Tales from my travels
These photos don’t have much to recommend them technically speaking, but I found them a nice series nonetheless. They were taken at 400mm handheld, and have been significantly cropped. A lucky sighting whilst we ate our lunch at a rest area off the Trans Canada Highway.
We began today’s photo club meeting with a practical session in the Heempark Arboretum, an area of the Delftse Hout next to the Papaver, where the photo club meets. As it was a windy evening, photographing the plants didn’t turn out to be too successful, so I concentrated on orienting myself in the park for a future visit, and trying to find some bird life. As luck would have it, I stumbled upon a pheasant, who didn’t seem too disturbed by all the photographers wandering around. With the low light, I decided to the put the 5D to the test, and shot at 2000 ISO, giving a shutter speed of around 1/200 s at f5.6.
The second half of the meeting was “eigen werk”, where members have the opportunity to share their photos. My favourites were a collection of bird photographs, including a couple shots of a purple heron, a bird which I have not yet seen, but would very much like to.
My visit to the wolves this morning was the primary reason for this trip, and I’ve been looking forward to it for a couple of months now. The centre has 6 wolves, all of which were bred in captivity, and are part of a wolf education program. Each day, one or two wolves are taken out for exercise, and it is possible for a number of people to join in on these walks.
I was very lucky, expecting to be part of a group of 5 or so people, I turned up this morning to find that I was the only person signed up. It was just me, Casey (the owner), Maya (the wolf) and Jackson (a Karelian Bear Dog).
We drove up about 10 minutes into the Blaeberry valley, where we parked the trucks and headed up into the woods. We walked for about 1 1/2 hours, enjoying the sun and watching Maya. She was fairly shy, but did come up and give my hand a lick. Of course, as well as watching and chatting with Casey, I was also busy with the camera (despite the full backpack, I used the 5D with the 70-200mm the whole time), trying to get some good portraits and action shots.
From a photographic point of view it was quite challenging – firstly, focusing on a wolf which is moving towards you is a difficult, and a number of potential shots were not focused. The light coming through the trees was also very variable, so it was sometime difficult to expose well. I haven’t yet had time to go through the full collection of photos, and the laptop is grinding to a bit of a halt. More photos will follow later on the website.
The experience was fantastic, and one I’d gladly repeat.
The verdict is back from the repair centre about the state of my 40D. Not good news – the card reader is broken and they don’t consider that this comes under the guarantee. Having raised the issue with Canon, I’m now waiting to hear if they have changed their mind…. my guess is though, that I’ll be stuck with the 430 euro bill for the repair.
As of this evening, I became an official member of the VNF West Fotoclub. Today’s meeting was given over to a presentation by Han Bouwmeester, a Dutch wildlife photographer, who specializes in bird photography.
The first half of the presentation showed a selection of bird photographs taken in The Netherlands, many relating to specific project such as Kingfishers and Owls. The photographs and description clearly highlighted just how much work is required in preparation, study and sheer patience. This was not, of course, news to me, but nevertheless always a slightly depressing reminder.
Perhaps realising this, the second half of the presentation focused on a trip which Han leads to the UK, visiting the Farne Islands and Bass Rock. These photos gave a good example of places which are more within the reach of the average amateur photographer, who also has a day job! Following such an organized trip means that you can fairly easily visit places where you are pretty much guaranteed wildlife sightings, and subject to weather conditions, will always come home with full CF cards.
Other news from the club, the website is now online.
I couldn’t help but feel like I was playing truant from school when I left work today at 1pm with four photo-fanatic colleagues, in order to visit Vlinders aan de Vliet, a butterfly house in nearby Leidschendam.
Walking into the butterfly house feels like stepping into the rainforest – surrounded by warm, humid air and tropical bird song. The only jarring features being the four enclosing walls, and the small children that invariably trip over your tripod legs.
Watching the butterflies was fun, but photographing them a great challenge, hampered by movement, high f-stops, and distracting backgrounds. I used two lenses for the job – a 105mm macro lens, and the new 70-200mm f2.8. In the end, I had very few pictures that I was really pleased with, as many either suffer from movement blur, or insufficient depth of field. I have, however, put a small gallery up on my site.
Having seen Marcel in action with his macro flash equipment, I have a feeling I have found yet another item for my photo equipment wish list.
Links to the others’ photos will follow.
Some more catch up work – a selection of photos from the second photo workshop I did last year, Puffins on Skomer Island, are now also uploaded to the Puffin Gallery. Looking back, they are for the most part rather disappointing – contrasty light combined with small, fast black and white birds is definitely a challenge.
I’ve also installed Joomla on the site – it still needs some customization, but at least it’s a beginning.
The last couple trips I’ve taken up to Haarlem/Amsterdam have been brightened by the increasing number of bulb fields that are springing to life. Therefore it seemed appropriate to also upload the set of photos I took at the Keukenhof two years ago to a gallery on Heron Photography.
A bit of a departure today from my usual photographic subjects – not wildlife, but a couple of colleagues on the tennis courts. It was the first time I tried out my new 70-200 mm f2.8 IS lens (just upgraded from the f4 non-IS), and whilst the results show that I could use some more practice in the sports arena, I’m pleased with the lens.
Last year I visited Bass Rock, for a photography workshop focusing on gannets (see Gutted about Gannets and Got my Gannets Back). With all the stress of corrupted disk and photo recovery, I never had time to process the photos at the time.
Whilst I still need to get my site set up, here is a sneak preview of the gannet photos at Heron Photography.