Flying birds and a sunrise

So, what have I been up to recently...?

Well, mainly trying to photograph birds in flight. It's been tricky - trying to get a successful setup of flashes, get the birds in the right location, and balancing the lights sources. But here's the result:

The shot comprises of four external flashguns. On mounted on the camera and facing towards the subject. Two at 45 degrees, one on the right, one on the left and one below; lighting the underside of the bird.  Fortunately, technology has made this very simple - having the camera-mounted flash as a 'master' and the other three flashes as 'slaves', meaning that when I press the shutter (using a remote control), the 'master' flash is triggered and using an infra-red signal it triggers the other 'slave' flash units instantly, providing balanced lighting of the bird in flight.

There is still room for improvement, but I have to move onto other things for the time being.

Oh yeah, and it was a very beautiful frosty sunrise yesterday...

The Night Sky at Bissoe

Something I had been keen to do during this project was star trail shots.  I've had a lot of fun doing them previously and figured Bissoe would be a great place to do them.  However, winter is not the best time because of the cloudy skies and the temperature (more on that later) but I gave it a go.

Bingo! The Met Office predicts to clear nights in a row (yesternight and tonight).  It's surprisingly spooky being alone on a nature reserve in the dark.  The moon was out, which was a big help for illuminating the landscape and giving me more light for shorter exposures.  And then we come to the weather.  It was cold even for Cornwall.  When I set up on the first night I put my camera bag down and a lens beanbag attached to it fell in a puddle.  I pulled it out, not too worried about it, and a few minutes later the side submerged in the water had frozen solid.  Similarly the toes of my wellies which had water on froze too.

The first night of shooting was probably the most successful but was cut short.  I had just moved to a new location and had taken some shots when what sounded like a tree falling down resounded from a patch of woodland nearby.  I turned to look thinking *nothing to be scared of, trees have to fall down some time* and then a light started flashing from the trees location.  Who cuts down tree at 10 o'clock at night??  Anyway, that was more than my already heightened senses could take.  I quickly, and rather silently, packed away my cameras - that's right, two camera's means twice as many shots and less waiting around doing nothing during long exposures - and vacated the area.

The second night was very slightly hazy and completely uneventful.

Shots from the first night:

The big pile of bricks/ruined building in the second and fourth photo is all that remains of the 'stack' that was once twice the size and used for the refining of arsenic pre-1939.  It got damaged when someone removed the lighting conductor off the top and  - you guessed it - it got hit by lighting, throwing bricks hundreds of metres every which way.

Shots from the second night:

Keep up-to-date with my latest work at www.jameslewisphoto.co.uk

A few old shots

I started this blog after I had started shooting for this project, so there's quite a few photographs I'm really pleased with that I haven't blogged yet - so here's a few.

Velvet Shanks: A classic arrangement.  I shot a few times, but preferred this version which used to flashes to light the underside gills better.

I used a flash gun to light the foreground gorse in the foggy shot - it has an exposure of around 4 minutes

I love shooting this shot from the same position again and again.  Hopefully I'll have a collection of seasonal change by the end of this project.

Red Dawn

I got up before well before sunrise again, ready to sit and wait for the fox to appear.  It didn't, but prior to setting up my hide I noticed a vibrant streak of red in the sky.  Walking past one of the ponds the sky was beautifully reflected in the still water.  It was one of the coldest days for Cornwall this winter and there was a thick frost covering the ground.  The air was still and the water even stiller.  This was the shot I got - a 30 second exposure with an ND grad over the sky.  It was taken about an hour before sunrise.

As I have already been asked a few times, I will clarify that these were the actual colours of the morning.  Nothing added in Photoshop.  I did run the RAW file through Photoshop, as I do with every shot I take, to make basic adjustments such as tweaking the brightness and contrast levels.

More nice weather please!

What a difference a day makes! Yesterday; grey and cloudy. Today; golden (and warm) sunshine.  Good job I chose to go on a shoot instead of go for a surf.

I purposefully arrived at Bissoe while it was still dark so I could set up and be ready for when the wildlife arrived.  Unfortunately it didn't.  Well, the wildlife I was expecting didn't and wildlife I wasn't expecting did.  At about 8am I saw a fox staring at me.  Needless to say it ran off quickly but it gives me hope of getting shots of a new species.  Later I scared a Dunlin away.  It ended up being a very productive 6 hour shoot.

