Winter shooting

Farm building

The snowy weather in Scotland at Christmas provided some great photo opportunities - I’m sure Flickr is bursting with newly-uploaded images of us Brits dealing with “The Big Freeze”.

The bird table in my parents’ garden was abuzz with starving robins, chaffinches, blue tits, great tits, sparrows and even two pheasants (one of which was black and looked more like a grouse) who made their way to the garden twice a day to eat the corn and bread crusts tossed in their direction.

Robin

Naturally, the little fellas were nervous around people but I could get close enough to get a decently filled frame with the 70-200 f2.8 screwed out all the way (about 3 metres from the table) if I stood absolutely still and stopped breathing. This is a big lens to hold still for more than a minute or two on the 5D MkII and my arms were shaking big time. I need to get on the weights.

Blackbird

I moved round to get a few different angles, including this one (above) which I quite liked of a blackbird silhouetted against the farm buildings in the background.

It was when I was crouched down taking this shot that I heard a frantic warble close behind me. I twisted round to see this feisty robin on the gate and fired off a few shots before it flew onto the opposite gate which, with the lamp in the background, provided a nice background. So determined was I to get a shot before it flew off that I couldn’t afford to reposition my feet, so I ended up taking this (below) in an almost impossibly contorted position, my feet and legs positioned one way with my upper body twisted around past the 180 degree mark, the weighty brute of a lens/body combo shaking in my hands. I just hoped I had a high enough shutter speed to deal with the violent tremble of my straining arms.

Robin

The RAW came out a bit underexposed but it came up beautifully in Lightroom. The image looks like it’s had a lot of post but just a bit of dodging of the bird itself was enough. Happy New Year.