An occasional post

It is Christmas Eve and I am at home. It is warm enough to sit outside on the terrace and drink coffee, read books, play with the iPad etc. Mrs. Ha is making gingerbread men and all is well with the world. The plan is for 2011 to be my last in full time work. I will be in my 55th year by the time I pack in so enough is enough. I am quite nervous as the outlook for investing for income is quite daunting and I don't want to start eating into my capital right away. I hope I can bite the bullet and get by.

The idea of freedom to do what I want for a while is so attractive. I am increasingly addicted to the Leica although sometimes I find myself frustrated by it. I keep reading more and more about photography. Both the creative side and the technical side. I am thinking through what I really need to do differently to tale better images. Its not about quantity it is about quality. The key word seems to be anticipation. I was reading how Cartier Bresson used to find the setting and then wait for the moment when something happened to trigger the moment he wanted. He could visualize what he wanted and sometimes varied his position by only a few millimeters to get a quite different impact each time. He was said to dance with his camera, he was so light on his feet, trying to create the image he knew he wanted. the expression "the decisive moment" is now for ever bound to HCB but it simply means picking the moment amongst many that encapsulates what it was he wanted to convey.

Whether you call it street photography, documentary photography or reportage it matters little to me. I go out to try and take a better picture than I took last time. If you are photographing people the question is to engage or not to engage. Should you "sneak" the photo or ask. I do both I'm afraid.

This was posed:



This was not




I shot this, as you can probably tell, without using the viewfinder. The lens is at waist height - I am sitting next to the man - and I guessed focus and exposure to take a candid portrait. Its nothing to write home about but I thought it was a nice example of how you can literally "shoot from the hip".

I took some photos in the local park. A lady learning tai chi from her master. I asked if I could take photos and they were quite content. I sat quietly on the bench and tried to get what I wanted. The 50mm was a bit too little but as they moved closer and filled more of the frame the shots improved. The master motioned me to shoot from the other side so I did although I didn't want to. The light was all wrong. When he took a break I moved back round again.





I am converting most of my shots to B&W now and wouldn't mind going back to film for a while. What really troubles me is that when I post images in critique fora they get little reaction. There are occasional exceptions but generally not much by way of feedback. The question therefore is what makes an image stand out enough to get a reaction, positive or negative. I have learned that they need a focal point but many photos - not just mine - are trashed for being too derivative. What does that mean? Copying the style of someone else? I guess developing your own style is hard but distinguishes you from the rest. I am a long way from there yet. Here is another one I like:




What I do enjoy is the creative process of taking a digital image and working on it on the mac with Lightroom 3, Photoshop CS4 and / or Silver Efex Pro to produce a different effect, replicating digitally the grain, tones and textures of black and white film.

In the coming weeks, my focus, if you will pardon the pun, will be on seeing better the image in the viewfinder. The Leica allows you to see what is outside the picture so you can tell when someone is about to enter the actual frame. You have context as you compose. I need to be more aware of the frame lines and think about what is in and what is outside the image boundary. HCB didn't crop his images and the sense was that he moved to make the full frame meaningful rather than cropping after the event to remove extraneous subject matter. This is far from as easy as it sounds and reflects his ability to visualize and choose the perfect or decisive moment to expose the film (or sensor as it is today).

To finish, here is another of my favourite recent snaps. This is the generation gap.....



Happy holidays everyone.

A brief return

The autumn is returning. The super-hot temperatures are cooling and it is clear that birds are moving although I haven't seen much around the garden yet. So I have been continuing to practice with the rangefinder and have developed a keen interest in black and white imaging. I have spent some time with a pro, Craig Norris, who has given me some Photoshop tuition and is critiquing my work occasionally. I am learning to improve my composition, to make sure I have a focal point to the picture and to vary my height and angle of shooting.

All this has become something of a minor obsession and I spend a lot of time looking at the Leica Forum. It never ceases to amaze me what people post expecting (presumably) positive comments. On the other hand others doubtless think the same about my efforts and indeed Craig and I have already disagreed on images. Quite healthy too. But there are some amazingly talented people who post but I stay clear of the techno-nerds.

Moths have been few recently. They don't seem to fly much in the very hot weather but this little chap did appear recently.



This goes under the name of "anticrates sp." and is as yet undescribed to science.

Yesterday about 350 Great egrets flew past, possibly heading for the Philippines. This was a chance evening sighting but after the passage of Chinese Goshawks earlier in the year perhaps I am on a migration route! I also found a crested serpent eagle in the garden a while back.



This species calls regularly here and is seen occasionally very high in the sky but on this occasion perched just across from the house.

As we go into the best time of the year the constant interruption and harassment that is work begins to get to me. I need a physical and emotional spring clean and jumping on another plane (as I will do later tonight) is not what I need. Striving for better photos is also very draining but in a different way. I once did some psychometric tests to determine whether I was a Type A or B. On the scale of 1-100 I was around 98% towards the A end of the spectrum so I commit totally to a project and push myself hard to improve each time. I love the challenge of the rangefinder and playing with a piece of software called Silver Efex Pro that I use for converting from colour to black & white.

I am sure this is Off Topic but here are a couple of my efforts:




Of course if you are a Facebook Friend or Flickr follower of mine then all this stuff is repetitive nonsense, for which I apologize.

