Twitching

Yesterday, we went to dinner at the cousin-in-law´s place, out in the country and quite a ways inland, where there is still full winter. I had the camera along, but of course had chosen the wrong lens for photographing birds; they have a bird-feeder outside the kitchen window and what a great twitching opportunity! Only the great tits (talgoxe) are plentiful where we live, more rare are the bullfinches (domherre, which is the archetypal Christmas bird), the willow-tits (talltita), and the snow buntings (snösparv). There was even, I think, a greenfinch (grönfink), though very far off. Also, twilight was falling pretty fast. Luckily, I can tweek quite a bit with this camera, but see in the dark it can not.

Bullfinch and great tit.

Willow-tit

How can you tell a willow-tit from a marsh-tit (entita)? According to my bird-book, they are almost identical exept for the song- apparently the marsh-tit sounds like he is sneezing while the willow-tit sounds like a tease. The best clue, however, is where you are: pine-forest: willow-tit; deciduous forest: marsh-tit.

Two male bullfinches having a row.

A female bullfich trying to find a seat.

Snow buntings - in the snow.

The very distant greenfinch.

Solar Eclipse!

Ok, so I was not prepared. I don´t know what I was thinking. I have seen eclipses before, and this is what I have done: poke a small hole in a piece of cardboard or similar, then project onto a surface and watch the thing happen. I don´t want to look into the sun, even with special glasses, it seems unhealthy. But I thought I would photograph the projection, anyway. This was the setup and if it looks awkward it is because this was the only place where the sun shone in between 10 and 12 today. It´s my stove. (It occurs to me now that I might have been able to catch it on our second floor, shining on my laundry, but as I said, I was not prepared.)

That´s just a lowly envelope taped to the kitchen ventilator and a
black plastic box turned on its side.

I got two reflections. 

This was the best photo I got, at precisely 11 o´clock. Then it occured to me that I have a camera of some ability in my hand. Perhaps I could photograph the sun?

Right. 

Well, with some hurry I first dug out the tele lens and put that on, which gives me 200 mm, turned to Manual and set the shortest time I could, a 1/6000 of a second, the smallest aperture, 32, and set the exposure down as much as I could from that. That worked a bit better, but still pretty fuzzy.

Then it occurs to me that I have a tripod. (It´s been a while since I took photos, as you can tell.) That makes one heck of a difference.

Slightly astigmatic, but kinda interesting.

Here I activated the delayed exposure button, to minimize
the handshake effect (in spite of the tripod).

But what really made it good was this little setup. Those are two sunglasses taped onto the lens. You take what you have, right? That took care of the astigmatic effect (I´m sure it has a name, but I don´t know what it is). I got this fairly sharp image at about 11:15, så the eclipse maximum was over, but still pretty good.

I didn´t get this close with the lens, but chose the RAW format and then
cropped all the photos later in Silky Pix. 

Also kind of interesting, a plastic paper towel holder reflected the sun onto the ceiling, and you could see the eclipse in the reflection!

After the eclipse. 

And below are photos of the last half hour of the eclipse. I got more light effects in the end, after the cloudiness cleared up completely. You wouldn´t think clouds would be good on an occasion such as this, but they helped, actually.

Cool!

Almost Invisible Birds

One of our days in Scarborough we decided to walk towards the north, along the Cleveland Way, which goes along the coast from Filey in the south to Saltburn in the north, and around the Moors national park.

It is amazing how sensitive the eye is to motion. Just look at this:

A vast, stony beach. A tiny brown thing among thousands of brown things. 

Hello?!

You look familiar, Mr Curlew. 

Or is it Mrs?

Old Scalby Mills at the mouth of Scalby Beck
(a creek; the word is similar to Swedish bäck,
so you can really see how close the east coast
 has been to Scandinavia, culturally)

Also, I tried to capture the swallows, swishing past us at the speed of light, almost. I never saw one of them sitting down, just having a rest. Ever.

A Friendly Face

So, it´s July and I come walking from town when I see this idyllic image: a guy with his fishing rod, a leisure boat coming towards him in the background. I got my camera out and when I started shooting, the guy hears the shutter. Oh dear, I thought, perhaps he doesn´t take kindly to being photographed. On the contrary, he did the exact same gesture as that guy in the canal boat in Birmingham! People don´t usually react to me like that, and now two guys in three weeks?

I have heard so much about people reacting badly to being photographed and at the library in Birmingham a librarian came up to me and said I could absolutely not take any photos with children in them. I assured her I was only interested in the architecture, but she didn´t look happy. (It was an odd feeling for me, to be taken for some kiddie stalker!) And some countries have laws against street photography. Considering how many people photograph everywhere, all the time, that must be a law difficult to uphold.

It´s impossible to photograph in a public place and completely avoid getting people in the frame. Actually, I like having people in the frame, as their presence is part of the experience. The English public seem to think their presence in my photos make them bad photos, and duck or back out whenever they see a camera and even apologize for being there!

I always try to pick photos for the blog that doesn´t show people´s faces, either being turned away or in the distance. Except my own, of course, but that´s my choice. Some friends say they don´t mind being on the blog, and that´s fine, some even see it as some kind of promotion of what they do, and I like to be supportive of that. It can be a tricky balance. If I´m unsure I ask beforehand. This guy, I proclaim The Friendly Face of Luleå in Summer.

The Curlew

The Curlew sounds like this.