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May 2011 – France, Chamonix
I was amazed to see that many crow so high up, 3842m high!, they were not really scared of humans as they were after any crumbles we may have. I knew that bird was about to fly, but I almost miss it as it was so cold my hands were freezing!
August 2011 – UK, Stonehenge
It was a rainy day at Stonehenge and those birds seemed completly soaked!
August 2011 – UK, Stone Henge
This was a lucky shot!
I was closing in that crow and as I thought the bird was about to take off I took a few shots but he actually took a few more seconds to fly away… which worked quite well as I have a fairly slow burst on my camera!
May 2011 – UK, Rye
This is part of the old gate that remains in Rye, the stones are full of colour, although I did enhance in post processing. I liked the different contrasts, with the dark window, the white dove/pigeon and the colored stones
April 2011 – UK, London
As I came out of the tube the first thing I noticed were those birds which seemed to be right at home on those letters. It was in fact a difficult shot to make it look interesting… because it is a bridge and there are lot of lines made by its pillars, its roof, the shops around, etc… It is difficult to explain, but none of those lines worked for me… so in the end I decided to crop it without respecting the master photo ratio, I slightly straigthen the photo as well and saturated the colours. And although I have retouched that photo quite a bit, this is what I saw I wanted to capture! :)
February 2011
When I saw that lonely bird I took a few shots, firts from quite far and then up to this point. I was just worried that bird was going to fly away, but it did not seem to care much about me!
The only trick was to get that moment when all the other birds who wanted to go onto that branch were away from the shot. That bird wanted the place for itself.
One may think the title of that photo is all quite mental, but then it would be a very back play on words that even Patrick Jane would not approve of ;)
November 2010 – San Francisco, USA
I am not sure what bird this is, but it was hidding in this tree and as he came out a ray of light was just lighting his feet and part of his body. I liked that sharp contrast and I don’t mind his face is still quite dark, I feel you can just see enough to give it a bit of mistery ;)
I also liked the fact the branch of the tree is pointing in the same direction as the bird gaze.
November 2010, Seychelles
A few birds were following the boat I was on and kept flying very low at very high speed. I first thought they were trying to catch fish but then they never did! and it looked more and more as if they were instead playing as they also liked to dive down and “float” very close to the water just in front of the ship. Maybe in the hope of catching a flying fish… the sunset was already gone and it gave the calm water some very interesting reflections, making it look like a painting. The difficulty in this photo was to get the balance right with allowing enough light and at the same time allowing for that bird not to be blurry, as it was going very fast. So what I did was to use my 300mm lens and follow the movement of the bird. It took me many attempts, especially since the boat was going quite fast as well, but I finally got what I was after!
November 2010, Seychelles
It was very low tide and I was walking quite far out in the sea with water at my ankles. When I noticed the bird I rushed to change my lens to the big 300mm one… while walking in the sea, which made me somewhat nervous! I was concerned the bird was going to fly away… I was walking very slowly towards him, thinking it would by my last shot at each step I was taking… Well… why rushing?! I managed to get so close I had to stop otherwise I would have to change my lens back again. The bird did not care about me at all! it was even slightly annoying because I wanted to take it flying off… I waited a bit… made some noise… but no, that bird was happy walking around!
November 2010, Seychelles
Those fruit bat were flying around as soon as the sunset started, they looked like they were flying from island to island too. the problem with this time of the day is the very low light and a lot of my shot were either too dark or the bats were blurry because they were moving too fast. After about 30 minutes of shooting, and failing to get a decent shot, I noticed they seem to have a fly path. I patiently waited in the sea, with water up to my knee and eventually noticed those 2 bats coming from a remote island. I took a few test shot in manual mode to get the right balance of shutter speed and light, I only had a few seconds but I was ready for them and was actually focusing my attention on the top bat, I want to capture it while it was making a V with its wing, the fact the bottom one was in a reverse V when I took the shot was pure luck. I tryied to post process this photo and remove some of the noise, but the end result is not really to my taste… in the end, I dont mind the noise that much, the grain gives it something in my opinion. Therefore this photo had not post-processing work done to it, exactly how I like my photos to be :)
July 2009 – Lac Leman, Swisstzerland
This photo was taken at the entrance of the Chillon Castle, on the Lac Leman. I had to wait for an annoying child/teenager girl to get out of that pier to take that photo! it was taken at the end of the tour of the castle and already that girl kept staying behind her parents (who kept screaming at her to … move!) and she had made an habit to stay in places where people were likely to take photos… I guess she wanted to be famous :)
The sky was very stormy, and as I waited to take my shot a bird then came at the end of the pier to thank me for my patience ;)
July 2007 – San Diego, California, USA
What I wanted was to take a photo with each of the bird deploying their wings at different stages… I almost got that right apart from the top left one! oh well… good enough for me :)