Wildlife Heritage Foundation

Let's start with probably my best shot of the day, got a very lucky shot of a Mountain Lion/Cougar/Puma taking a jump across a pool in order to get to some meat. I have no idea how the head managed to be in focus... this I attribute to photographer's luck.

Anyways, back to the story. This photo was taken at the Wildlife Heritage Foundation in Kent. This place serves as a conservation area for endangered large cat species. It is not a public facility, and entry is usually only by joining a photography tour as mine (I went along with Photographers On Safari)

Getting to the location is about an hour on the trains to Headcorn, after which a quick 5 minute transfer on a taxi gets oneself to the location. Bring a good map - as the place can be tough to find if driving!

Main lenses I used were the 300/4 AF-S Nikkor and the 70-200VR Nikkor. Both were at times attached to the TC14EII teleconverter. The 300/4 + TC served very well for head shots, giving me a 420mm /5.6 with little loss in resolution, so long as I can get a decent shutter speed.

What I'd experimented with today was attaching a 1/4 CTO (Color Temperature Orange) gel to my SB600. I was hoping to warm up the cooler shadows, and in this it did not disappoint. However, the images in good light do actually come in a little too warm. Perhaps I can fix it in Bibble, perhaps not. So far I'm reasonably happy with the results, I'll continue to use it and see how it goes.

After an instructional session on how camera settings and composition, we headed out to the Lion's enclosure to shoot them getting fed.



I may have been a little over-handed with the saturation. Anyways... I was prone on the ground for this shot in order to get to eye level. It was an icky proposition, as just a few minutes ago, we saw a live demonstration of a lion "spraying" one of my fellow attendees.... by turning around, and releasing a high pressure jet of lion waste fluid through the fence. If it were a chimera it'd probably have hit the dude, but it's aim, with no eyes on the back was not very good ;-)



Om nom nom nom.

After devouring the meat, they took up positions on the wooden structure which gave us lovely opportunities for head shots.



And when they got too close to the fence, a chance for a little lion abstract ;-)



Sumatran Tigers were up next, tough critters to shoot as they were pacing around lots. The difficulty was in tracking them through a fence with the fellow paparazzi - little movement room, and the ensure that the lens was sticking through the barely-large-fence-holes.



The 70-200 was indispensable for the "wider" shots. Stopped down one stop, it gives great detail, and the background separation is fantastic.



Not to bore everyone to death with endless tiger headshots, I'll move on to the Cheetahs now. The little fellow was in the shade when we arrive, and I was equipped with the 300/4 and TC14EII from the previous tiger session. The Cheetah itself was a little too close (The nose basically was able to fill about half the frame... er...) so I turned to taking some abstract cheetah dots :)



The keeper was trying her best to lay the meat so that the cheetah would move on to the area with lots of high grass, however the cheetah was being a cat, and refused to do anything with it.



As always, the 300/4 + TC14EII combo comes through. So long as there is good light, and there was good light today :)

Moving on, we went to visit the Amur Leopards.



The female was tending to two cubs, and it is understandable if she was pissy when a hoard of paparazzi shows up :)



Still, I managed to snatch a nice portrait once she was fed and chummy. The 70-200 here was equipped with the TC14EII (I think....) - my experience today was that it performs _adequately_ at F4 with the TC, but stopping down to 5.6 releases the full fury of the lens :) The beautiful bokeh is not too badly affected.



The male on the other hand was enjoying the shade and did not want to leave the coolness. A few meat goodies enticed it to come play in the sun though :)

It was rather harsh during that particular time of day, but the fill flash manages to control the contrast, though not the deep dark shadows.




The Snow Leopard was up next. It was a challenge to shoot as it was in deep shade, and again being a cat, just didn't want to move. Got a fairly nice portrait shot.




Next to the Snow Leopard enclosure were the Pallas Cats. Once again, difficult light situations were abundant, and for the head shot, the 300/4 performed admirably.



I'd switched to the 70-200 in order to get more "space" around the furball. The 2.8 helped immensely with shutter speeds, but I was wishing I had a D300 and could push the iso higher....



Finally we went over to the Mountain Lion's playpen. Those cats can jump ;-)



Again, no idea how the AF locked on to the head. Is this a sentient af system?

Next up was the servals, but we saw the lions having an afternoon siesta, so we made a detour to shoot the lions prior to catching the servals.







Very tough furballs to catch as they are quite wary of humans.

Pretty awesome day, not sure about the CTO gel used on the lens though, will probably need to re-visit the photos another day when I'm not so worn out.