I tried focus-stacking the Wrinkled Club specimens again with much better light conditions this time.  It is made up of 15 photographs. I got down to ground level so the background would become blurred as it was too far from the point of focus.  As I didn't have access to a suitable macro lens, I used a 70-200mm with extension tubes to get close enough to fill the frame with the fungi, which incidentally is only about 3-4cm tall.

As I was walking round the reserve during sunrise looking for things to photograph I passed one of the reed beds.  It was quite a misty morning and when the sun came out, behind the reeds, it lit them beautifully, highlighting the dew on the branches behind them too.

A new year at Bissoe

So the Christmas holidays have come and gone and I'm now back in Cornwall for my penultimate term at University College Falmouth. I had a few successful shoots back home in Wiltshire but was looking forward to getting back to Bissoe Valley Nature Reserve to continue my ongoing assignment.

True to form, the weather wouldn't clear up.  Dark, dull, grey clouds.  So without a ray of sunshine for a week, my photography was limited to a few mediocre shots.  But this week I have been much more successful.  Initially, I had a few failures, which I expected.  I've also been experimenting with capturing birds in flight using flash and am slowly improving. But it is my other shoots which have proved best.

I went to Bissoe at night to try and capture the stars, but it got very foggy. Although I wasn't getting the shots I wanted I kept shooting long exposures and got some really interesting results.  I have shot this 'stack' before but in different conditions.  The fog gave quite a ghostly effect.  It is lit by surrounding buildings.

This is another location I have shot numerous times in different conditions and shooting it in fog, with a 4 minute exposure, created quite a surreal image.  The 'stack' on the left was lit by a building site to the right.

This fungi, a Wrinkled Club, Clavulina rugosa, was a surprise to me.  I thought it was a lichen species originally, and struggled to get a decent shot of it.  I used a Canon 70-200mm lens with extension tubes to take 12 photos of differing focus.  I then stacked all 12 shots on Photoshop giving a perfectly sharp shot.

Latest shoots at Bissoe

I make my way to Bissoe a few times every week in the hope of find something new and interesting. Since my last post - videos of some common birds at Bissoe - I have decided that I simply haven't shot enough video over this past term to put together a film worthy of a degree project.  It's a real shame, but stopping filming means that I can focus of my stills photography and, hopefully, produce a volume of work I'm really proud of.  So without this sounding too much like my project logbook, I now have a much clearer focus for this assignment.

Over the past few days I have photographed some new species at Bissoe Valley and also managed to take some shots I have been trying to get for a while.

This Blackcap did not stay very long as I had just left my hide to photograph a nearby Song Thrush.  I thought it was a Coal Tit at first, as they had been all over my strategically placed bird feeder.  It's the first time I've photographed one and if it returns I will try and improve on this shot.

Whilst, rather unfortunately, photographing some Great Tits, I heard some crows making a lot of noise.  I turned and saw two buzzards being chased by crows swooping at head height about 20 metres away from where I was stood.  GUTTED! I had a 500mm lens on me but they had flown off before my brain could register what just happened.  I had forgotten how big they are!  Anyway, they both perched up in nearby trees.  The first one flew off as soon as I emerged to photograph it, but this second one stayed a bit longer -  long enough for me to get a basic shot.  It reminded me that I need to start photographing these birds more.

On a clear night a few days ago, I headed out to see how Bissoe looked at night.  Unfortunately the moon  wasn't shining, so it didn't light up the foreground much.  However, the dark sky was ablaze with stars - it turns out there's much less light pollution in the Valley than most other places I do night photography.  I was trying to encapsulate the industrial history of the place by using this old ruin/ building as a focal point.

Oh yeah, and it was so clear and dark that I could see the Milky Way with my bear eyes (ha, bare eyes) as the photo on the right (look up) shows.

Why a Robin? On a feeder?  Come on James, you can do better than this...

Well, it's the most Christmassy photo I taken this winter, and it's 1st December so that completely justifies this image.

