I’ve been reprocessing a few old images including this shot of Black Nab at sunset, Saltwick Bay which I took a couple of years ago. I’d gone up to the coast hoping for a good sunset but the sky remained fairly grey all day and I only had a trace of a sunset. This exposure blend has brought out the best of it but I need to re-shoot this coming winter when there’s a really dramatic sky.
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Black Nab at sunset. Saltwick Bay, Yorkshire
A drive through The Strines, near Sheffield today produced this stunning male red grouse standing on top of a dry stone wall. As I rounded a bend there he was and for a moment we eyed each other up like a couple of western gunslingers wondering who would make the first move. I reversed the car, grabbed the 500mm and put it out of the window and then slowly drove back round and was lucky enough to find he was still there. Looking a tad wary now though, he stayed for a good few minutes while I made some fine images of him :¬) It’s only when you see them out in the open like this you get to marvel at their white feathery ‘trousers’ which protects their legs from the freezing conditions of the moorland during the winter months.
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A red grouse male perches on top of a drystone wall near Sheffield
The nights are drawing in and the days are getting shorter, but the late summer sun is really at its best just now, especially when it falls on a stunning vista like this. This is Curbar Edge in Derbyshire with late summer light bathing the purple flowering heather moorland and kissing the edges of the browning bracken leaves. I used a 24mm lens, POL and grads to bring out the colours in the landscape and the gritstone outcrop of Curbar adds beautiful recession to the image.
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Wakefield based wildlife and landscape photographer | Yorkshire landscape photographer | Derbyshire landscape photographer | late summer sun over Derbyshire | Curbar Edge at sunset | Peak National Park sunset image
A few static shots of a common pipistrelle bat (Pipistrellus pipistrellus). I would like to try some flight shots but don’t have a working IR trigger which I reckon would be required for such a small and active mammal. Many years ago, in the days of film, I tried photographing bats in flight with an home made IR trigger but with little success. There was no way of shooting and checking the set-up and re-adjusting as necessary until the roll of transparencies had come back from the lab days later. Now, of course, with digital it would be instant feed back. I might have to dig around in the attic to see if I still have the trigger!
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I spent a pleasant hour photographing house sparrows interacting with man as they picked up crumbs around our breakfast table outside the motorhome. There were good numbers of adults and juveniles all as bold as brass, feeding from our hands and perching on the bikes propped up at the side. It was nice to capture a few images detailing how closely this species interacts with humans.
house sparrow interacting with man | Passer domesticus | house sparrow perched on bicycle | birds and man