London in the evening

Decided to take a walk down to the Thames this evening, didn't realize it'd be a near 5 hour walk as I covered a fair bit of the south bank, all the way to St Paul's, then a long walk back home. Man, I thought these were reserved for the weekend? :)



Here's Trafalgar Square this placid evening. The overcast weather was doing nothing to dampen the spirit of the tourists. The 4th Plinth's activities were going on as usual, rain or shine. Took a few snaps of the hour's plinther, but I think my walkaround 16-85 wasn't long enough to crop into the artist on stage. It's alright, but I would have preferred my 70-200 in order to stop the motion. VR does not help in this case.



Along the south bank, I tried to capture the spirit of love and life near the eye.



In cold contrast, is loneliness along the steps of St Paul's.

I was also looking for urban foxes, to no avail. Oh well.

Hyde Park Shoot

Following yesterday's snafu with the lack of atm card, the next best choice was to go heron hunting in Hyde Park.



The website said the park would open about 6, so I left my place slightly after 5. Oxford street was still alive with people even that time...



Some landscape photogs using medium format.... ooo....



I went to the Round Pond in the Kensington Gardens, however I found mostly Swans nesting on the bank, and some smaller birds picking up food from the side of the bank. I turned around and went back to the Serpentine, there were a few herons up and about, and was a good chance to get some BIF in :)



I was using two setups this morning, the 70-200/VR + 1.4TC, as well as the 300/4 with and without the TC. The 70-200 I shot it wide open with the TC, at F4, and showed a very bad amount of veiling flare. Examining my other shots with it stopped down to F5.6 showed that this flare was gone by that aperture, but still it's sad to see it :( All those shots went into the bin.



The 300/4 as usual was impeccable, with or without the TC it was very good. The difficult part about using the 300/4 is of course the shutter speeds required to get a sharp shot, as well as the narrow field of vision.





Slightly after 9, I was seeing much reduced bird activities, so I decided to go check out the Peter Pan statue before heading home. Caught this shot from the North Bank of the Serpentine. The boat, incidently is called the Peter Pan 2.



I think this is a full sized cormorant... not certain. I think the Little Black Cormorants and Pied Cormorants in Cleland were cuter though ;-)



Lots of Coots around. Found the statue. And I'm not going to post a picture of a statue ;-)




Grey squirrels were all and about the park. Did not think there were as many as the huge clusters from Greenwich, but they weren't too rare. I observed them being quite receptive to the visitors feeding 'em.

Camley Street Natural Park

I was slated to visit the British Wildlife Centre today, however as luck would have it, I had my atm card sucked up by the machine as some idiot stuffed a slip of paper into the card slot :( Grr....

Only have a few pounds in the wallet, so I trudged home and searched online for any close by parks to visit. A hit turned up, Camley Street Natural Park. It is a relatively small place, you can probably complete a quick walk around in less than a quarter of an hour.



The amazing thing is its location. It's barely a 5 minute walk from King's Cross/St Pancras station. It's just between a waterway and the train lines. Just stepping in the gate, and you don't feel in the city anymore.



There were a few Mallards around, and as you can see, with chicks :) I also spotted a dusky moor hen, and several coots. The pond area was pretty alive with insects, I took many shots of Damselflies and Dragon flies with the 300/4 + TC14E combo. Sadly, as I was in a very low position, I had no support. So... all the shots are now in the trashbin. Damn it, I want my 300/4 with a stabilizer :( In any case, I still got a few reasonably usable shots (i.e. not going to go larger than 8x12), like this:



Most of the time there I spent with the insects though, mainly hoverflies and bees.






The bees and hoverflies were curiously mostly found on specific plants, very interesting.

I'd like to say more about the park, for example it has a area set aside for beetle larvae to grow. There was also an area set aside for people to look logs to see "minibeats", like millipedes and centipedes, etc.



However, I was kinda like distracted by the lack of wolves running around central London available for photographers, so I headed home ;-)

Battersea Park

Visited Battersea park on Sunday, it's very close to the city, just south of the river. No tube stations in the immediate vicinity, but there is a railway station just a 5 minute walk away. It connects directly from Victoria, but it's kinda pricey for a one stop ticket :(

Did not see many critters (a couple told me I had a rat or mouse scurrying at my feet when I was doing my flower macro :( ) - but there was a large assortment of water fowl in the area, and I think I saw a beautiful dusky moorhen that HAD to disappear after I pull out my 70-200 :P

I spent a good amount of time chasing bees today, unfortunately all the bumble bee shots I managed to take were totally useless due to incorrect exposure metering and plain simple missing focus. The end of the day was good though, as I caught a pigeon perched on flowering shrubs. Yay :) 70-200VR + TC14E rules as a walkaround wildlife lens :)

Bushy Park

Bushy Park is located a scant half hour from the Waterloo Train station. Target today, is of course the deer. So I walked. And walked. And walked. And got this:



Not too shabby for the 300mm/4 plus TC14EII. That's about the limits of the close focus on the 300/4, any closer and I'd need extension tubes, or better, the 200mm Micro Nikkor. The details are hurt more by the lack of stopping down as well as motion in the wind. Could probably do with a tripod but I'm not yet ready to carry a tripod around again.



