Packing a business suit and a camouflage suit for the same trip is a little strange, but lets skip over that one. I arrived without incident at Twickenham and did my duty on the first day of the conference, but took an early exit from the evening meal and headed for an early night.  The alarm woke me at 5:00am, dawn wasn’t until 6:45am but I wanted to ensure I could find the deer before dawn.  The gates don’t open to vehicles until 7:00am, but pedestrians can gain access.  The plan was to walk in through a number of gates until I found a suitable herd close by. The park is 13 miles round, so it could actually prove a long job. I needed a bit of luck.

By 5:30am I was dressed and heading for the hotel exit. I think the staff had a little giggle as I strode out, dressed head to foot in woodland-pattern camo and shouldering a 500mm lens and tripod.  Never mind, on with the job. At the Richmond gate I parked up and walked into through the iron gates. Still dark, the mist was down which was exactly the conditions I wanted, but no deer close to the gate. A quick run back to the car an on towards the Sheen Gate. The same process, a quick walk in, 10 minutes looking round with no result so back out to the car. At the Roehampton gate I caught my first misty view of a few red deer.

As the light began to grow I found I was on the rugby pitch surrounded by a herd of red deer around 50 to 60 strong with two or three large stags in attendance. Unfortunately no real rutting activity yet. It maybe a couple of weeks early.   As dawn broke the gates opened and traffic started to pour through the gates. Londoners on the way to work, dog walkers, joggers, cyclists streamed through the gates.  The deer started to head off the open playing fields and wandered off towards the woodlands.  Time to move and find a concealed position and wait for the dee to come to me.

I checked the direction of the wind, watched where the deer were heading and ran back to the car. Joining the queues of traffic to enter the park and then heading for the car park at Pen Ponds I managed to skirt round the main herd. The sun was now up and burning off the mist quite well. The dog walkers were moving the deer along nicely.  I spotted three large stages heading for a wooded drinking pond and quickly found my place with a good view. Throwing a small skrim net over me and the camera I settled down to wait.  The sun was now streaming in through the low branches of the trees, lighting the bracken. The three stags walked in through the trees straight into the golden light.  The could sense something was not quite right, something or someone was there, but they couldn’t work out what it was.  They remained on the early morning light for a good 10 minutes. Here is the best of the images.

Anyway, having been up to Dumfries and photographed Caerlaverock Castle I had the idea of combining this with some of the characters performing at Sheffield.  One group were representing Norman Knights over four centuries and it was one of these which caught my eye.  In order to make the final compilation image work I had to ensure that the light came from the same direction and was something I could work with in photoshop. I quickly checked the castle image on my iPhone, logging into my online flikr account and worked out where I needed to be positioned to take a compatible shot of the knight.  In actual fact I couldn’t get the angle I wanted, so had to think about reversing the light direction and flipping the image in photoshop.  It is actually quite easy to visualise your image when you have the iPhone and access to your stock images on-line.

Here is one of the series of original images of the knight. Yoy can see I’ve also tried to isolate him from any complex background, making it easy to extract him and place him alongside my castle.

Doesn’t look too promising does it?   Well, with a little bit of photoshop magic, and a good few hours playing around with it I think I finally came up with a workable result.  First I prepared the castle image by blurring the image, replicating the effect of a shallow depth of field. Next I placed the image of the knight on a second layer and flipped him to suit the lighting conditions. (The one I used was a slightly different angled original to the thumbnail above). After that it was a case of making the colour of the light match using adjustment layers and tones.

So here is the result …. I’ve called it ‘The Crusader’ and I’ve given it its first run out in competition in the Guernsey Open Exhibition. Lets see what the judges think.

Caerlaverock Castle

Originally uploaded by Falc

For anyone who has never been to Dumfries and Galloway I have to say you are missing out on one of the most beautiful, unspoilt areas of Scotland. Instead of gunning the car straight up to Glasgow, Edinburgh and the Highlands turn left once you cross the border from England. You won’t regret it.

There are castles galore, nature reserves, mountains, islands, beaches, cliffs, so many things to see and do. Best of all the area hasn’t been discovered by the masses yet. We stayed in Dumfries, but to get the best of Galloway then you probably need to be further ‘in’.

The shot you see here is Caerlaverock Castle, just on the Solway Firth, south of Dumfries. It is a moated castle, triangular in shape and in every way a classic medieval castle. This is an ‘HDR’ shot, with seven different exposures combined to provide a ‘best exposure’ for every pixel in the image. By having seven images each exposed differently the camera can capture detail in the dark areas as well as the lighter areas. Photoshop allows the various frames to be combined.

Hope you like it.

