Blair Drummond on a sunny day

Went to the Blair Drummond safari park in Fife, Scotland on a sunny day in June of this year . Used the Canon 7D and 1D MK III from within the car and through the windows. Lenses were the Canon 300mm F2.8 L IS and a Canon 70-200mm F2.8 L IS II. A Canon x2 extender II were used as well.

Overall a learning process, I feel these photos are a good example of my first attempt and on the next visit I’ll be better prepared.

Few things I picked up on:

• Try to take your photos as best you can while excluding any vehicles and fences.
• Prepare your equipment on the passenger seat and change equipment over as need be.
• Don’t worry about cars behind you they can over take if the road is wide enough.
• Sometimes you will get a better clarity on your photo if you have a open window, it’s not always possible though for example being in the lion’s enclosure (wash the windows before going to the Safari park helps as well).
• Having a extender helps a lot if the animal is a far distance away or for close ups but if the animal doesn’t want to move then there’s nothing you can do. The tigers didn’t move in the time I stood ready with the camera so that’ll have to wait for my next visit.
• Take your time, don’t be rushed or you’ll miss a perfect photo opportunity.
• Check your settings over before you start taking photos. I reset my camera back to default and didn’t realise I was shooting in jpg on the 1D till I edited the photos.

Here’s some of the photos I took on the day.

Photographs by Jacques …

Life in miniature format = Macro play

In the beginning of Spring in 2011 I was bored one afternoon and was looking for something to do. I ended up on the round-about close to my house in the flower bed. I cut open a flower’s one side and found a miniature world rich with life inside.

Photos were taken with a Canon 450D and stock 18-55mm lens.
F13, ISO1600
F8, ISO1600 F5.6, ISO800 F13, ISO1600You can see the size of the flower here as I held it in hand and before cutting the side open to get closer to the little creatures. There is a world out there and we miss so much of it, I really need to do more things like this.
As I was walking to the round-about I took these few photos.

Photographs by Jacques …

Forth bridges at night – Night photography II

Night photosession at the Forth road and train bridges.

We haven’t been out for a while for a night photo session. After days of snow, rain and cloudy weather it was time to get out and get some photos done.

I used my Canon 1D Mark III with my new Canon 24-105 mm F4 L IS lens for this session. I think need to invest in a wide angle lens for photos like these in the future. At 24mm I didn’t get the whole of either bridges in the photos. Time to do some homework to see the best wide angle lens to use. I started at F22 to see how hard I can push it last night and settled on F10 with either 30 seconds, 15 seconds or 10 second exposure.

The wind plays such a big role in night photography. The photos looks great on the camera but once you get it on a large computer screen you can see what the wind has done to your ‘near perfect’ focus. Editing the photos afterwards gives you another level to change things if you aren’t 100% happy with the results.

It was great fun and I think I prefer night photography over day time. So much to do at night to force you to try new things to get the best out of the light and subjects. The best part of all is you can take almost anything that would be boring in daytime and transform it at night, having a famous and brilliant subjects like these on my doorstep is a extra bonus.

Forth bridges:

Probably the photo of the evening for me.

A few photos at different angles and spots of the train bridge.

A train decided to add some extra effects to the long exposure. Other than that it’s the same image as the 1st one.

I tried to cut the spotlights out to get a better image of the bridge, didn’t work to the extent I hoped but not that bad either.

One of the best scenes of the evening for me.

The road bridge at low tide.

From below the road bridge.

I hope you like these photos, I really enjoyed taking them.

Photographs by Jacques…