Spring in Scotland

Hi all,

I got back from Scotland last night and had a nice time. I did lots of photography although in hindsight I probably should have spent more time revising for my GCSE's.

On the first morning, while taking the dogs for a walk along the beach I managed to spot something very unexpected...an otter. It was very far away but I was sure of it. This was the first wild otter I can remember seeing. Originally, I thought it was a seal as the only part of the otter showing was the head, but as the animal dived down, I saw the tail flick up out of the water. It was only when the otter came out of the water onto a large rock off shore that I was certain. I took as many photographs as I could including these two.

On the second day, again whilst walking the dogs, we spotted a couple of dippers next to a large waterfall on a river near Golspie. The next day, I set myself up near where we saw the dippers. While I did see them, they kept their distance and lighting was terrible. Both dippers were collecting nesting material around the rocks but decided to stay close cliff wall. I hope to photograph them again next time I go up there.

I decided that I should spend more time revising after this so I decided to photograph the birds in the garden rather than going out further a field. This meant that I could take photos during my breaks. The feeding station I had set up attracted lots of common and some more unfamiliar species to me, for example, siskins, of which I had only seen in my garden once a few years ago. The siskins were by far the most difficult birds to photograph as they were constantly flitting between branches. They were also by far the most aggressive towards other birds, despite their small size. Same with the goldfinches which would also attack other birds if they came near the same feeder as them.

It was a brilliant trip but unfortunately I will most likely not take many more photos until my exams are over, or the half-term, depending on my timetable. 

I hope that everyone has had a good easter.

All images © Samuel Aron

Up-close and personal

Hi all,

I told you there would be more photographs of frogs. The sunny weekend weather has brought them out into the open more. Last weekend, I spent a good few hours photographing the frogs on the ponds surface. They had become much more active. There was also a good deal of frog spawn to be seen which meant one frog in particular was constantly on guard.

I took many photographs of this frog as all the other frogs were being scared away by it.

Some others did appear for a while but only a short while.

Today, I have been using my newly bought Aquapac for photographing the frogs underwater. This is my favourite image that I took underwater. It shows the mucus slime on the frog clearly, plus the reddish colours of the frog.

I will try to photograph some other subjects soon but for now I will keep with the frogs and try and improve my underwater images.

All images © Samuel Aron

FROGS!!!

Hi all,

Recently, the frogs in my garden pond have started becoming more active. This means that I have started trying to photograph them more.
I first noticed that they had returned to my pond when they started moving about at night.

For this shot, I was aiming to show the frog in a wide-angle view but the frog jumped down the path in the middle of the exposure, meaning that it was shown twice in the same image.

The following images are from this weekend.

I'm hoping to photograph the frogs more throughout this spring.


All images © Samuel Aron

HAPPY NEW YEAR! - 2013 review

Hi all,

I hope you all had a brilliant Christmas and a just as good new year.
I haven't posted anything recently or done much photography either due to revision so I decided to do this one post before I get back to work.
I will do the review month by month and do a little summary, accompanied by a photograph.


JANUARY

Nothing could sum up January more than the mass of snow that we got around London. I immediately went out to go and photograph my local wildlife in the snow but one of my best shots, I think was of a great tit, sitting on a bare branch of a pine tree in my garden. This was actually one of the few photos that I got of a bird, while it was actually snowing.

FEBRUARY

One thing that I did do a lot in February was visit a local nature reserve called Stocker's lake. I had been there before but usually been unsuccessful as far as photography goes. However, when I visited this time, there was lots going on. Many bird species, including some rarities, visited the lake during the winter months. One of my favourite shots from February showed a group of two coots sparring with two more coots about to join in. The fight was quickly over but it was amazing seeing this other side of coots. 

MARCH

In March, I found out that I had one my first ever photography competition. I managed to gain first place in Young Garden Photographer of the Year with my image of a long-tailed tit. The image itself was actually taken a year before I entered but I hadn't started entering competitions at that stage. 

Unfortunately, the green on this photograph has been enhanced by the blog.
Better quality can be found on my website, 500px or Flickr.

APRIL

During this month, I was invited by my friend Josh (who also does photography) to go with him to norfolk for a day. There are lots of fantastic reserves in Norfolk to go to so it was difficult deciding where to go. We ended up going to Titchwell Marshes and had a brilliant time. Not only was the weather good but the birds showed really well. We saw avocets, godwits, ruff and even a black redstart. I took so many photos that day that I actually ran out of of space on my memory cards. My favourite picture that I took that day wasn't actually of a rare species though. Instead, it was of a preening pheasant, showing off all it colourful feathers in the sunshine.

MAY

In May, I went to Yorkshire for a week. During this week, I to a visit to the Bempton Cliffs. While I should have been revising, I couldn't resist. There was so much to see. I had never seen so many gannets in my life. I managed to catch an image of two gannets interacting while on of them was in flight.

JUNE

I did a lot of macro photography in the Summer using my new lend reversing ring. I loved seeing all the insects close-up. This red damselfly was  on a plant next my garden pond. I tried to get underneath so that the shadow was shown and used a home-made diffuser to fill in the details underneath the insect.

JULY

Towards the end of July, I went to Scotland for a few days with my Dad as we had not been yet that year. The weather was reasonably good while we were there with only one day of rain and the rest of the time it was sunny. My favourite image that I took up there was of a Bottlenose Dolphin breaching in the Moray Firth.

