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My most recent photos... |
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Most of my pictures are all now on Flickr. Click the logo to visit my photostream...
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...and everything else
Click here to see all my Flickr sets.
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Me and my stuff
I've always liked photography, and for years used a number of Canon and Minolta film cameras. I sold the lot in 2003 and bought a Nikon Coolpix 4500, but soon decided that a digital SLR was what I really needed.
Since 2004 I've been through various Canon cameras and lenses including two EOS 20Ds, an EOS 30D, an EOS 40D, an EF 400mm f/5.6L, and an EF 300mm f/2.8L IS before finding myself with the following which I use at the moment:
EOS 7D
EF 500mm f/4L IS
EF 1.4x II extender
Kenko 1.4x DG extender
Sigma 150mm f/2.8 APO DG
Sigma 17-50mm f/2.8 OS HSM
Super-Takumar 50mm f/1.4
Samyang 14mm f/2.8
Speedlite 550EX
Macrolite MR-14EX
...plus sundry other gubbins.
I tart everything up using Canon DPP, Adobe CS2, Photomatix and Helicon Focus.
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A-Z index
Click here for a list of links to all my photos by species/subject.
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Copyright, sales & contact
Website design, all photographs and content on this site are copyright Rich Andrews. Please don't copy, steal, pilfer or hotlink anything on this website. It's the height of rudeness.
If you have any enquiries about licensing, please .
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SUNDAY 3rd NOVEMBER 2012
Hoopoe
My second trip to Sand Bay to look for the long-staying Hoopoe. This time the light was marginally better, but the bird kept within an area of long grass and so my best (=least bad) shots all had the bird obscured by grass stems.
The high resolution of the 7D is a bit of a double-edged sword. With decent light and a close subject it can provide wonderfully detailed pictures. But when you need to turn the ISO up a bit, the sensor really struggles with noise and the resulting reduction in detail, which is particularly apparent when the subject isn't too big in the frame. The one below was the best I could manage - a big grainy crop tidied up with DPP, Neat Image and Photoshop. Bottom shot is the original - most of the time it was in that thick stuff on the right. I toyed with the idea of taking out those stems over its shoulder as well. But couldn't be bothered.
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SATURDAY 27th OCTOBER 2012
Isabelline Shrike
A fine day for a trip to the seaside, where an Isabelline Shrike (or Daurian if you prefer) had been at Portland Bill. Unusually for a trip to the bill, we saw the bird almost immediately when we got there, and even managed some close views of it - albeit through a narrow gap in the scrub at Culverwell.
You can click on the pictures to make them bigger.
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WEDNESDAY 17th OCTOBER 2012
New lens
In a moment of madness I happened to order one of those Samyang 14mm wide angles off Ebay. It's manual focus and doesn't even have an automatic aperture, but the resolution is brilliant - on a par with some of the Canon primes costing more than twice as much.
So I took it out to try out on a few co-operative subjects tonight. You can click on the three pics below to see them bigger - does that look any better?
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THURSDAY 4th OCTOBER 2012
Black Tern
It seems that most of the Black Terns I see at Chew are never more than about half a mile away. So it was nice to be able to see one breezing about in front of me as it fed over a flooded field at Clevedon today. Following one of these in flight as they dart about with seemingly impossible changes of direction is one of the trickiest things I can think of in bird photography (along with Swifts and spinning phalaropes).
Nevertheless, of countless frames, most of which were binned, a few happily 'came out'...
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SATURDAY 29th SEPTEMBER 2012
A bird in the hand (and in the allotment)
It never ceases to amaze me that getting a decent photograph of a bird being held for ringing is never as easy as you'd think it was. Don't ask me why, maybe I'm just crap. Anyway, after being phoned to say that a Wryneck had just been caught in the Heligoland trap at Chew, this is the result. What remarkable things they are...
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In the afternoon I went to look for the late Cuckoo which has been seen around some allotments at Severn Beach; it's evidently been attacked by a predator and has lost its entire tail, in addition to half of its primaries and most of the secondaries, coverts and scapulars on its right side. You can see the adult grey feathers on its right wing that have already replaced the lost brown juvenile ones.
This is the latest-staying Cuckoo ever to be seen in the Avon area; although it can fly, it hasn't migrated due to the loss of so many of its main flight feathers. It's questionable whether it will be able to regrow them sufficiently in time for it to fly to Africa, even if it can find enough food in the coming weeks.
This one did let me get close enough for some frame-fillers and head shots without having to be restrained; with its missing tail a close crop is just about the best you can do with it:
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On the way to Severn Beach I stopped off at Filton for a few snaps of the Vulcan on its last flight of the year. Perfect light for once, too. Even though it's been in the air for a few years now, there's always a lot of people who come out to see it. The roads at Cribbs Causeway and the A38 were packed.
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