly compressed panoramic animation of the beach. Be warned there may also be a picture of Tamsin deciding to do some extreme beach sports!

Read on for the full story…

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More fun & games with alternative photography techniques.

Floating a Steam Engine! I must have gone mad, well actually that happened a long time ago but I digress! The intention is to make a model train appear as if it is floating and therefore present us with a pleasant reflection within its photograph, as below:

  Click image for a larger view …

Here is a brief overview of how to carry out this technique:

• Find a shallow waterproof tray, preferably dark coloured. You may find one at a garden centre.
• Place supports for a platform in the tray, house bricks will do.
• Now place a dark platform (eg roofing slate) just below the lip of the tray.
• Make sure everything is level
• Fill tray with water so that there is about 1mm of water over the slate platform
• Place whatever object you wish to photograph, on the platform. In my case, a model ‘Flying Scotsman’.
• Place a flash head & snoot such that your object is illuminated but the water is not.
• Place other flash heads as required to provide fill in lighting
• Meter & shoot your images

Do be careful doing this, you are going to have high current electric & water in close proximity to each other, so caution is of the utmost importance. Do have fun though, this is a classic technique that has often been done on a large scale for sports car publicity. Tamsin is now asking for me to help her do it for her model horses

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On a different note; an interesting use for infrared photography is the romantic portrait.

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This technique shows almost a glow to skin. The above picture is simply a family photo that I grabbed whilst walking past Tamsin & Snowy, with the IR camera. In a studio setup the effect can be refined with some quite stunning results. More on this, later in the year.

Despite all the inclement weather, we have recently been treated to views of some varied & beautiful phenomenon in the sky. Here’s a pictorial account of the last week’s worth:

The other day Tamsin & I were off on the hills of mid Wales when we saw a stunning, bright rainbow.

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I didn’t have an ultra wide lens with me so the image is a mosaic of 5 frames, I’m still pleased with how the rainbow colour spectrum has shown up.

Then the other night, 21st March, was the Spring Equinox. A break in the clouds gave us opportunity to watch the full moon rise.

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I love the view through the trees as the moon crests the mountain ridge behind our home.

And last night ice crystals were causing a beautiful halo around the rising moon.

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Hexagonal ice crystals in Cirrus clouds are the normal cause of this 22.5 degree halo.

Maybe I can photograph some more weather features, and bring them to you this coming year.

Well it’s always nice to have some Daffodils in flower for St David’s Day, and this year the garden has duly obliged. I do like Leeks too, but they’re best cooked in butter and served up with a joint of Welsh Black cooked in Red Wine. So my preferred 1st March celebration is to  watch the daffs bobbing in the breeze.

In fact Spring is definitely  trying to have sprung, with various flowers giving a welcome splash of colour. I’m not sure of it yet though, this coming week could feel rather chilly and snow in April isn’t uncommon. Still, here’s hoping Spring has arrived; let’s enjoy the flowers. I wasn’t the only one to be doing so, as you can see below:

Oh and by the way, I’ve just added a separate Bird gallery to share some bird images, so please do have a look.

I felt like imaging something a bit different last night. My full astro setup is currently dismantled whilst undergoing a PC upgrade and the skies partially cleared during the evening. So out I went with camera & static tripod.

Now Orion is usually a really nice widefield at this time of year, so I started playing around with different settings but then Tamsin’s pony, Snowy, came to offer her help in the proceedings!

So I settled for my full spectrum modified Fuji on the tripod and attempted to produce a portrait of sky & pony. The thing is, pony models don’t keep still for long and stars don’t really show up on fast exposures. So… I had to use a bit of HDR technique to apply duplicate exposures, one for pony & one for sky. Foreground lighting was supplied by the 60Watt tungsten outdoor light on our house, everything else supplied by nature.

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I thought of calling it “Pegasus meet Orion” but I’m not sure that Tamsin or Snowy would have been in favour. Oh well, that was a bit of fun, back to work now (which is fun too {grin} ).

I decided to make a final montage, showing the moon in it’s various eclipse states.

Click here to view the image.

Hope you enjoy it, I’m going to put the picture as a big poster on my wall