After almost a year, I’ve gotten the photography bug back on my trip to Scotland. Yesterday we visited the Galloway Kite Trail, where daily feedings take place for the population of red kites in the area. Kites were native to the Galloway area, but had virtually died out until 2001 when kites were gradually reintroduced into the area.

Yesterday the feeding station wasn’t particularly busy; we waited about two hours for the kites to turn up, and when they did we got about 25-30 kites. According to the RSPB representative, it’s not uncommon to see 50 or more at a time, but recently the kites have been feeding off of food dug up by tractors ploughing the fields.

In any case, I got some good bird-in-flight pictures, and a lot of practice! This was taken with my go-to nature combination: the 7D equipped with the 100-400. Lighting was initially a real pain with the sun overhead, but as the day progressed I was able to find locations to get some pretty good shots. It took me a little while to get into it, but the 7D has an excellent focusing system and I was able to track using the centre AF point after a little while.

All-in-all, it’s been nice to get back into photography a bit, and hopefully you’ll see me around a bit more from now on.

Along the same lines as the last couple of posts, this again is taken in Plymouth. This time we decided to re-visit the Eden Project, which I actually have taken photos of previously. It’s been a long time since we were there last, so it was great to see the progress they’ve made over the last few years (although the assocated price rises weren’t so great!).

Over the next few days I decided to try and put up some of the photos I took whilst there. This first one was taken in the temperate biome, and pictures a few of (what I believe to be) blue and yellow daisies. Of course, I’m no horticulturist so take that with a pinch of salt!

On the same visit as the last photo, we also visited a fair where we were supposed to see some balloons taking off. Unfortunately for us, just as we got there, the wind picked up and we were forced to instead see what you see in the photo above.

Unsurprisingly, exposing this shot correctly proved quite tricky since the brightness of the flame far outweighs that of the background. Here, I took the approach of setting a low ISO; my thoughts were that even if the background were dark, it could probably be compensated by post-processing. Luckily, I was right! The processing here was to boost overall brightness and saturation of blues.

This photo of Plymouth Sound was taken from atop the coastal cliff walking from Jennycliff to Bovisand whilst visiting Sarah’s folks. Saw the naval frigate and had to get a shot!

In my last post I mentioned I was trying to do a 52: one photo a week for the rest of the year, mostly to motivate me to take photos. I also said that I would post one photo per day all of this week – that didn’t work out too well in terms of time this week, so I decided to put it back a week and start from this moment onwards!

And it’s a bit of a cracker to get started. I’m a regular visitor to Brandon Marsh nature reserve which is run by the Warwickshire Wildlife Trust. The site has a series of bird hides and many thousands of varieties of birds, so being just down the road from me it provides a really great place to get some nature and birding photos.

One hide in particular, called the Carlton hide (after the television production company), is quite secluded and apparently a good place for spotting the elusive and very shy Kingfisher. A couple of days ago, we went there for probably the tenth or fifteenth time and, as we opened the hatch of the hide, we found a Kingfisher! Not believing my luck, the little guy diligently went and grabbed a fish, patiently waited for me to rattle off a few photos, ate his snack, pottered around for another 10 minutes or so and then left.

It was pretty exciting really; I have the usual duck/swan/goose shots, but recently I’ve managed to get some great photos of some more exotic birds which hopefully I’ll get a chance to post this week. But hopefully the entire week won’t consist only of birding shots!

After a very long time I’ve taken a little while to upgrade the photoblog’s WordPress version to 3.0. Development on Reflection 2.0 is pretty slow but it’s coming along.

This week will start a new period of activity for the photoblog. My grand master plan of doom is to start posting one image a week – the so-called 52. And as an added bonus, I will be posting one photo per day starting on Monday. I really hope this will get me out with the camera and motivated to finish Reflection.

Anyway, to kick off, here’s another shot from the UNC campus. We spent quite a while out in the gardens there, and there’s a plethora of wildlife around – an awful lot of birds for the most part. I am reliably informed that this is an American Robin; quite substantially larger than the robins we get in the UK. Enjoy!

Another one from UNC’s arboretum. Of course, I didn’t go at night and shine a flashlight! But I tried to make the most of the light, and spotted a relatively shady section with these night purple flowers lit up (anyone have an ID?)

This is another huge advantage of my 35mm f/1.4L. It’s just a great lens for this kind of isolated bokeh effect.

UNC has a small botanical garden called the Coker Arboretum. We spent out first day there, just generally having a look around at the variety of flora they have there.

I’ve got quite a few more shots of flowers, but here’s one of some of the local wildlife. I’m not a huge bird photographer – don’t have the patience for it – but these guys were very tame and would quite happily come to within about 15 feet – easy prey for the 100-400.

I think these are seaside sparrows, given away by the distinctive yellow above the eyes. Anyone want to correct me?

So, I’m on holiday! Right now, I’m visiting a friend at the University of North Carolina, and we spent the last couple days running around campus being all touristy.

The campus is really very nice. I hadn’t appreciated that the university is quite old, and as a result the architecture is all-brick and looks very appealing to the eye. This is the Manning building – I have no idea what’s inside!

This is also the first shot taken with my new camera – a Canon 7D. There was a little saga getting one which actually worked, but that’s a story for another time, and probably one for my regular blog. Suffice to say I’m really impressed with the quality and low ISO performance. This particular shot was taken with my 10-22 and a CPL.

Anyway, this will be the start of a new little arc of photos from my time at UNC, so stay tuned!

Here’s a quick look at my average day – staring at a screen full of code!

If I remember right, this is some JavaScript code utilising mootools to do some funky effects. If you want, you can see it in action.

In a related note, I’m seriously considering starting a 365 or maybe a 52 (that is, one photo per day or week). I think it might be nice. We’ll have to see if I can keep it up!