I've been very remiss with blogging the last few weeks so here's a quick catch up. Since the snow the weather has been pretty overcast most of the time so it's not been the best for taking photos. On the brighter side though I have bought a new lens for my camera which is a big(gish) telephoto zoom to replace the old one that I bought on Ebay for £50. It's a Sigma 120-400mm which on my camera gives it a long range of around 13 X normal (640mm).
I was having a few days holiday so in the afternoon I bought it I went to find somewhere to try it out. I went to one of the local reservoirs first but it was really cold and windy so I drove around looking for somewhere else to go. Ended up driving for a while but ended up at Worsborough Country Park near Barnsley. To call it a country park was a bit grand but for Barnsley I guess it was close enough. Took a few pictures of seagulls on the reservoir and on the way back to my car a couple of photos of a squirrel up in a tree.
The following day I decided to look on the internet to find a better place for taking photos and found a Yorkshire Wildlife Trust place called Potteric Carr which looked promising. Again it was a bit dull but the sun came out for a bit every now and then. When I first arrived I was a bit self conscious about having this big lens on my camera but by the time I left after seeing what the other photographers were toting around I was feeling totally inadequate. There was't a great number of birds there and they all seemed very far away so I didn't get many decent shots. The saving grace was this young swan that was in a small pool next to one of the hides.
The next day I had some jobs to do but the following day I had planned to go back to the waterfalls near Holme village that I visitted last year near the end of a long walk from Crowden. I thought that with the last of the snow melting there would b plenty of water coming down the waterfall and I was right. It was a dull day again but it didn't matter because there waterfalls are generally in the shade anyway. There was still a patch of snow near the waterfall that hadn't yet melted even though it was nearly two weeks since the snow fell. I didn't use my new lens for the waterfall shots but on the way there I used it to catch a few fairly poor shots of the grouse in the distance.
A couple of days later the sun did come out for a while but it was still quite cool so I headed to a reservoir that I've not visitted before near Bradfield. Dale Dyke has a path around it which was quite muddy and at the top end there is a path through the woods up to Strines reservoir. There is no path around Strines but it was very cold and windy when I reached it so I wasn't too bothered. After walking around the reservoir I headed up a path that went up one of the adjacent hills so I could take some shots looking down at the reservoir.
So that brings me up to date as I haven't taken anything useful since. Not really had a good opportunity to exploit my new lens but I'm considering visitting a couple of RSPB places at Fairburn Ings and Dearne Valley so hopefully they'll better suited.
This is a blog where I show images of things I see as I wander about, mainly in the Holme Valley at the edge of the Pennines in West Yorkshire. I'm fairly new to photography even though I'm not that young and I'm very enthusiastic about improving my skills. I like to process my photos to make them look as good as I am able. I love to share my images and some day I would like to start selling them as prints and framed and share with more people.
Wednesday 4 March 2009
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1 comment:
The swan is GORGEOUS!
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