The first set of deer I encountered was quite surprising... they were grazing a long a somewhat busy road where pedestrians were cycling to and fro, and toddlers being moved amoung them in buggies. So... evidently these were much more used to humans than the deer at Richmond Park. Glee!



Here's an "environmental" shot I've been trying to take, instead of just portraits. I think the residents love the deer, and many strollers would just stop to observe them. One thing I must say, is that a large number of people I encountered were very friendly, and several stopped to make conversation ("what a big lens you got!").



It's pretty easy to get a close up - I think it's currently off season and they seem very mellow. Don't quote me on this of course, I'm a wannabe-hobbyist wildlife photographer, not a naturalist.


I followed this herd of deer for a good part of an hour, munch munch munch was all they did :P



I can NOT resist portraits. The deer I met in Richmond were mostly without antlers, and those in Greenwich too far... this was my moment of non-stop portrait taking.







Got hungry and proceeded to find food. However, I stopped to make this photo:



This is my homage shot to Bjorn Rorslett. Lunch was a simple affair, a cheese burger from the vendor in the park. Oddly enough, that area was the children's play area, and I got lots of odd looks from parents. Never seen a wildlife photographer before people? :) I'm dressed in bloody, neon bright orange for goodness sake!



A few minutes walk from the vendor was this lake structure where the birds were whipping up a storm. There were also some baby birds floating around, got a few shots, too meh for me all went into the trashbin.



Also, since the birds were flying all over, I took a few minutes to practice some BIF photography. The shot above was taken with the 300/4 + TC14EII, it's reasonably sharp, and the D200 locks on pretty quickly in the overcast light. It also helps that the bird was landing.



Little peeps taking an afternoon siesta while the parent watches over.



OM NOM NOM NOM!



Well that's it. Have tons more but I'm not going to make anyone sit though twenty odd deer portraits :P Have a fawn day!

Wildwood Trust

Fawn (Hand raised for easier herd management)

Last weekend I headed down to Herne Bay, Kent, to vist the Wildwood Trust. The journey there was quite long via the trains - and hour and a half to get to the Herne Bay Railway station, then another half an hour on the bus. The buses are a little tricky, bus 4 goes to Wildwood, and 6 is the one for the return journey.

One of the first critters (didn't process the photo due to crappy composition - my fault) to be seen were the Ravens. They are actually quite BIG in real life, far bigger than I expected. I do NOT want to meet them in the dark. Next up were the deer, and there were little fawns being hand raised, in order to keep them less flighty, and easier to manage e.g. for administering medicine. To be honest, they are probably the first critter I've encountered to be seriously affected by my camera. Every shutter release made them shudder. Hmm. Anyways, they were moving way to rapidly for my skill, thankfully I managed to get that shot above that I though well, not too bad but could do with the defocused fawn out of the way :P


Artic Fox

When I arrived in the early morning, I was rather lucky to be presented with the artic fox just enjoying a sunbath just besides the viewing portal (which is made of course, of evil glass). The 300mm wide open was just enough to capture the little furball. At a first glance I thought I was looking at a cub, and it was only later on I realized that it was adult fox sized, and the rounded ears would probably be evolved to keep body heat, rather like the polar opposite of the Fennecs and their oversized ears for cooling down. Later during the day when I returned, it was quite difficult to get a good shot as its enclosure seemed to be actually quite big.



Wild Boars

Just opposite the artic fox was another huge area where 2 wild boars were languishing whilst a 3rd, younger boar was foraging for food. The 70-200VR was very useful here to crop the shot the way I wanted it. The fencing here was quite widely spaced, enough for a lens to get an unobstructed view, but not allowing anything larger to pass through.

Moving on along, was another enclosure closed up for a year to allow the land to renew itself, followed by a red deer enclosure. Didn't bother to take a shot as I need a minimum of a 600mm lens to get to them, plus they were in the shade.



There seemed to be two packs of wolves, but in either case they were nigh difficult to shoot. The fencing in this area was very thick, and the camera constantly kept focusing on the fence (!!!) instead of the wolves. Grrr. In addition the entire park lives up to its name of Wildwood - trees abound everywhere, not just the wolf enclosure. This makes it somewhat difficult to get a shot, especially with the wolves in the shade. The fencing also causes a large decrease in the sharpness of the lens, a tad annoying but hey it's a conservation trust not a photography studio.



