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I recenlty got back from an extended period on leave in Europe and thought I had better get up to date with some post-prod work. Here are a few shots of a wild male kestrel which were taken from Danny Green’s hide in Worcestershire.

I very rarely these days take advantage of someone else’s hard work to ‘get the shot’, as I prefer to hone my skills in the field on my own, but in this instance it was worth it, as this timid raptor is really hard to get close to and shots like this (of a wild bird with vole prey) are hard to get.

Despite Danny and his colleagues hard work, though, good shots of this species are not guaranteed and it was an 8 hour wait for less than three minutes of action. The voles prey gave a touch of added authenticity I felt I had been patiently collecting cat kills over the previous few months, and put them to good use here! 

I have spent quite a bit of time whilst recovering from my shoulder surgery getting the kit together to start a project using a macro field studio and I intend developing this work during this coming spring and summer.  I have had a couple of sessions with amphibians over the past few weeks, and this morning spent several hours photographing some stunning male palmate newts in full breeding colour, with their extraordinary webbed hind feet on show.

My inspiration for taking this technique on board is Niall Benvie (from the ‘meet the neighbours’ project) and I would urge you to check out some of his work.  The technique itself is fairly simple, but getting the kit together can take time and it can be involved. There are clearly numerous ‘tips of the trade’ to learn, which are going to take time to learn, but great fun though and the results speak for themselves.  

I have spent the last couple of days catching up with some long overdue filing, writing and post production. I came across this little image which reminded me of a grand camper van trip we made a few years back to the Norfolk coast.  

The campsite overlooked this stunning view across a wonderful salt marsh.  The atmosphere was complemented by a barn owl hunting up and down the footpath behind me as I was taking shooting this sunset, but unfortunately I only had the 24-105 at the time…  

Spent a wonderful week in Preston Montford, Shropshire in the company of John Bebbington and a great bunch of fellow macro photographers, photographing inspects.  Weather was – unusually – perfect in that winds were light and the sky hazy.  The weather changed only at the end of the last day, when the wind picked up.  

We found some really spectacular insects, such as the green and dark forms of this eyed-hawk moth caterpillar below, and also met some very nice people.  All in all good week.