36 News 8

We had a good autumn here in North Kent. The colours were vibrant and remained so for quite some time. A trip had been planned to the Brecons in South Wales for the 2nd week in November and it was just a matter of keeping a close eye on the weather to see if it would be worthwhile. Weather permitting I intended to coincide this with a visit to a feeding station to photograph red kites. Arguably the best place in Britain to get shots you need a good day with blue sky since photography is done as they soar above. Good weather was forecast so after 7 hours of driving, negotiating through one traffic jam after another, I eventually arrived with minutes to spare! I wasn't to be disappointed. It was an quite amazing spectacle and one which I hope to experience again in the not too distant future. A thoroughly enjoyable and productive following 4 days was then spent shooting the beautiful landscape of the Brecon Beacons, an area I have come to know well over the years.

Over the next few months I was hoping to photograph short-eared owls hunting on the marsh but only a single bird has been seen on and off. The mild weather and poor vole year has contributed to this so I have been taking regular visits to other areas on the North Kent Marshes where other birds have duly arrived in larger numbers. As a whole though numbers of wildfowl in particular have been way down compared to previous years.

This standing stone lies at the top of a valley in the Brecons and I'd photographed it before using natural light. However, I was never totally satisfied with the result, wanting something more ethereal and so returned at night. I had to use a lengthy exposure in order to give me enough time to walk round to the left and fire off 2 bursts so as to evenly illuminate the stone. Digital is so sensitive that with a 16 second exposure it picked up street lighting in Brecon some 6 miles away. This I feel adds to it further.

I'd spotted this barn owl hunting over rough grassland from a few miles away so one evening took a drive and parked up close by approximately 2 hours before sunset. It showed itself an hour and a half later and allowed me just a few seconds to secure the image below. I never crop my digital images in a big way since I feel this fools the viewer into thinking you achieved ultimate perfection in-camera. The most I will crop to is 20%. I have visited the same spot both morning and evening since and although it shows it never comes as close as it did on the first occasion. A beautiful bird and my first half decent image of this species. I used a Nikon D2x with 300mm f2.8 AFS VR with 1.7 tele-converter. ISO 800. 1/500th sec. F4.8.