Red Fox

I seemed to be having lots of luck that day with the foxes. I was part of a sequence of shots where the fox was lazily yawning for the camera, when suddenly this huge gust of wind came by. I have no idea why, but at 630mm eq fov @ 1/80 of a second, I managed to get the shot =) It is sufficiently sharp, considering me being buffeted by the wind and the long focal length. Another one for a large print :)

Portraiture

Ms Emma Tooth - Fine Artist



Ms Olivia

Several weeks ago I visited the Kensal Green Cemetery on its open day. It was a great day out, and I happened to meet these two fair ladies that were willing to pose for the camera :) I'd used the 55mm 2.8 AIS Micro nikkor - basically my only choice as my 70-200 was in the shop. And that, it did not disappoint. Now usually when I'm out shooting wildlife, I'm always fighting shutter speed - I need speed to stop motion. That kinda carried on here, and as I was very nervous, I just adjusted my aperture to a somewhat low setting of F4 - hoping that that would sharpen the lens a tiny bit - and max out my shutter speed for whatever exposure that was. In retrospect, it would have been better to just stop down to F8, as I probably have the shutter speed to get more of the subject in focus - critical focus was of course on the eyes. At F4 though, most of the image was defocused. It's unlikely that you will see this in a web sized image, only the full res image will highlight this fact. I'll just have to do a test print to see if this works :)

The lighting that day was pretty diffuse, but as always my SB600 is always engaged. I'd set it off-shoe to camera left on both photos, and it provided the critical highlights to the eyes, as well as to give the colours some pop. Flash rules!

New Toy!

The last week or so has been spent setting up my new toy: a replacement laptop for my macbook pro, a Dell M6400. The system came with only a 80GB hdd, so first thing I did was to swap it out and put in two 320gb hard drives. The boot drive I used a 320gb WD Scorpio Black, their top of the line 7.2k drive. The data drive was just a 5.4k rpm I picked up at a tech bazaar. My OS of choice is obviously Ubuntu, however being this is a pretty well specc'ed laptop, I thought that I'd install Vista 64 to get some gaming in (Trackmania Nations Forever ROCKS!).

Partitioning the boot drive was pretty straight forward:
- First partition would be /
- Second partition would be /home
- Third partition is the swap drive
- Fourth and final partition is for Vista

I'd given Vista a fair bit of space, in retrospect I should have provided it even less since I only boot into it to play *1* game. Everything went very smoothly, and surprisingly, even all the extra feature buttons of the M6400 worked out of the box in 9.04 - the only thing that I had to fudge with was the Nvidia drivers. Oddly enough the quadro drivers did not show up on the restricted drivers manager, so anyways, a quick install of Envy NG sorted that out.

Next of course was color management. Now Vista 64 out of the box had me very worried - photos and dvds were overexposed by one stop or more (!!!!) and it turns out that the nvidia vista control panel was set for very aggressive brightness, contrast and gamma. In any case, calibrating with an Eye one Display 2 quickly gave me back expected colors and saturation. I would like to mention that I actually got the 1440x900 screen. My MBP has a higher resolution of 1680x1050, however at many times I had to move very close to the screen to read smaller text. A lower resolution screen helps by providing larger text for an easier read, so I hope this isn't an error in my part down the road. It is also a "normal" CCFL display, not the newfangled RGB led stuff that's all over the market now. My take on this is that while I would love the extra color gamut, I only do photo processing for several hours a week, if at all. I'm not going to suffer through an over saturated desktop the rest of the time.

On Ubuntu, things went well using Argyll CMS, props to Mr Gill for releasing this for us on linux. Now Argyll at the high quality settings takes much longer than Eye One Match, however I think it performs better as on the lagom lcd test site,, on the contrast page I was able to make out all the individual colors. It performs well on the black point page (I can see all the black squares), and the white saturation page only 253 and 254 were not distinguisable.

The gamut of this crappy ccfl is probably very small, I'll see down the road if I want to plug in a rgb-led. (The M6400 is highly upgradable... cpu, four ddr3 ram slots, lcd etc. All you need to do is find the spare parts off ebay)

That said, I still think the old screen on my mbp has the edge, at least in viewing angles. Both are matte, but the MBP offers much better side to side viewing tolerance. Oh well. There has to be a reason macs are just so expensive eh?

So far, the last week I have been enjoying the improved productivity in linux, the main thing I miss from OSX would be the background wallpaper (!!) - I think that in OSX it's color managed. In 9.04 it doesn't seem to be. The wallpaper-tray widget provides the same wallpaper switching ala OSX, so I'm sorted there.

One awesome thing about this baby is that Houdini runs together with Compiz, so I can get snazzy desktop effects and run H at the same time. Woo!