Richard & Caroline's Blog

A busy weekend indeed.

First up a trip to Hartsholme on the Saturday morning. Meeting Chris to see how the young baby Coots were getting on.

We found it interesting in the amount of effort the parents were putting into renovating the nest. Possible getting ready for a second brood?

We only spent a couple of hours there, things were pretty quiet but it was good to see how the baby Coots were progressing.

I spent Saturday afternoon in the studio. First doing some portraits and then some product shots. I’ll be processing these over the next couple of days and then passing the initial edits on to the customers. They will make their selections and i’ll then do the final editing of there chosen shots.

Sunday afternoon, we spent walking round Whisby Nature reserve. Caroline was shooting Macro and I was using a long telephoto zoom. Occasionally we would swap bodies when something caught our eyes that needed the others lens.

The bright brilliant blue of a Damsel fly caught my eye, so I took a few shots of those, using the macro lens and macro flash. Once at the lakes we managed to get few reasonable shots of a pair of Tufted Ducks and some Great Crested Grebes. Walking back we spotted several small toads crossing the path, then a family of ducks followed by a rabbit.

All in all a pleasing way to finish a very photogenic weekend.

I learnt some time ago not to trust the the histogram.  How you customise the camera affects the histogram, and in a studio, when using high key or low key lighting the background overpowers the rest of the scene affecting the histogram.

Recently I was watching a video on Kelby Training by Frank Doorhof called “Why Fake It When You Can Create It”.

In it the fashion photographer Frank Doorhof covered some aspects of metering in the studio using a flash meter.  Great stuff, and I cannot recommend it enough.

Gives me a few ideas to try out when I am in the studio tomorrow.

Our friend and fellow photography Paul has just finished a major overhaul of his Website. Check it out at www.lauter.co.uk.

A pleasant morning was spent at Hartsholme Park yesterday before I headed to the gym. There was three of us shooting, Chris Bennett, my lovely wife and myself.

It was fairly quiet, as usual a few Heron’s but not as many as usual, Greylag and Canadian Geese, but still not as many as usually flew in to visit the lake.

We walked around the main lake heading for a Coots nest when we spotted a rather tame Robin.

He seemed quite content while three photographers pointed their long lens at him and snapped away!

To get to the Coots nest you have to cross over the lake via a bridge at the southern end. As we approached Caroline spotted a couple of adult Coots diving for food, and feeding it to their young who where swimming nearby. Then a couple of Great Crested Grebes also appeared, one diving for food while the other stayed on the surface. The one that never dived looked a little odd, and it took a while before we realised that one had young tucked away on its back.

The Coots were mainly feeding under the bridge, but the Grebe’s were wandering all over the lake.

Once they had disappeared from view we crossed over to the West Bank of the Lake and headed to the Coots nest that we had been watching for a number of weeks now.

We had seen it being built and now the young were getting bolder and briefly leaving the nest.

A fun morning, certainly not as many birds as usual but it was great to see how the Coots were getting on, and good fun spending the morning photographing with Chris and Caroline.