Spring on the Moorland – ‘Through the year’ project

Creative, Nature, plants, Projects, Through the year project, wildlife, Yorkshire

I’ve been working on various projects over the last few months, including themed photographs, and more creative photography ideas.

This is part of a large ongoing project to photograph the habitats I regularly visit in Yorkshire, and a few surrounding counties, to show the flora and fauna found in these ecosystems throughout the year. These include farmland, meadows, riverbanks, moorland, woodland, and coastal cliffs.

These are a few of the photos I’ve taken from moorland days out:

I also love working with backlighting and have been experimenting with taking multiple exposure photos:

Lark ascending

I loved silhouetting this skylark against the sunlit sky as it rose up above me, but also tried combining several photos in a multiple exposure shot against the light, which shows the beautiful feathers, and the movement of the bird:

lark ascending sequence
cottongrass multiple exposure

This is a multiple exposure of the cottongrass, blowing in the wind, and again backlit by the low sun. Below is a backlit photo of a snipe, taken early morning on the North Yorkshire Moors.

Places I visit for photography

Nature, Places and travel, wildlife, Yorkshire

I’ve added some new pages to my website giving a bit of information about some of the places I visit for my photography. So far I’ve written about Fountains Abbey and Studley Royal, Bempton Cliffs, the Farne islands, Donna Nook, Forge Valley and the North Yorkshire Moors Railway, but I’ll be adding more about both local sites in Yorkshire, and some of the longer journeys we make to Northumberland or Scotland, and some of the sites we visit there.

Forge Valley

Forge Valley woods, North Yorkshire

Studley Royal, North Yorkshire

Farne islands, Northumberland

Bempton cliffs, East Yorkshire

Donna Nook, Lincolnshire

North Yorkshire Moors Railway

Some winter visitors to the garden

Nature, wildlife

We’ve had plenty of birds on the feeders and plants in our garden with the recent snow. The goldfinches are always very photogenic, but particularly so when perched on the snow covered teasels in our garden. We also had four fieldfares visiting for the rosehips we left on our roses, and it was lovely to see these beautiful winter visitors.

 

A more creative approach to nature photography

Creative, Nature

I love watching wildlife and capturing an animal or bird’s behaviour or character in my wildlife portraits, but some of my more recent projects have been aimed at capturing more of the spirit and beauty of nature in more creative ways. This is very much a work in progress, and rather than one particular style or technique, I’ve tried a variety of styles and  techniques, as I think what is needed to bring out its essence and character is, to some extent, dependent upon the animal, bird or environment concerned.

For example, when photographing terns in the Farne islands, I wanted to convey something of the balletic elegance of their flight, and so aimed for a high key approach with the sun shining through the feathers to give a more ethereal quality, combined with a slower shutter speed to allow some movement blur.

When watching bullfinches feeding in a snowstorm in Scotland, the white background and bright colour palette of the bullfinch plumage reminded me of Chinese bird and flower brush paintings, and this concept certainly influenced how I approached the subject. With the snow helping to create a minimalistic background, I exposed the image to brighten this further, used a slower shutter speed to capture some movement blur, like rough brush strokes, in the bullfinch’s fluttering wing, and aimed to keep the image simple and painterly in my processing.

Sometimes the animal’s habitat is what makes the scene interesting, in which case I aim to use composition and processing to bring out interesting patterns or textures. An example is the long-eared owl in woodland, where I wanted to emphasise the patterns formed by the branches, against a subdued colour palette caused by an earlier snowfall, with the owl being merely a part of the beautiful woodland scene.

Equally I loved the amazing curves and shapes of the eroded cliffs on Noss, Shetland, where the texture and pattern of the cliffs make the picture, as much as the gannet perched on his ledge (see also at the top).

Sometimes the story is about the relationship of the animal to its environment. I photographed this stag roaring on a mountainside in Ardnamurchan. The roaring of stags carried for miles, and was the only sound other than the wind in the remote glen where we stood looking up at the mountainside to spot the source of the noise. When photographing him I wanted to show something of the size and space of his remote habitat, so I waited until he moved towards another stag and stepped out onto the crest of the ridge, so that I could silhouette him as a very small, but still recognisable shape against the colourful sky.

I have also worked on a series of photos of water birds where the colours reflected in the water are a key element of the picture. These great-crested grebes are probably my favourites of these images. I love the colours and patterns of the reflections and ripples on the water.

Most recently I managed to take a series of photos of swans in a style I had wanted to achieve for some time. I sometimes like to use a dramatic lighting style (chiaroscuro style lighting) in my monochrome photos, and had pre-visualised photographing swans in a very high contrast style, with the light shining through, and on, the swan’s white feathers, creating an ethereal effect, as with the tern.

Hopefully these photos capture more than just a record shot of wildlife, though they don’t always seem to go down well with judges, but, as we’re always being told, we should take the photos we want to take, and these are definitely the photos that I enjoy making the most, so it’s an area I want to keep developing and progressing – watch this space!

A visit to Studley Royal

wildlife

We visited Studley Royal, near Ripon, on Monday, and I got some photos that I’ve been pre-visualising for some time. I really wanted to get some close-up photos of the swans, picking out details of the their plumage against a dark background. Fortunately I got the light I wanted and some cooperative subjects and I was pleased with the results.

Swan1Swan3Swan2Helen_Jones661120171009-02

Farnes

wildlife

Some photos from a day trip to the Farne islands. I created some composite images of the terns flying – they are so graceful and almost balletic in their flight. I also loved the puffin who decided to look at me with his head upside down – not the best of photos, but it did make me laugh!

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The Howardian Hills AONB photo competition and the Yorkshire Arboretum

Nature, plants, wildlife, Yorkshire

I was delighted to win the ‘Best image taken at the Yorkshire Arboretum’ in the Howardian Hills Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty Photo competition with the above image of a backlit Acer, taken at the Yorkshire Arboretum last October. I received a year’s membership of the arboretum, which is a wonderful prize. The Arboretum is an area of parkland, lakes and ponds covering 120 acres, situated next to Castle Howard. There are so many photo opportunities around the calendar with spring and summer wildflower meadows, spring blossom, rhododendrons and azaleas, and trees from around the world, possibly at their most beautiful in Autumn. There’s also a fair amount of wildlife to be found in the arboretum, so I’ve been very much enjoying my membership, and some of my many recent photos are displayed below.

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