A Walk at Limb Valley

Last week I visited Limb Valley, a rather large beech forest that I have planned to photograph for a while now but once again I was late.Just a week earlier it was too early to go there, I thought at least, as the colors were not really at their best. That said, at the end it all went fast, it also was windy so the leaves blew off :/ 
The valley is located just on the outskirts of Sheffield, on the border of the Peak District NP. I find it a pretty cozy little valley much because of the big beech forest.
An observation, throughout many walks I have taken I have seen that people have hang ropes from the trees over the streams. Sure it sounds/looks like a lot of funny but what if the rope breakes? or you can not manage to hold yourself up? (Am I getting old questioning this? :) ) 
On the last pic in this post, I have taken a pic of a really stupid place where somebody have placed a rope directly above a steep fall, 3 - 4m straight down on to a rock.

Here is the rope swinging place, would you dare?

Dipper

Tomorrow I will go to Sweden for 2 weeks and to visit my brother up in  Kalix (Norrbotten). Should be great with real winter, and with 1 meter of snow, the plan is that we'll try to shoot a bit of everything but I really hope that we get the opportunity to photograph the northern lights, but much depends on the weather.
We will also drive snowmobile's and maybe go out to fish, fishing  is not so funny now because of that you have to first dig through the thick snow cover and then maybe it is about 70cm ice on it, a sweaty job in other words.
Well, it will be fun anyway to visit the northern part of Sweden again.
I will try to blog from there as well but it may not be as frequent.
But in the meantime here are some more pictures of the dipper that I managed to get right close last time a was down to Rivelin. Managed to even see goosander down there in one of the small ponds and that is not happening so often, I also saw a Kingfisher but it wasnt so cooperative this time.

Camera Equipment: Nikon D90 and Nikon 200-400mm f4 lens.

Dipper

At last, the dipper has arrived to the little river, down in the Rivelin Valley, I've always liked this tough bird, do not really know why but I think because it is so small and seems to be so tough. It is so fun to watch it when it searches for food in the river either diving or walking on the bottom of the river.
And for the first time, I got both the female and male in the same picture, they tend otherwise keep some distance from each other, I dont know why but thats how I experience it.
Now I think they are close to each other because it is time for mating soon, especially considering how much they sing to each other.
I also think it is the same couple who were there last year, will see if they choose their old nesting location.
Since I usually spend a lot of time to try to shoot them in the spring and summer they usually get used to me after a while and sometimes I can get quite close, but right now they are still a little shy.

Camera equipment: Nikon D90 and nikon 200-400mm f4 lens.

Male on the left, a little bit more colorful :)

Do u see it under the water

Searching



Ready to dive

The Beautiful Mandarin Duck

As I wrote in the previous blog post, I then went down to Endcliff park and there was the beautiful Mandarin duck in place.
I'm Always happy to see the nice colorful duck, so it was just to take out the camera and take pictures.
I managed to get pretty close to the Mandarin, which has not happened before, but maybe it's the cold / winter which makes them less shy of humans.
Since the birds surely need more to eat, they know well that people usually will feed them with bread  and for that reason they cant resist to eat easily earn food.

camera equipment: nikon D90 and nikon 200-400mm f4 lens

Wyming brook forest

Today I biked down to wyming brook forest, the goal was to photograph the little stream that runs through that and try to get to some autumn pictures. It turned out that it would not be so easy, mostly because there was not so much hardwood beside the stream.
But a little higher up the creek,  there were some trees with some fall colors. Fall colors usually come here they last 2 weeks of October or around the first weeks of november depending on how much it has rained during the year and this year it's been extremely rainy.

Photo equipment i used: Nikon D90, nikon 10-24mm F3,5 lens and a tripod.
Click on a picture to enlarge it!

Flowers with the 50mm F1,8 Lens

Today I went and my wife to the botanical garden, just to stroll around and look at the nice flowers available. The weather was overcast, which is good I think when you're shooting flowers, it becomes a more even light without too harsh contrasts that it can be in the sun. Many of the spring flowers are gone but it had come up fresh flowers, so it was no problem finding motifs. And today, I wanted a little challenge myself by taking photos with a fixed 50mm f1, 8 which is very bright, sharp and provides a stunning bokeh. Bokeh is called as the picture is not in focus. When using a shallow depth of field that you get with an aperture of 1.8 it will be behind and in front of more blurred. Hope you understand otherwise you might see it in the pictures. :) The lens is widely used for portraits as well, just for the short depth of field and bokeh's sake. U can for example take a facial image and only the eyes are sharp, which gives a nice effect to the image. Because it is a fixed lens, you get to move to find great photo angles there by then it is a challenge. If you have a zoom so you can always just zoom in on the object. It may look like you have shot with a macro, but with a macro, it will be much, much closer which is nice too. But it might be fun to vary a bit, and if you could capture with macro in the same way as with the 50mm lens. The macro lens maximum aperture usually 2.8 which of course does not give as much bokeh.

Click on the the pictures to enlarge them!

Ångra ändringarna

 

 

Heron Hunting Fish

Couple of days ago i went to Endcliff park here in Sheffield to watch if the Mandarin duck was there.
The Mandarin duck is originally from Asia but specimens frequently escaped from collections, and in the 20th century a large feral population was established in Great Britain.
However the Mandarin wasnt there, but instead a grey heron landed on the pond and started to hunt fish. It`s fun to watch them hunting, they are so incredibly fast and precise.

This weekend, I will go to the Snowdonia Natioanl Park, but i will return on monday.
See u :)



First attempt fails

Second attempt



resulted in a



very small fish :)

then it flies away full and satisfied :) :)







Early morning at Redmires

Early this morning at 5:20  I took my bike up to redmires Reservoirs, the weather seemed promising.
It was pretty cold this morning (8 C), but the sun was supposed to turn out today, according to the weather forecast.
Once up I listened for the cuckoo, but it was quiet today, little bit disappointed because that was the one I would take pictures of today.
It was just to start walking around the area to find photo opportunities, saw a snipe, but it was far away. Shortly afterwards, I see a Wheatear and i get some pictures.
After that I decided to go to the other side of the reservoir, just to try get some pictures of the Linnet. During the walk there, I saw a bull finch was odd to see one of those in the green out there, because Iam used to see them in Sweden in the winter.
 The linnet`s was in place, but now it had to start blowing a lot and it was very cold in the wind,  and now it started to rain and hail at times.
I felt no fun being on that side, so I went back to the other side where there was less wind. There, I managed to see a new bird species for me, it was a Golden plower.
I held out for a while, and cycled home at 9:00

Ångra ändringarna

I found a white rabbit

Water-forgot-me-not

wheatear

Lesser Black-backed Gull.

Common Sandpiper

Linnet/Hämpling

Golden Plower

Wood Pigeon/Ringduva

Lapwing/Tofsvipa