Spring round-up

With some of the worst weather experienced in the UK for many a year, it seems an age since we had those still warm days of early spring. Here, in North Kent, it has been wet, wet, wet and windy! Not ideal conditions for plant and insect work, or for birds and mammals come to that. I have attempted to get out and shoot as and when I can as well as holding numerous workshops and sorting through 100′s of unedited images that have been lying idle on my hard drives. Here’s a round-up of my work over the last couple of months.

A sunrise workshop at Reculver was arranged at the last moment to coincide with low tide. Seven of us met in the car park at dawn and made our way down onto the beach where we photographed the sun rising against the sillhouted 13th century towers.

While shooting short-eared owls from a hide on the North Kent Marshes, this hare ran around a pond infront of me and came within 3m, sat and nibbled for a good few minutes. After which, it ran back around the pond again! It was as if it was checking me out and decided to snack when it got here!

The images above and below were taken on a breathless, chilly morning in April when marshland birds were noisily proclaiming territories and fighting off rivals, as was the case of the greylag geese, below.

Bluebells started to emerge in nearby woodlands and rather than wait until they were in full flower, I decided to capture an individual in bud. When they are that small and close to the ground, a nagging breeze becomes less of an issue.

A scene such as this of bluebells flowering in a beechwood lends itself perfectly to the panoramic format where a standard ratio would have included too much sky. A Nodal Ninja head was used and the five images stitched together using PtGui software.

It was a beautiful evening and with the weather as it was, there was no way I was going to leave until I had made the most out of the opportunity. An evening such as this may not be around for another year. I was right!

A wildflowers workshop was held in rather damp conditions but, as is so often the case with photographers, they used the conditions to their advantage, shooting raindrops on grass blades and cowslips.

We enjoyed a fabulous evening on my last Dungeness workshop, culminating in shooting silhouettes and me painting the boats with torchlight, well into the night.

My ongoing project (15 years thus far) to record the beauty of the North Kent Marshes, continues.

I spent a good few hours at a site not too far away shooting lady orchids. Aside from the usual portraits (which you simply cannot resist) I attempted to go for something a little different. Why pack up and go home, just because it gets dark?!

On Tuesday I’ll be joining fellow nature photographer, Marek Kosinski, in the Carpathian mountains of Southern Poland shooting all manner of subjects, the results of which I’ll be posting here.

Tags: bluebell, dungeness, flower, kent, orchid, photography, reculver, robert canis, spring, Workshops