Take more pictures
I’ve been experimenting recently in Lightroom with some pre-sets from a company called Sleek Lens. I’ve had them for some time and used them fairly frequently but with these images I pushed them further than before – quite a bit further.
How much is too much?
Strangford Lough from Castle Espie WWT Reserve. Scrabo Tower and Island Hill through the rain in the distance with a faint rainbow.
There’s something about a big photograph. It draws the eye, it has presence, it can fascinate, it can impress.
I’ve rediscovered panoramas.
These images are from Castle Espie, Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust centre in County Down and were taken over the last week or so.
I’m enjoying doing something different. Most of the images I produce are destined for stock while panoramic photographs are meant to be printed big and hung on walls.
I’m also getting to use my Canon 5D2 rather than the little Panasonics. The Panasonics are great when you have to carry a camera for hours shooting general stock. The Canon is more suited to this work and it’s like working with an old friend again.
The Antrim Coast is next on the list.
I haven’t been to Castle Espie WWT Centre as often as usual this year. Last week I went motivated by the realisation that my yearly membership is due in January.
Castle Espie is on the shores of Strangford Lough, the largest sea lough in the British Isles. They have designated it a Marine Conservation Zone and a Special Area of Conservation under the EU Habitats Directive. It’s so big it can accommodate nearly the entire population of Light Bellied Brent Geese when they winter there.
The geese leave Canada in late summer. They travel across Greenland, stop briefly in Iceland to refuel and then on to Ireland. They arrive from late August onwards exhausted, hungry and ready for the nutritious eelgrass that grows in abundance on the lough. About twenty-five thousand of them spend winter there and this means, although Castle Espie is always worth a visit, it is especially so in Autumn when the geese arrive.
Last week when I went it was raining, and it was windy. No worries – I imagined dramatic images with sheets of rain gusting over the lough. I should know better. When I got there Scrabo Tower, which sits opposite, above the lough, was barely visible. There was plenty of rain but it was constant drizzle, not the windblown sheets I had hoped for. I waited and wished I’d brought a flask of coffee.
Eventually, it cleared, Scrabo Tower emerged and some Brent Geese even appeared. I got photographs, not the photographs I had imagined, but that’s rarely the case anyway.
