First off , thank you sooooo very much Carole for the newsletters they are wonderful!! I have had my nose glued to them , the design work is excellent!!! and the photos , well Julie !!! GREAT work!!! Its great reading about your events. I will reciprocate and bring some mags from the uk for you when I come over for sure 🙂
Well not much to report here but we now have the date for Frex going into the vets , she is booked in for Thurdsay coming for scoring.. eek nerve wracking . Apart from that well… its my birthday today :):):) so I am off out for a meal this evening with friends:) so I am looking forward to that!
I have a bit of a new hobby ”Twitching ‘ as they call it here, I have been photographing as many different birds as I can, in our garden and next doors garden and while out walking. I am trying to build a collection of photos. I am becoming a bird spotter!! I have even bought myself a book to learn and recognise what I see. Its kind of addictive! Rebus is very funny when I photograph the birds at home, he just watches me with a kind of superior sort of expression , too cute !! Frex on the other han dances about like a loon because she associates the camera with going ‘walkies!,
I took this photo while photogrpahing the birds next door, Rebus was giving me the look. I love this photo and got an a3 photo printed of it . I will be getting it framed for our sitting room. :):)
Well signing off for now as I better make myself a bit presentable for this evening.
Again thank you Carole for the newsletters I am chuffed to bits with them 🙂
Lin 🙂
That photograph of Rebus is absolutely stunning. The look in his eyes….amazing.
Happy Birthday Lin!!
This photo of Rebus is absolutely gorgeous! I could look at his eyes all day long.
When you come over this Spring, I think you should come early and visit me in FL. There is no better place for “Twitching” than here! You would definitely see a much different landscape than in the North. Please post some of your bird pix!
You are welcome for the magazines—I’m glad you enjoyed them!
Happy Birthday Linny!!!! I hope you had a great dinner celebration!
I have no doubt that “Twitching” can be addictive. I can feel it pull at me.
What does “a3” mean? This picture is stunning!!! Please tell us how you took, light conditions, lenses, settings, etc. It is Fabulous! I agree with Carole you could look at that picture all day.
thank you 🙂
Carole I will deffo post some bird fotos , 🙂 I’d love you all to too to if you have any fotos of wildlife or birds from your areas!! Our birds will be very plain though in comparison I think as the further North you get in the the duller in colouring the birds seem to get 🙁 South UK has some really colourful birds but not Scotland …sigh but we have some beauties never the less. Its funny isn’t it when you take so many fotos you look at everything differently , the world around becomes full of foto opportunities!!
Carole I would have loved to have come to your part of the Usa maybe another time ,that would definitely be something to look forward to for sure. I dont intend for this to be my last visit , I am seriously hoping to come for NASS too at the end of the year,if the USA can cope with me twice ;o)
Julie Re rebus’s printed foto, A3 is a paper size we use :)A3 — 297 x 420 mm — 11.7 x 16.5 in. The foto I took on aperture priority:) with my 70-200mm lens, full length at 200mm, I stopped the lens down to f4 for sharpness and cranked the exposure compensation up to +1, just to define his coat texture, the IS0 is set to 640 as it wasn’t the nicest of days :(.
The foto I then over saturated in software (tone mapped) , tweaking colour levels for grey scale impact, then added a vignette to the final image.
“The foto I took on aperture priority:) with my 70-200mm lens, full length at 200mm, I stopped the lens down to f4 for sharpness and cranked the exposure compensation up to +1, just to define his coat”
I thought you might have used that lens! Why did you use f4 and f2.8? Would 2.8 been too shallow? What a great idea to up the exposure compensation when shooting a dark dog. That is what I should be doing with new-born puppy pictures when they are still mostly black.
Thank you Lin! That picture is a classic. PLEASE sign your pictures especially the really good ones. People steal them even from this little blog!!! They do not claim they took the picture but most often pass them off as their dogs or puppies.
Thanks Julie:) I will do , why people feel the need to pinch fotos is beyond me but I’ve seen it happen over and over again your right!
I stopped down to f4 because previously when setting out to take a portrait using f2.8 I have found the depth of field too shallow. I’ve maybe got the nose sharp but behind the nose and even the neck area etc has been almost like a partial bokeh and vice versa with the rear sharp and the nose soft. I’ve found f4 -5.6 -6 about the best so far for head shot portrait results. I also now make sure I am far enough away from the dog for the shot to allow the lens to focus too, I used to think my sigma lens back focused all the time, it used to really drive me nuts but it didn’t I just used to get too close!
I think there is an equation I read somewhere to calculate focal length ,f-stop etc for depth of field but to be honest I’ve never tried it ,I tend to get caught in the moment and just snap with the set up that works for me:) probably technically way wrong! I’ll find some examples for you for depth of field in a head shot with varying apertures where I’ve got it very wrong and very right and post linkies for you.
geesh sorry guys , that was an essay!!! lol
We love hearing what you have to say…and I especially love the Scottish coloquisms!