Mar 17

Mar 17 April Come She Will

I got up this morning ready to get out and take some pictures of spring in all its glory with the 400mm and 100mm macro, over in Bushy park. The sun was shining and I thought great, finally a chance to get out and get some good images after such bad luck with weather lately. I left home and walked across the bridge and suddenly that all changed. As if by magic, boom the sun goes in and the day became grey, overcast and dull, I could not believe it. I decided to press on and give it a shot anyway...

and this ladies and gentlemen is all I got.....

I literally could not get near anything, there were no birds around, the light was flat and overcast and what was around like this starling, was way off up in the tops of the trees. I was so annoyed that I have had such bad luck with the weather that I decided to wander back and cut my loses.

7D with 400mm lens, camo and Manfrotto tripod and ball head

side note- I decided to get a couple of images of my set up that i have been using for wildlife since the beginning of this year, for all to see as it really has given me some great images. The tripod and ball head has made a massive difference in ease of use, and stability that just was not there with my old travel tripod (benro).

I decided to go visit a tree where I buried my old parrot Loki under, about 2 and a half years ago now as I meandered back in a bad mood.

Loki shot on the 7d with a 5Omm F/1.8 in 2011

There are always birds hanging around in this particular tree for some reason and today was no exception. As I stood there 3 green Woodpeckers flew into the tree and (very noisily) proceeded to jump around in its branches. Finally my luck had changed. I managed just one half decent image of one of them before they went on to the next tree but that was enough to change my mood.

Green Woodpecker shot at 400mm on 7D at 1000 of a second at F/5.6

I finally had something to show for my troubles and although it was fleeting, it was enough for me.

I did still want to capture 'spring' and from what I had seen so far it was not quite there yet. With my mood on the up though after the woodpeckers, I spotted some flowers in the middle of the brown, dead ferns. I stopped off for a little while in the middle of the dried bracken and ferns to capture some lone daffodils with first the 35mm then the 100mm. It turned out I think to be the best few shots of the day and well worth the detour.

I loved the contrast of the colours, as well as the idea of new life emerging from the dead, decaying land around. Overall it gave a striking image that I think works really well.

The final image was taken using the 100mm macro with the ring flash and the F stop set at F/35. This blacks out all but the subject in focus, creating this striking image.

To sum up then, it just shows that a little bit of persistence can sometimes give you The bit of luck that you need. I wish the day had stayed sunny, but heading home I was happy I was able to get what I did. I like to think that I got a couple of images at least that came out well and I can be happy with.

FIN