Happy New Year

 

I’d love to say that this year I will become a dedicated and dutiful blogger – but let’s be honest – that’s unlikely to happen anytime soon.

Anyway onwards and upwards, as they say…

Last year we added some 50,000 images to our database – which now stands at around 550,000 shots in total. Keeping such a large collection is getting expensive on hard drives as our collection now requires terabytes of space :-)

2016 was a monumental year in one respect – my much loved, abused and over-used  Nikon D300s finally bit the dust with well over 300,000 actuations. Can’t complain at such longevity, but it doesn’t stop you from trying LOL. The camera failed seconds after the shot below was captured.

Anyway we replaced it with A new Nikon D7200. A fine camera for the money -  not that it’s in any way cheap – and we’re happy with it. Wonder how long this one will last.

We continued to do new things with our photography in 2016, and will doubtless continue to do so in 2017 and beyond.

We’ve always been into photographing aircraft and motor vehicles and so on. The Coventry Motofest is one of our annual events now and we’ll probably continue to photograph it into the foreseeable future.

One of our new(ish) fascinations is with dragster racing at Santa Pod. A festival of gut wrenching noise, vibration and raw horsepower. Quite a spectacle to behold. Anyway we visit a couple of times a year.

I love it, Seri is not as keen -  but she’s a trooper and goes along for the ride :-)

Of course none of this takes away from our primary interest which is, was and remains wildlife and nature photography. Actually the photography is less important to us than the wildlife itself.

And so we continue to visit the seabirds colonies at Bempton, Deer at Bradgate Park, Seals at Donna Nook and lot of other species in lots of places.

People who know us, and there are a lot of them in the wildlife and photography communities, may be surprised to know that we let our Warwickshire Wildlife Trust membership lapse some 6 months ago.  Brandon Marsh – our favoured visiting spot for the past 10 years is just not what it was and we’re taking a break. So 6 months without a visit and not missing it a bit. We’ll most likely join again in the near future – but I wouldn’t hold my breath waiting…..

And so to our latest photographic variation: We’ve always captured lots of video, which we seldom show anywhere. This may change now as we’ve bought the mighty beast pictured below. A professional level camcorder – albeit an ageing one – we are delighted with the purchase of our Canon XF305 HD camera.

Only used it in test situations thus far and only captured minutes of footage, but it is looking good so far. There ‘s a steep learning curve, but nothing insurmountable.

Click the image to see our first test footage – all cockups are mine not fault of the camera…..

Annual Report

And so we get to the end of 2010, the end of the year and the end of the first decade of the 21st Century. In personal terms this year has been nothing short of a bloody nightmare – family matters – we miss you so much Trish - , but in terms of our photography and wildlife watching – which is, after all the reason d’ etre for this blog, we have had the proverbial ball. 

So, just for the moment, let’s forget the personal and concentrate on the lovely animals and the photo adventures Seri and I have enjoyed this year…….

2010 has been our most “productive” year ever in terms of photos added to our database and collection. As of today – 31st December 2010 – we have added a pretty astonishing 90,859 images to our database – we have never approached this number of shots in any previous year. I should point out this is not the overall number of shots, but rather the number that have survived the cut. We probably shot 40-50% more than this…….

So – a few, ok, a lot of,  boring statistics –

Month	Number of shots
January	4993
February	5185
March	6415
April	8537
May	11597
June	9087
July	7629
August	8842
September	7464
October	8316
November	8756
December	4038
Sum	90,859

Not all of the above were wildlife shots, of course, we tend to take one or more camera each with us wherever we go to. Also it is true to say that cameras with a high frame rate (8 frames per second for our D2h and 7 Frames per second for the D300s) tend, on the whole, to generate more output simply due to the fact that more shots are taken in shorter periods of time.

