Snow!

This stag has recently lost one of his antlers, the other will also drop off soon. With red deer, this happens naturally around the end of winter and they take until July to regrow.

Snow is scarce in southern Britain. Checking through my archives, it’s been around eight years since I captured images in a decent snowfall. So I was excited when the “Beast from the East” (a Siberian weather system heading our way) was forecast to bring us unusually heavy snow.

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Westonbirt Arboretum

Autumn Colours – A blend of two images, one in focus and one out of focus.

A few days ago I travelled over to Gloucestershire to attend a one day autumn colours workshop at Westonbirt Arboretum run by Light & Land and led by award winning photographer Andy Farrer. It was a good day at a lovely, colourful location with a nice group of people. Weather was a bit grey but at least it didn’t pour down!

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Put yourself in the picture

Autumn Walk – ISO 400; 166mm; f/5.6; 1/180 sec (click image to view larger size)

What to do when you find a nice (quiet) location but you think having a person in view would help add something to the image? Put the camera on a tripod, set your 10 second timer, step into the limelight and become the star of the show. Although, it’s not always quite as easy as it sounds, as I found out recently!

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The Rut

This fight was over in about 5 seconds!

This is a short post purely to share some images.

I’ve spent several mornings in Richmond Park over the last six weeks or so, mainly to photograph the deer during the autumn rut – the time of year when red deer stags and fallow deer bucks fight for dominance and the right to mate with the female hinds and does respectively.

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Back off!

Back Off! – ISO 200; 196mm; f/4; 1/800 sec (click image to view larger size)

A couple of us were enjoying photographing some red deer towards the end of a photo walk in Richmond Park when I took the image above.

We’d had dull conditions to start, no sign of the sun at sunrise, quite windy and a heavy downpour during which we had to shelter under the trees, but the sun appeared eventually giving us some better light. There had been a lot of deer activity with this being the Autumn rut – plenty of bellowing and running back and to, with the larger stags fending off the younger males who were trying marauding tactics, running into the group of hinds to try and split them up and take a few away, some with success but mostly not. The odd hind slipped away by themselves, tempted by the bellowing and strutting of another male nearby, who would quickly run over to round her up.

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Fujiholics London 2017

Trafalgar Square – ISO 800; 14mm; f/7.1; 1/1700 sec (click image to view larger size)

Another short post from me as I’ve just spent an hour “curating” this selection of images and my dinner is calling me!

Today was the Fujiholics London Photo Walk. A great event with about 60+ people attending. Not enough time to speak to everyone, but good to chat with those I did get to speak to, some familiar faces, some new and some surprise meetups with people I’ve met on my walking group.

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