Anyway, onto the entry.  It is a while since I entered Havant, so I have a good choice of images to choose from. I’ve decided to go with the following:

PDI Open Section
Yorkshire Lime, a new piece as yet untried in any exhibition
Herringfleet Mist, an oldie but goody. Probably on one of its last outings
Look for Gold, another well used image, but worth another try
Rip Tide, always seams to do reasonably well

PDI Nature Section
Common Blue Butterflies Mating, another new one, testing the waters
Green-veined White, again something new for me. Not sure this one is upto scratch, so an experiment
Young Japanese Macaque,  a banker
Group Snooze, should be a solid entry

So we will know in a week or two.  I’m still in need of nine acceptances for the British Photographic Exhibitions 4 crown award and now have twenty four images submitted. I hope that I don’t need the Havant entry, but they are always a backup.

Silver-washed Fratillery

Originally uploaded by Falc

Another interesting day with the ‘Butterfly Rig’. This time at Grafton Wood where I got decent photos of several species of butterfly. The image here is a Silver-washed Fratillery but also photographed were Common Blue, Holly Blue, Comma, Brown Argus, Brimstone, Gatekeeper and Small Heath. No sign of the Brown Hairstreak though. All in all a good day’s practice and a couple of half decent images.

Butterfly season comes to an end very shortly, so not many more shots of this topic to endure. Back to landscapes and people at the end of the month.

These tiny butterflies are coming to the end of the flight period now and so I’m taking every opportunity to grab a few shots of them.  I particularly like to try and isolate them from underneath, which gives a slightly different perspective than the usual side on or top down image more usually seen.  This composition requires a different technique and some ‘field craft’ to get.  Finding the butterfly is no different, but the approach has to be slow and low. I start to approach by getting very low, I look for a bank which allows me to get much lower and to approach without the butterfly seeing me.  Then I use a mono-pod to slowly move any grass or foliage which is in the foreground or background. Set the flash to -2.3 or -2.6 stops and start the creep in.  Using the 180mm macro lens I need to be about 2 ft from the butterfly to get a decent image.  The butterflies tend not to be as flighty when approached in this manner, if you try to get this close from above then you will have great difficulty.

Hope you like the result.

So, onto the Great Barr entry … I missed this exhibition last year, so I have a few ‘oldies’ to try and a few new, untried works too. A good mixture, hopefully.  I have great hopes for the butterflies ‘Common Blues Mating’ taken just yesterday near Sherwood Forest and ‘Young Japanese Macaque’ a good old tried and tested favourite which scored 14/15 at the recent National Club Championships.

Mono PDI
Third Age of Man
Station Master
Lippy
The Wagoneer

Colour PDI
Flotsam
Saltwick Bay Storm
The Young Ones
Spurn Defences II

Nature PDI
Common Blues Mating
Japanese Macaque in Onsen
Blackbird on Hawthorn
Young Japanese Macaque

Creative PDI
The Andrews Sisters
The Moorings
Sea Thrift
Clearance Sale

Common Blue Butterflies Mating

Originally uploaded by Falc

Another day out with the macro lenses today. The weather was overcast and dull, so not a day for landscapes, plus I’m trying to get to grips with this macro set-up. Practice makes perfect.

I spent the morning around Sherwood Forest and finally ended up near Broughton Pumping Station, just outside Ollerton in Nottinghamshire. The white butterflies were out in strength and so were the smaller Common Blues. Because of the overcast conditions they are less flighty and a little easier to approach. I found several ‘paired’ on the grass alongside the bridleway next to the River Maun.

Using a shallow depth of field has blurred out the background nicely on this shot. I had to press a few blades of grass down both behind and in front of the butterflies to get the best result. Hope you like it. I might give this image a try at one of the Nationals which are coming up next week.

Green-veined White

Originally uploaded by Falc

A day off work, clean the fish tank, look for a new car and take the camera out into the garden.  In the garden I have a yellow ‘Choisya (Mexican Orange Blossom) bush which attracts the white butterflies on cloudy days when they use the yellow leaves as a hiding place. They are surprisingly difficult to see.  The yellow of the leaves is a very effective backdrop for these ‘yellowish’ butterflies.

Today I walked past the bush and disturbed three or four butterflies, so nipped indoors and brought out the ‘butterfly special’. The lens is a 180mm f3.5, but strapped along its length is a 580ex flashgun with a 5″ x 8″ diffuser attached. This is powered down by 2 and 1/3 stops, and so just fills in the darkest shadows.

This is the result. I quite like it because of the restricted colours. Just need to practice a bit more to get the antennae into sharp focus. Perhaps increase the depth of field a little by moving to f5.6 or even 6.1

Hope you like it.