A walk in the rain

Today it was time for a walk in the pouring rain, I chose to go down to the Rivelin Valley.
The rain started last night but already the little river had very high water.
The walk is about 7km which usually take 2h it feels just right for a wet day out. :)
The day was dark and dreary and the forest felt very empty of wildlife, so I tried to shoot some fungus instead, and also some pics of the flooding river.
But I saw a little splash of color in the form of a kingfisher, but it disappeared in a hurry in to the bushes. I waited  a while for it to come up again but I gave up after 15min it was getting cold to just stand there.
So I went back home and tomorrow I will go to Sweden (Stockholm) to celebrate Christmas and New Year.
I finally get the opportunity to shoot images that is more normal for the season :))

So I wish you a really nice Christmas and New Year. See u

Edinburgh

On Friday last week I went with my wife and her parents off on a road trip to Edinburgh. We've heard and read in the newspapers that it's one of the finest cities to visit in Europe.
And I must agree, there are fantastic fine buildings from the medieval and Georgian architecture.
The biggest attraction is Edinburgh castle situated on a hill overlooking the entire edinburgh a visit here is a must.
Some other places that are well visited is the National museum of Scotland and Palace of Holyroodhouse, it's the Scottish royal castle in Edinburgh. And across the street there are the Scottish Parliament with its special architecture.
From here you can then wander on to Calton hill that also offers fine views over the city and the sea but there are also some fine monuments.
From here you also have lovely view of Princess Street, which is the main street with lots of shopping and fine old buildings.
As the days are quite short in winter time so you do not see so much in one day, so this round was enough, we thought, but there is obviously so much more to see.
So from Calton hill we went then down to Princess Street and the Christmas market where we spent the rest of the evening and this we did on Saturday for Friday was mostly spent in car driving from Sheffield to Edinburgh.  
Sunday morning we went back home, but instead of the same road back we drove through the Lake District, it takes a few hours longer but is definitely worth it.

Click on a picture to enlarge them!

Edinburgh Castle from the national museum

Holyrood house

Scottish Parlament





The view from calton hill towards princes street

in the distance on left side the Castle and in the middle princes street

Calton hill in the distance

Edinburgh Castle

Christmas market on princes street

Princes street from an another view

Lake district

 

Ångra ändringarna

Abstract of Water and Oil

I have been playing with water again, but this time i added olive oil. I have seen in photo magazines how to get cool abstract images of oil and water, so I made an attempt yesterday.
I had difficulty getting the oil to form circles, for the oil were dissolved by the water, I tried with olive and sunflower oil. But after experimenting with different amounts of oil so it was easiest to get  circles when it was only a few teaspoons of oil in the water, in the beginning I poured in several tablespoons and then it's just got thick and had a lot of small bubbles.
To get the colors to the image I lifted up the bowl and then just simply add different colored paper, foil and other colorful things under it and then i highlighted them by two small spot lights from the side.
Camera equipment i used, Nikon 3Ds with tamron macro sp90mm Di and a tripod.

Over the weekend, I will go away to Edinburgh (Scotland), so images from there next week.

Kingfisher and Heron

Almost every day for a week, I have been down to Endcliff Park where the beautiful little kingfisher is located. I've tried to get my dream picture off it, which is when it splashed down into the water.
But unfortunately the sun does not reach down to the water yet because it is in a valley and the winter sun is not really bothered to get up as high.
I think that maybe in February the sun is reaching down there, then i will try again or i will try every time i get the opportunity but it will not be easy.
So why is the sun so important then, because the shutter speed is far too low now and I do not want to raise ISO sensitivity that will increase noise to the photo.
And that the sun can give fine effects of splashing water after the bird.
As it is now, so the shutter speed is 1/60 at noon with iso 200 and to get to the picture that I'm talking about, I must have a shutter speed of at least 1/500s or more.
But I can not complain when I have the opportunity to photograph the beautiful kingfisher :))

Camera equipment: Nikon D90 and Nikon 200-400mm F4 lens thar combo gives 300-600mm F4 with D90 (1,5) crop sensor and a tripod.

Road trip through Peak District NP

The day was spend driving around with the wife's parents in the Peak District to show a bit of the neighborhood. We started at Ladybower reservoir,

then continued along it for few km to Derwent. We wanted to show them the dam which is very nice with its falling water.

