A page dedicated to the celebration of nature and nature photography
For many years I have dreamed of witnessing this - one of nature's greatest spectacles and just this week, my dream came true in Kuusamo, Finland. However, Its not as easy as you might think though and just hopping on a plane in mid-winter will by no means guarantee you success. I was in Kuusamo for just one week and this shot was taken on the very last day of the trip with absolutely no other signs of the aurora prior to this. To see these beautifully lights dance around in the sky before you can only be desribed as magical!
This beautiful male mallard was photographed after night of heavy snowfall in Lancashire. The snow has provided the background to the image and also a high amount of bounced light from beneath the bird, removing almost all shadows from the shot. The picture was taken from a well chosen position by a pond near to where children regularly feed the ducks. It was simply a case of shooting them as they flew by the camera at eye level.
Red squirrels are one of my favourite British mammals and are instantly recognisable over their more boorish grey cousins. This individual was photographed in Rothiemurchus forest near Aviemore in Scotland where I spent the day trying to get a pose that was a little different than the normal pose that we so often see. I believe they are making their presence known again in my local county of Lancashire, where I hope to see one soon.
It's been a number of years since I last photographed fallow deer, in fact, I was still using slide film! I remember back then not being overly impressed by this species as they seemed a little too easy compared to other species of deer and therefore, not as rewarding to photograph. However, a recent autumn visit to Dunham Massey in Cheshire made me re-think that opinion as when you introduce other factors such as nice light and autumn colours, they can look amazing. The moral of this story is; it's not what you photograph that matters, its the way in which you photograph it.
It's surprising what you find when you look back into your files! I'm going to Scotland in the coming weeks to photograph both wildlife and landscapes and was looking where I had been in the past for ideas. I happened to come across this picture taken near Rothiemurchus Forest that for some unknown reason, never got processed. Maybe I thought I had better images at the time that need my attention first...who knows!
.jpg "Cormorant (Phalacrocorax carbo) with freshwater perch")
Taken at Dunham Massey in Cheshire, this cormorant was very accommodating and came within a few metres of the camera whilst it wrestled with this perch. In the end the cormorant gave up and the perch lived to tell the tale.
This shot was taken at a time when wasps are relatively docile but at a time when most people suffer their unpleasant sting. They are no longer faithful to their nest but obsessed with sugary foods as they spend the remaining days of their lives in late summer desperately trying to find a source, often at the expense of an unwary person. The shot was taken in a wild and free setting using a series of Canon speedlights to freeze the motion of the insect and recreate natural day light conditions. In all, the shoot took two days to complete with just the one frame being acceptable. The majority of the images were ruined due to the very narrow depth of field the camera gives when shooting at such high magnifications, which is about 2cm at this distance. Because of this most of the wasps were out of focus either flying in front of or behind the strawberry.
In early spring each year our native amphibians head out from hibernation to a pond where they are likely to remain faithful to for their entire life. They join many, if not hundreds of other individuals in this annual event over a brief period where they gather to mate. This individual was found leaving such a pond to run the gauntlet with local traffic on a busy lane in Lancashire. It's a sad fact that now many of our amphibian ponds are fragmented by highways and species like the common toad, now listed as a UK Principal Species have to do this each each year to breed. Fortunately, the future looks brighter due to planning policy changes, which aim to target species of principle importance, which means that any new roadways have to take this delightful little creature into consideration as part of the planning process. Good old toady!
This shot of a male mute swan was taken on a grey, overcast morning when the light was flat and all shadow and highlight detail can be recorded with little fuss. The shot was very simplistic, just the swan and an uncluttered lake behind. I deliberately over exposed the picture so that the swan's outline is almost merging with the reflected sky on the water, but yet still retain colour and contrast within the beak and the legs of the bird.
One of my most favourite and memorable images was taken on a trip to the well known Donna Nook seal colony off the
You may be surprised to hear that snowdrops are particularly difficult to photograph? Well it’s true, they are! This shot was taken less than half a mile from my home but to get it, I made two trips and shot nearly 200 frames. The reason for this is that snowdrops are very prone to the slightest breeze. In what would seem like the calmest of days in our world, their little flower heads will be nodding like lanterns in a gale force wind. For the shot to work, I needed all three heads to be in the same plane of focus at the same time and take advantage of a very narrow depth of field, which renders the foreground and background completely out of focus. The shot was taken using a 500mm telephoto lens rested on the ground to give an intimate view of the plant. The foreground grasses are so close to the lens that they are recorded as a green mist, which can be clearly seen along the base of the picture.