AUGUST

As the Summer Holidays were drawing to a close, I took another, yes, another trip to Scotland. I saw a lot more this time around as I spent more time there. Because I saw so much, I'm going to have to upload more than one image for this month. On the way up, we stopped off at Loch Garten. I knew that this wasn't the best time to see the ospreys but I didn't actually go there for the ospreys. My main interest was the red squirrels. They showed really well and I got images of two different squirrels.

I also spent two mornings photographing seals on a beach near where we stay. They were also great to photograph. The first morning, they were all on the sand. I spent nearly an hour trying to get close enough to photograph them as they seemed quite timid and there was no way of hiding myself. But I eventually got there. I took many images but I was fondest of an image of one seal yawning with another in the frame, making it look like the seals were having a conversation.

The second morning they were out on the rocks so were even harder to approach. Not only that, but the tide was coming in so I didn't have a lot of time. The seal below wasn't actually holding that position. It was in fact shuffling itself round to get into a more comfortable position I presume. :P

SEPTEMBER

I had been planning to go to Richmond park at the end of September to see the rut as last year I was too late. There was no morning mist unfortunately so I had to make do with the given conditions. Luckily though, there was a lot of activity and I managed to get this shot of a bellowing stag staring right down the lens.

OCTOBER

Scotland for the third time in a year! The weather was lousy though. Nevertheless, me and my Dad took a visit to the Tollie Red Kite feeding station. It was amazing seeing the kites like this.

The background has been slightly softened to reduce noise.

NOVEMBER

I started visiting my local park again in November to see if I could get any shots of the resident Kingfishers. While I did see them, I didn't get any decent shots. I 'm still trying to get a shot but this friendly Robin kept me company while I was there.

No remote shutter release or bait. Just a very friendly Robin.

DECEMBER

I didn't do much photography in December but I did go on a skiing holiday in Switzerland where I saw black Red Squirrels. A first for me. I didn't have my slr with me so I had to use my compact camera.

So that's 2013 gone. Ahead of me I've got my GCSE's but I hope to keep doing photography.


Happy New Year everyone!

Scottish autumn (wildlife overview)

Hi all,

A few days ago, I got back from Scotland. I had a brilliant time up there. I was only there for four days but I still saw plenty of wildlife. The weather was good most of the time so it allowed me to get out.

Because of the good weather, there were beautiful scenes across the firths. We stopped at the cromarty firth. While there, I managed to spot a variety of birds, primarily waders and wildfowl but you could also see dolphins breaching in the distance. Because the dolphins were so far away, I didn't manage to get a shot of them but I did take a lot of landscape photos (which I don't normally do) including the one below.

The next day, a sea mist settled in so, while it wasn't bad weather, it wasn't particularly good weather either. The sea was very stormy that day so there weren't many birds near the shore. There was however, a few snow buntings and a flock of sanderling and ringed plover. The shot below shows the flock flying over the waves that day.

I also photographed this wagtail at the beach.

I didn't do any photography the next day but the day after, I went to the Tollie red kite feeding station near Dingwall. There was lots of activity with plenty of kites, buzzards and ravens coming in to feed on the food put out. This is a selection of my favourite images.

I didn't do anymore photography beyond then as the weather started to get bad. I hope you've enjoyed the post and the accompanying photographs. Have a great half term everyone.

All images © Samuel Aron

Richmond park deer

Hi all,

Yesterday, I got up at 5:30am to drive into London to photograph the deer there with my friend Josh. It was a brilliant day and there were lots of great opportunities for photographing the deer. Although the deer rut hasn't quite kicked off yet, we saw plenty of roaring stags and youngsters practicing their technique which they can hopefully use later on. The red deer were very easy to approach and I was able to come within 3 metres of a roaring stag. Even the stags with their females were fairly easy to approach, although I did back off when the stag came towards me. Unfortunately, there was no morning mist or strong enough light for using fast shutter speeds so we were mainly exploring and trying not to get chased for the first hour at the park. There was a group of low-flying gees that flew right under the sunrise.

Canada geese at sunrise

After very little success in this part of the park, a walk down to the playing fields saw that we had much more.  This Fallow buck ran right in front of us.

Pacing Fallow Buck

The stags with the females were very difficult to approach but there was a small group of stags on their own which were incredibly easy to approach. These deer didn't mind our presence, nor the loud buzzing sound of a man out with his remote control helicopter. At one point, two pairs of the stags started to practice fight right in front of us.

Practice

We stayed there for a while and then moved up to the woods. It was at this point, while eating a sandwich, that I saw a huge red stag coming out of the bracken right behind us. We came with metres of this deer and I was able to get this shot of it calling.

Call of the wild

After this stag had left, we contemplated going to the other end of the park to see if there were any deer in the bracken. However, we decided to stay where we were as we could hear many roaring stags close-by. Because of this, we were able to get quite close to a small group of young stags sitting on a grassy patch. These stags also presented many opportunities.

Black and white red

Yuck!

I decided to move on as there was a roaring stag surrounded by does around 200 metres from where we were. This stag, despite being surrounded by females, was very approachable and, quite frankly, wouldn't shut up. It was brilliant. He was always roaring (not necessarily at me) and showing off.

Intruder

Calling stag

Watching doe

Phone snap

It was nearly time to go home after this so we decided to hang around the car park. Luckily though, there were three stags just sitting there next to it. At this point I only had 10 photos left on the final memory card and both my batteries were almost depleted so every shot had to be timed well. I kept approaching the deer by crawling on the ground. I eventually got within 3 metres of the closest deer. I was able to get close-ups of the head and the stag roaring.

Stag portrait

Bellowing

Calling out

After that, I got in the car and went home. It was a brilliant day and I can't wait to go back there again.

All images © Samuel Aron