Alverstone Mead Hide

Hey there photography peeps.

As you can see, I've had some fun recently photographing red squirrels. It all came about from a holiday in Center Parcs where a forest ranger there told me about how abundant red squirrels are on the Isle of Wight.

We all as my father-in-law lives there and I knew I would be going there soon, I did a bit of research and found a hide at Alverstone Mead that apparently had an abundance of red squirrels using the feeders. The hide has a wooden walkway to it and as I was walking to it, red squirrels started popping their heads up to greet me!

They were tricky to photograph as they wouldn't stay still for that long and ended up coming so close to you that you would struggle to get all of them into the picture! My big problem was getting the images sharp. Photographing on a cropped sensor using a 70-200mm lens meant I had to use an f-stop of around 11 in order to get the animals sufficiently sharp. That was tricky considering it was an overcast day. I had to boost the ISO to 800 in the end and got some satisfactory shutter speeds.

My personal criticisms of my photos of these squirrels are: 1) the backgrounds aren't focus enough and 2) I crop my photos too tight missing off bits of the squirrel like its ears or tail! You can see more of my squirrel photos at: www.flickr.com/photos/danlayphotos. Please go on to the photos and leave any constructive comments you like. I appreciate honest feedback.

The hide is a wonderful place to go to so make sure you visit it if you are ever on the island. Type Alverstone Mead Hide into Google and you should get a location map of where it is. Otherwise, just send me an email and I'll send you more info!

Image stabiliser really works

Well, as you can imagine, I have been trying my hand with my new Canon 70-200mm lens and it is prooving to be a real gem. The one thing I had some doubts over was the image stabilisation. I have heard lots of people say good things about it but wanted to see for myself how good it was. So I tried taking a picture of a neighbours car alloy wheel from a standing position. I extended the zoom to 200mm and took the picture with a shutter speed of only 1/50secs.
The results are shown below.

Image without stabilisation (200mm f5.0 1/50)

Image with stabilisation (200mm f5.0 1/50)

I am amazed at the difference and all the extra cost for this lens makes it worth it! The extra sharpness I can get at these low shutter speeds is just wonderful. I can't wait to see what kind of photos I can now get from events, sports matches, family and friend gatherings and weddings! This is truly an amazing lens!

New Lens - Canon 70-200 F2.8 IS L

How cool is this! I am the proud owner of a spanking new Canon 70-200 F2.8 IS L lens! Very happy chappy indeed! All I need now is the weather to brighten up a bit and i'm in business!

My main purpose for this lens will be people and animal photography. In time I shall get some extension tubes so that it will convert to a macro lens and I shall also possibly get an extender to increase the reach for better bird close ups!

My first impressions of the lens is how well built it feels. I get the feeling this will outlive my camera body several fold (indeed I have heard that some people have outstripped six EOS 1D bodies with this lens! Not bad going). With the flash unit attached, it makes my camera look so small! But its the glass and the flash that are the most important thing my more educated photographers tell me so that's where i've spent my money so far!

My second impression of the lens is how amazingly quiet the motor is. I could bearly hear it when I started using it! So quiet. That should stop scaring the birds away then!

My only gripe is that it's white! Why? Why? Why? Just make it black Canon! No need for white.. honestly.

Will hope to post some more photos soon!

My lens is bust

Bad news folks. I had a lovely weekend of photography planned only to find that my lens is no longer working in the autofocus department. I contacted Sigma and they are happy to fix it under warranty but I'm a bit gutted. I had lots of photo opportunities spoiled. Ho hum. To be honest, it makes me wonder about whether to go for Sigma lenses in the future. I have a 70-200mm lens in mind next and despite the £500 price difference between Canon's L version and Sigmas EX version, I might still opt for the tank like build quality of the Canon.
Your thoughts friends?

I got me a flash unit!

I have the privilege of taking the photos at my sisters wedding next year and after some consultation with some photography friends, it became apparent that a powerful external flash unit is an absolute must! So having scraped some pennies together over Christmas, I decided to take the plunge and bought on EBay a brand new Canon speedlite 580EX II.

I haven't yet really had the chance to use it much but am planning to do some portrait work soon (if my work and study let up!).

Does anyone have any useful tips they can give me? I really am a novice when it comes to using a flash unit!

Playing with sweets!

I was in a longish meeting at work on friday and I got a bit bored as much of what was being discussed didn't directly effect me. We had a tin of quality streets on the table and we were happily munching through them! As my mind wondered I thought these wrappers might be a challenge to make into an interesting photo.

I pocketed a range of colours and had a go at photographing them at home. It was a lot harder than I first thought it would be. I got two nice photos in the end. The one above and another on my flickr account.

This image above I particularly like as its not immediately obvious what it is! My wife thought it represented a rose, I thought at first it looked quite like a rough cut jewel or piece of glass.

In Lightroom, I overexposed the image slightly and increased the colour saturation to make the image stand out as much as possible.

Single light on white tulip

I thought I would try my hand at taking a photo of a flower in a dark room with a single light source. I used a piece of black card stuck to a wall and put single tulip into a vase about 0.5m in front of it. Using a small desk lamp set about 1m away to the right, I switched off the room light and began taking photos from my camera set on a tripod.

I was at first amazed at how difficult it was to get the back drop plain black without any reflection from the light. I need to invest in some black cloth methinks!

Then my next challenge was to try and get the light coming in at the right direction to light up the tulip enough but to leave some of it in shadow. I experimented with a sheet of white paper as a reflector to get a more even lighting on the subject, ideal for portrait photography. The end result was a very flat looking image so I abandoned that idea!

I also toyed around with the aperture settings to try and get as much in focus without losing the fuzzy background I wanted.

Post processing was easy. In Lightroom I simply boosted the blacks and contrast a little. That was it!

So what do you think? Do you have any improvement suggestions? I appreciate all comments.