FYI: Change of blog name

Ok, so no photos this time.  Probably next week if you must know.  Just thought I should let y'all know that this is definitely and solely a Bissoe Valley Nature Reserve blog, and I won't be posting work from other projects and shoots here.  I should point out that this is NOT official and is in no way affiliated with Cornwall Wildlife Trust (they manage the reserve) - this is an independent university project of my choosing.

The reason for the change? Well, I LOVE this assignment and am really committed to making it as good as possible - it will take up a lot of my time and I will be producing a lot of work from the reserve so it seems only right that I should dedicate this blog to the developments of my project.

So in order to direct a wider audience to my work, I have changed the web address of the blog from jameslewisphotograph.blogspot.com to bissoevalley.blogspot.com.  Better sooner than later.

I hope you continue to enjoy the progression of my work over the coming months,

James

Birds at Bissoe

What a beautiful sunrise!  For those of you who missed it, I'll fill you in.  It was cold - and let it be known that it was (probably) Cornwall's first frost this side of summer.  Mist rose off the arsenic coated river, and the sun steadily rose, with its golden glow lighting a song thrush casually singing high in a tree top.  

I shot a few landscapes to mark the occasion, and then went in search of birds.  I have had only limited success so far but two days ago put some birds feeders on some trees, hoping to increase my success rate.  And I wasn't disappointed! When I arrived there were a couple of blue tits already feeding which I accidentally scared off.  I had a feeling it would be good shoot.  I set up my hide, and waited.  The birds continued to be interested even after their initial fright but they soon came back and they were still feeding after I left. As well as taken some stills, I did some video clips - I've edited the clips together for your viewing

I know they're not brilliant, but it's progress!

Bissoe Valley Nature Reserve

Since I started my final year, on 3rd October to be precise, I have been working on a project that will lead me through to the end of my degree, and hopefully get me a decent result at the end of it.  I was originally planning to do a species study on the Red Kites of Britain, looking at their characteristics and habits within their habitats, as I am writing my dissertation on their reintroductions (try not to yawn).  However, with hindsight this was clearly unfeasible for reasons that are unimportant.  Thankfully I realised that and so I am now doing a habitat study of Bissoe Valley Nature Reserve.  It is an old arsenic mine, which was transformed into a nature reserve roughly 20 years ago and has now been left for nature to have its way with.

Why Bissoe?  It's local - in between Falmouth and Truro (7 miles from my house).  Oh yeah, and there's tons of stuff there!  By stuff I mean naturey things, of course - flora, fungi, wildlife, birds, a cracking industrially scarred landscape too and a few ponds.

*Tell me more* I hear you type...

Well, that's the whole point of my photos...check them out and you'll become enlightened.  I have no doubt that from now to May 2012 a lot of the posts on this blog will be about the progress I make during this project.  I just hope you enjoy them and don't get bored because if you're bored, I probably will be to.  I've got a long way to go, and a wealth of ideas to experiment with.

So here's a completely biased selection of what I think are my best shots so far.  Click and view them BIGGER.

Enjoy, and I'd love to here what you think!

Heather

Centaurium erythraea

Amethyst Deceiver

Common Cavalier

Goldcrest

Misty Morning

Stormy Morning Rainbow

Common Toad

P.S. It probably goes without saying that I won't uploading as many photos as this every time, but I've been shooting for about 6 weeks now and if I didn't have at least these 8 photos to show, I'd be worried.

Thanks, James

First Blog Post

So, what's it going to be? How will I start this this blog?  Well, I created my own blog on my website, www.jameslewisphoto.co.uk, so with that shameless plug I've already begun.  I see this as a much more accessible and visible way for people to view my work than my own blog, so much of the content will be similar.  Anyway, I hope to update here regularly - probably more regularly than my actual website.  I really hope you enjoy my photography.  I love doing what I do and if it gives pleasure to others then all the better.

Wait...

Maybe I should tell you a bit about myself?

Ok, I'm 20, in my 3rd, in my final year of a Marine and Natural History Photography degree at University College Falmouth and play excessive amounts of guitar in my spare time.  Not interesting enough for you?  Well...I surf whenever I get the chance, I'm below the average height of a British male and I have VERY curly hair.

So that's me.  Thanks for stopping by. See you soon.

James