photos from the past 40 years
A selection of winter visitors for the Weekly Prompts Photo Challenge: Visitors.
These bird species move from their breeding grounds to spend the winter in different locations.
A feeding Whooper Swan, a winter visitor to the Martin Mere Wildfowl and Wetland Centre, Lancashire, England.
A male Common Redpoll, a winter visitor to Punnichy, Saskatchewan, Canada.
A Fieldfare, a winter visitor to Cheshire, England.
A Snowy Owl, a winter visitor to southern Ontario, Canada.
This is my contribution to the Weekly Prompts Photo Challenge: Flamboyant Red.
The prompt got me thinking about some of the various bird species with red in their common English names. Some have very little red plumage.
Then I thought about some of the red birds that don’t have red in their common English names. Such as the Northern Cardinal, you can’t get much more flamboyantly red.
I was considering a few ideas for the Weekly Prompts Photo Challenge: Clock the Time before thinking about using a timer app on a tablet to time long exposures.
My plan was to set up the shot when I was down at the Colpoy’s Bay shoreline for the sunrise. I would set the tablet on top of the camera bag as I usually do and take the shot at dawn.
The plan didn’t work out. I took my lightweight kit of three manual focus primes in a small bag so no lid to set the tablet on. Not that the choice of camera bags really mattered as I forgot the tablet. So I set up the shot at home in the afternoon.
This small tablet has a timer app allowing me to time long exposures at dawn and dusk. There’s also an app that shows sun rise and set and moon rise and set direction for any locations I’m not familiar with and an app that alerts me to the chance of a display of the northern lights.
Edit: It occurred to me after posting this that I hadn’t explained the reason why I need a timer app. Sometimes I use strong neutral density filters to given long exposure times. This allows me to blur moving water or clouds moving across the sky.
In fact there are apps that will calculate the exposure and time it for you. I have been doing the exposure calculations in my head so just use a timer app. Maybe I should investigate the calculator apps.
This is my contribution to the Weekly Prompts Photo Challenge: Crystal.
I had a couple of ideas for the challenge until heading down to the Colpoy’s Bay shoreline for the sunrise on Sunday morning. I found a bush on the shoreline with some interesting ice formations on it.
I spent more time photographing the ice formations than I did the sunrise. The ice formations are created by waves splashing on the bush and freezing.
Here I started isolating interesting sections with a telephoto lens.
This is my contribution to the Weekly Prompts Photo Challenge: Not the Norm!
I spotted this One-eyed Tree Creature on the South Bruce Peninsula, Ontario, Canada at the weekend. After researching the species online I didn’t come up with much information other than that the scientific name for the species is Unumoculus arborcreutair.
This is my contribution to the Weekly Prompts Photo Challenge: Flame.
This is my contribution to the Weekly Prompts Photo Challenge: Cover.
Having had my first cover shot published in the early 1980s I still try to shoot vertical and horizontal versions of a photo at times. Editors are often looking for vertical images for use on covers.
A sunrise over Colpoy’s Bay and the Niagara Escarpment from late summer. This is a horizontal version I used in a blog post when it was taken.
A vertical version from that morning.
