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16th January 2012
Recent subject matter has included: flooded woodland, earthworms, the moon, beetle larvae and hooded crows.

22nd October 2011
Been spending as much time as possible outdoors for the last 2 months. Autumn is a great time of year for landscape, wildlife and macro photography. Shortening daylight hours serve to focus the mind and get old projects completed and new ones started. Roll on Winter!

4th August 2011
Swapped my camera for a fishing rod yesterday evening. Tried long trotting worms using a centre pin reel on a small river and caught bream, roach, rudd and perch. Happy days :)

26th July 2011
Been concentratin' my efforts around the wildlife pond for the last few weeks, plenty of insect life to inspire photography. The dragonflies being the main attraction. Some of the reed mace and other aquatic plants i planted are now well established, they should really come into their own next year and beyond.

5th July 2011
Retreated to the studio out of the rain to try some more macro photography, its a good chance to experiment with different lighting setups.

3rd July 2011
It's warm work haulin' around some 30kg of camera gear for hours on end, so am goin' to retreat to the leafy coolness of some oak woodland for the next day or two, in the hope of gettin' some decent sparrowhawk shots.

1st July 2011
I've long been a fan of high-magnification macro photography, so recently I made a reverse lens adapter and a focusing rack. I adapted the geared column of my Meopta darkroom enlarger for the rack and it works very well. I'll add a few of the resulting photographs asap.

29th June 2011
Intermittent cloud cover is making it difficult to acquire decent "swallow in flight" shots, especially when i'm restricted to using a shutter speed of 1/8000 sec. Every break in the clouds is precious! :)

28th June 2011
The Number of species found in and around my wildlife pond, excavated just five months ago, is as follows, Red Fox, Grey Heron, Mallard Duck, Pied Wagtail, Swallow, House Martin, Four Spotted Chaser Dragonfly, Hairy Dragonfly, Brown Hawker Dragonfly, Common Frog, Smooth Newt, Pond Skater, Water Boatman, Whirligig Beetle, Diving Beetle, Alderfly, Caddis Fly, Great Diving Beetle and Silver Y Moth.

25th June 2011
As summer takes over from spring, wildlife is noticably a lot less busy. Flocks of juvenile finches numbering 25 to 30 indicate all is well in the food chain as far as invertebrates go. Some species are busy with their second nest of chicks, another good sign. Fox cubs too, can be seen play fighting at dusk and dawn. Plenty to see and plenty to photograph, long may it last.


20th February 2011
Have been trying to photograph Otters (Lutra lutra) for the last 13 months. So far have had 3 sightings but no useful images. If anybody has regular sightings, i'd be delighted to hear from you.
Buzzard (Buteo buteo)shoot is going according to plan so far, regular feeding ground found, hide in position etc.

13th February 2011
Seen 5 Buzzards, in courtship display mode today, soaring high at approximately 1000m. Maybe they know it's Valentine's Day tomorrow - "Love is in the air" literally!.

22 January 2011
Dug out a wildlife pond today, triangular in shape, some 40m long and 20m wide at the widest end. Livestock fencing will need to be erected to allow wetland plants to get established on it's margins.