So more boring statistics – which I shall read in future years, which in itself makes this a worthwhile effort - So the cameras workload:

Camera	Number of shots
Nikon D2h	8344
Nikon D200	14339
Nikon D300s	54659
Nikon D50	11870
Lumix FZ28	650
Olympus U850sw	281
Pentax Optio S40	70
Fuji S5700	141
Konica-Minolta Z1	82

As you can see the Nikon D300s is our most worked camera, hope it survives LOL

Lots of very old equipment as you can see – but hey it works and it costs a great deal less than buying new……

Our database lists 93 different locations for the shots we took this year – most of them are in the Coventry and Warwickshire area – where we live at present.  We did however manage to get out and about between periods of illness and so on. Brandon Marsh Nature reserve figured largely, no surprise to anyone who knows us, in our photo activities and we shot 56040 images on the site, spread over 158 visits - as you can imagine we didn’t miss a great deal :-)

We also managed to visit Bradgate Park in Leicestershire 9 times shooting 5774 images, Coombe Abbey Country Park in Coventry 8 times – 4266 shots, Donna Nook Seal Rookery in Lincolnshire twice shooting 2610 shots, Draycote Water 4 times – 1960 shots, Groby Pool 7 times (it’s close to Bradgate Park) – 1477 shots, Rutland Water twice – 1090 shots, Slimbridge Wetland Trust twice with 3560 shots, Warwickshire University Grounds – 4356 shots and Seri visited her parents in Malaysia returning with 484 shot in tow. We also made a trip to Wales, our old homestead for our “summer holidays” shooting Red Kites and a May Day trip to the Cotswolds – to the Bird of Prey Centre at Batsford Arboretum. Not a comprehensive list – but these are the main places we visited.

In terms of what we have taken photos of this year, well, anyone who knows us knows that we shoot anything that is in front of the cameras – so we have taken lots of scenic shots, especially at the beginning and end of the year when snow was on the ground. We try to place our images in context in our database, so if we go to Bradgate Park to shoot the deer, we will also shoot the scenery to place context into the overall trip’s portfolio. As I said, we shoot everything, plants, fungi animals, birds and so on…….

So this year we have taken 8637 invertebrate shots (insects, spiders, snails and the like), 6658 vertebrate shots (not including birds) ranging from dogs and cats through to rare Great Crested Newts and all manner of mammals, 59247 shots of birds ranging from very rare Bittern and Osprey through to the most common Pigeons, Starlings and so on. We have also photographed Deer 3217 times (Fallow, Red, Muntjac and a few shots of Reindeer). 1830 shots of Fungi, 3751 shots of people and  1669 of ourselves, 3951 shots of plants and flowers, 4896 shots of scenery and landscapes and so on and 1535 shots of Grey Seals.

In amongst the above are 103 shots of Osprey and their nest site and chicks, 314 shots of Bittern, over 800 shots of Kingfishers and 2371 shots of Robins – what can I say, we like Robins :-)

Highlights of the year, undoubtedly our two trips to Slimbridge Wildfowl and Wetland Trust, and the two trips to Donna Nook for the seal breeding, and also our trips to Wales and to the Batsford Arboretum.

The first  two locations could not be more different to one another – Slimbridge teems with captive and often highly endangered species of wildfowl from all over the world. All nice and tidy each species or breed has an enclosure suited to its needs, with manicured pathways and lots of staff to care for them. Donna Nook is a stretch of beach with a fence, some 2000 seals, at the peak, and several hundred interested and excitable people all trying to get a view, and more often than not a photograph of the new-born pups.

Both of these sites are gorgeous in their own way – it is not accidental that we visited each twice  - and are well worth the pain and effort required to get there and back, and indeed the week or so of bed rest required after such trips.

The trip to Wales is, for us a trip home. We saw hundreds of Red Kites in the air above our heads at Nant yr Arian – a site to remember forever. Batsford Bird of Prey Centre was similarly memorable – to see large raptors such as the Golden Eagle and European Eagle Owl swooping above one’s head has to be seen to be believed. Some great trips this year :-)

We have had a great year in terms of our photography……… hope it continues into next year and beyond :-)

You probably noticed there are no photos in this posting – the reason being – we have posted hundreds of shots throughout the year. View the other posts on this blog, or visit our Flickr sites or the Brandon Marsh Galleries to see what we have been up to.

For now we wish everyone we know a Happy New Year and I’m off to prepare our equipment for 2011. We shall be at Coombe Country Park tomorrow – 1/1/11 a visit we have made each New Years Day for the past 3 years.

So Happy New Year – and if we see you, we will probably take your photo :-)

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