Next we continued to Hope Valley and Edale, where it was a lot of snow (for UK :)) ) It looked very nice with snow on the peaks and the green valleys.
The journey continued through the Winnats pass, one of the two passes through the Dark Peak area. The other one is the Snake pass, a bit more north, passing Ladybower.

At Winnats pass (Castleton), there are a lot of caves as it was an old mining areas. They quarried for  a stone called Blue John, a semi-precious stone blue in color :) (suprised? ;) )
After a few quick photos, we continued to Bakewell which is a nice little village with small shops, cafés and a lot of outdoor cloth shopping. After strolling around for a while and shopped the mandatory bakewell pudding, we went to the last place we would have time to visit namely Chatsworth house (http://www.chatsworth.org/). The house is amazing but today there was an awful lot of tourists, so we just took a couple of quick photos and went home.

Kingfisher, robin and more

I was again at my bird feeding place, but without jay pictured. They were in place but no one wanted to sit on the perch that I have put out. : ((
But a magpie was caught on picture very early in the morning, it was still pretty dark outside and the camera was set to manuell mode shutter 1/200s ISO 1600 so picture was a little bit dark :) A so-called low key image where most of it is black, might be fine with those photos, too. Unfortunately, little cut off tail feather.
But today I was down to Endcliff  Park because I had read on the Sheffield bird study group that two kingfishers had been there yesterday, so I went down today to check if they were there and they was there. So I tried to photograph them for a few hours i got some pics of them, but it's hard to get really close to them because they are in the middle of a pond. So the closest you can get them is about 6m it is fun to be able to get so close, but it would be much better if I get closer because that will blur the background on the image even more.
But in this pond I have the chance to take my dream picture of the kingfisher, which is when it dives into the water and the water splashes and it has fish in its beak that is the image I will hunt all winter hope I succeed :))

 

Camera i used: Nikon D90, D3s and nikon 200-400 f4 lens

 

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Some bird pictures

I have continued my attempts to shoot Jay's, I have gone there early in the cover of darkness. Because I have noticed that if i go there while it's in the middle of the day so they want not to come. Like yesterday, I was there all afternoon without success and now this morning I was there again, they arrived and checked out but then disappeared pretty quickly, maybe they saw something that was strange, I had moved the camera to another place because it would otherwise have rained and blew straight into the lens so maybe it was that they saw.
So today it was just some small birds on the site.
I have put out a big branch and when i arrive I put sunflower seeds and nuts on top of it. And the meaning of it is that the birds will land on top of the branch, because I have the camera pointed at it. And also because i want clean pictures without any distracting things. In this way the eyes stuck on the bird only and make it pleasant to watch :) but I have not really gotten into it yet mostly because I have to have the camera a good distance away from the branch (5-6m) and then you can not really get the blur in the background I'm after.  And it's so far away, because the jay's otherwise not will arrive, they are very suspicious.

One other problem has been the sound of the cameras shutter, when i fire away pictures it sounds like machine gun but they are now getting used to it.

There is one picture of jay, it is not a good quality picture but i put in anyway :)

 

Camera equipment i used: nikon 3Ds nikon 70-200mm f2.8, nikon 200-400mm f4, tripod and wireless remote control.

 

Tough Now!

Now it's little hard to find something to photograph, Weather wise it has been great with sun and chilly mornings all week. I have tried to shoot Jays for a few days now, but without result. Mostly because I can not be bothered to sit still, and I'm starting to freeze after 2 hours and then I just give up, and it does not help to dress warm either. I have also been up to Redmires reservoirs but there was not much bird life there either, except for some different kinds of gulls and roosting lapwing's. I Also checked for water vole but they were not there, but they might remain inside at their nests in the winter.


Bird food thief

Willow tit

Roosting Lapwing's

Black-headed gull in winter plumage

Black heads

More pics from Botanic Garden

Today I took a trip to the botanical gardens again, the weather has not been the most enjoyable recent times. So Therefore I have not been out and photographed so much.
But today the sun was shining so I just got to get out and I chose to go to the botanical. Once in place i took a trip around the garden and then I was also inside the glass pavilion where they have exotic plants, but it blooms not that much now only some individual plants.

 

Camera equipment i used: Nikon 3Ds nikon 200-400mm f4 lens and a tamron 90mm Di macro lens.

Click on a picture to enlarge them!