Roundhay Park, Leeds

On Thursday I went to Leeds to visit a friend of mine, Paul Gorny, who is also a keen photographer and has been working with me on a video project for the last 3 months. We managed to finish our video and began the export which can take quite a long time. To pass this time Paul showed me around Roundhay Park. It seems to have a bit of everything; woodland with some massive trees, lakes, streams and even a gorge. It reminded me a bit of Mote Park in Maidstone. There was certainly plenty of bird life around but they were difficult to spot as the trees were so tall. There was also plenty of snowdrops in places and even some early wild primroses. I expect Roundhay to be an excellent place to visit in a couple of months time once spring gets going especially for wild flower and insect photography. If you are visiting Leeds and you want to stroll around a good park then Roundhay is worth considering.

Snow drops (Galanthus nivalis) on the edge of some woodland in Roundhay Park, Leeds.

In the next few days I will be uploading the video Paul and I were working on entitled "In between Wood & Water". I will also be uploading a couple of other video projects that I have been working on as well. I will post the links on this Blog.

Exploring Kiveton Community Woodland

I went to explore Kiveton Community Woodland yesterday, in South Yorkshire as it maybe a filming location for me in the Spring. So I went along photographing and geo-tagging potential filming spots. I had been told that it was a good place to film Skylarks and that appears to be very true. After walking around for an hour or so I began to hear them in the distance. I made my way up a hill covered in thick grasses and found myself surrounded by them. It appears that the males are sorting out who goes where at the moment as there was a lot of fighting going on.

Unfortunately 200mm was the best I could do with the lenses I had with me.

It wasn't just the Skylarks settling disputes. I found a stone feature which had a few dozen spiders climbing to the very top. Once at the top they would spin out a long thread and then do something which I can only describe as stand on tipy-toes and let go of the stone. The wind caught the tread and the spiders would take off. I have never seen this behaviour in person just on TV. Once at the top the spiders would wrestle for what I assume were the best take off points.

Spiders wrestling at Kiveton Community Woodland.

I managed to get some footage of this behaviour which I think will demonstrate it better. I will edit it and get it online as soon as possible. I will also try and get them identified as I am no expert on spiders.

All in all it was a successful scouting trip and I definitely will be going to film Skylarks there in the spring. 

2013 Orchid display at Kew Gardens

For my third day in the South East I visited Kew Gardens. This is one of my all time favourite places to go. This weekend saw the opening of this years orchid display which turns most of the Princess of Wales Conservatory into a giant orchid green house. This is the third year in a row that I have been to this event and is really the only chance I get in the year to photograph a variety of orchids.

I mainly focused on getting wider shots around 35mm instead of the usual macro shots that I like to get on individual flowers. This year there was plenty of green foliage to go with the orchids this helped fill out the wider shots giving the impression that this years display was more mature in its growth compared to previous years.

Something that was catching the attention of a lot of the visitors to all the greenhouses were the abundance of tame robins that had taken up residence. Their singing was amazing and their trust in people was equally so.

A Robin sitting on a (Cleyera japonica) from India in the Palm House.

A Day at Dungeness

Day 2 of my tour of Kent I visited Dungeness. I have been visiting Dungeness for about 5 years now but most of those visits were to the RSPB reserve about a mile inland. Back in November I broke my old routine and headed to the beach by the nuclear power station to film a short documentary. The shingle beach is strewn with abandoned fishing boats, fishing shacks and fishing equipment, as it is part of a national nature reserve it has been left for nature to slowly take over. This is a great place to take photos and to shoot video, particularly at dawn.

The main objectives for today's visit were:

1. Film the waves crashing on the beach at 720p 50fps in the hope of generating some slow motion footage.
2. Record the sound of waves crashing on the shore.
3. Continue practicing with magic lantern installed on my Canon 600D.

Tour of the South East

Today I began a four day tour of the South East. First stop was Canvey Wick in Essex. I spent last Summer filming at Canvey Wick for my MSc summer project. The aim of today's visit was to collect footage for a short Winter video on the site. The weather was amazing and the light was almost perfect for videography. 

Canvey Wick is well known for it's rare and unusual invertebrate species but these are usually seen in the Spring and Summer. During the Winter however mosses and lichens take over. At one end of the site there is a large pile of burnt wood, most of which was covered in a brilliant array of mosses and lichens. I couldn't resist stopping to take some photos in between takes. 

Tomorrow I will be visiting Dungeness.

Ambient audio recordings at Peter Fidler reserve

Early this morning I went out to the Peter Fidler nature reserve to get some ambient audio for a video project. It was a beautifully clear, bright morning. I was able to get some bird song recordings as well as the sound of squirrels feeding on nuts and seeds which is a new sound for me.

It would of been great for photography but sadly I couldn't carry the sound gear and camera at the same time. I was able to get a few snaps with my phone though which I am quite pleased about. 

This photo was shot and edited on my iPhone 4S.

Panoramas at Lumsdale, Matlock

Last week while there was still plenty of snow around I visited Lumsdale outside Matlock. I wanted to see what it was like in the snow. I had spent quite a bit of time there in the Autumn while filming for a short documentary and feel in love with the place. After spending plenty of time taking regular photos I decided to try some close up panoramas of one of the waterfalls there. I had never really tried this before but I thought I would give it a go.

Here is a dramatically down sized snip-it, unfortunately Blogger didn't like the aspect ratio of the image I had stitched together which was around 49.3 mega pixels so here is a 4 x 6 chunk of it. After a few attempts of a wide horizontal image I thought why not try a vertical version because from this point you can see the next waterfall above. 

 

Again this is a 4 x 6 chunk of a much larger image which was in total 78.3 mega pixels. I actually prefer the vertical shot. Once it was all stitched together I realized that I really needed a stitched strip of images on either side of this one to really capture the whole scene. That would probably mean stitching together a 235 mega pixel image. I don't know if my computer could take that kind of abuse. If it snows again I will go back and try again, if not I will wait till the spring and try a really calm day.