I still have a hankering to write too but until I hang up my banking boots that isn't going to happen. I have wonderful ideas for this blog but either never get round to writing or my mind goes blank when I sit down to type. In reality I just want to be out there taking pictures, whether it is natural history with the DSLR or arty-farty stuff with the rangefinder. So whatever your interest, if you are still out there, here is my last offering for the time being.

Thanks.

Blog off.

I was surprised how long it has been since I last posted anything. Even that was just a cut and paste job. I am currently at a crossroads. My work is all consuming and my interest in it is all disappearing. Sadly I am unable to "coast" and so I continue to work like a ............... trojan. My outings with the camera are becoming rarer. Also the Leica distracts me. I love it but it is not a wildlife camera. Rangefinders simply are not the best tool for the job. But for reportage or street photography, scenics and the like, it is probably unbeatable in DSLR terms. Medium format of course would win but I can't afford a Hasselblad. Hot weather may be good for bugs but it is not good for me and 35 degrees Celsius isn't going to get me out ite and abite as Prince Charles would say. So I am going to hibernate the blog. It may reawaken some day, Rip van Winkle like (a wonderful playmaker in the mould of Neeskens) and if my plans come to pass maybe I can devote more time to it in H2 2011. But for the time being, toodle jolly PIP!

Quote from David duChemin

Working really hard to get an image only makes it a hard-earned image, not a compelling one. Shooting someone you dearly love makes it a photograph of someone you dearly love, not one that is necessarily well exposed, well composed, or otherwise emotive to anyone but you. Shooting a poor image of an exotic place or a man with a turban doesn’t make it a good photograph, just a lousy shot of a guy with a turban. Using a long lens and getting really, really close to a duck doesn’t make it a good photograph of a duck, just a really, really close one. What makes a good photograph is judged by other criteria entirely.

I like the "duck" bit!

Anger management for beginners

It's been a funny old sort of week. A most unpleasant contretemps in the City Plaza car park in TKS started it off on a bad foot. Two local thugs threatened me and started shouting "White shit" after I asked one of them to "fie dee" after he had tried at least 3 times to park his Jag in a space big enough for a London bus (some poetic license perhaps). I have his car number so if anyone knows how to track the trash down I'd like to introduce him to some friends of mine in blue. The so-called "security" guards in the car park feigned interest but claimed the CCTV camera, which was pointing directly at the spot showed "nothing suspicious'. Three cheers for this gloriously non-racist society. My wife, who is god bless her, Chinese, suggested I call them yellow dogs but I am very fond of Golden retrievers and I felt this would be unkind to the GRs.

A couple of days off on Thursday and Friday. The same wife, for I am monogamous - one can after all have too much of a good thing - suggested I should rename "holiday" as "working from home"-day. I see her point. Still, it gave me a chance to potter a little, run the moth trap for a few hours each night, take some more photos with the Leica, take some difficult decisions about pensions and spend more quality time with Lulu. I needed some rest after barely sleeping for several night after the CP incident due to a mixture of shock and outrage that morons like this are allowed to walk free in civil society. His plate starts MD so I guess the M stands for Moron. D is probably for Dick-head.

I confess I am struggling with the Leica. Having only a 50mm lens (in itself costing roughly the GDP of one of the smaller PIIGS) I have to see things differently. I have immersed myself in all sorts of sites and books, reading about Cartier Bresson, Magnum and looking at some of the classic work of iconic photographers. I am captivated by black and white and thoroughly recommend Michael Freeman's Complete Guide to B&W Digital Photography, which I picked up in Waterstones on London Wall 10 days ago. I am also building a fair number of links to sites that give me comfort that being "crap" is but a milestone on the march of progress towards being "slightly less crap". Sort of an experienced crap photographer.

I'd like to recommend two other works. Many people know Satyajit Das as the author of Traders, Guns and Money. However he has also written a wonderful eco-traveller book called In Search of the Pangolin. I have read this twice. Firstly before I had met Das and again after having met him for breakfast in The Mandarin Oriental. Having done many similar trips I can confirm many of his experiences are familiar. The Amazon trailer says:

A pangolin is an obscure species of scaly anteater. Prehistoric in appearance, it is about the size of a cat with a long tail, and is covered in large yellowish-brown scales. "In Search of the Pangolin" is a unique potted travel narrative focused on eco-tourism, from the point of view of two eco-tourists, as they search for the beast over a period of 15 years. The book combines wicked humour with passionate and often poignant insights into the natural world and the culture, games and deception of conservation. The book's central focus is to provide insights into the world of eco-travel and eco-travellers. Outlining the grand spectacles and magnificence of the natural world that the traveller seeks out, and exploring the promise of eco-travel (furthering conservation and environmental awareness), the book also addresses the shallow reality (eco-travel is in fact another form of consumption and harms the world that it is seeking to preserve).

This really understates it and it is one of my favourite reads. And Das didn't pay me to say that!

And then another of my all-time must read authors, Simon Barnes. An amazing writer on both sport and natural history he has a growing list of wonderful works behind him. My favourite remains "Flying in the Face of Nature: Year in Minsmere Bird Reserve". However I think any person with a reasonable interest in natural history and especially those with a passion for it will emerge from "My Natural History" a happier person. I seem to have missed out on the diversion into recreational drugs that Barnes admits to but otherwise I did find myself feeling oddly in harmony with much of what he wrote. He is one of the people I would like to have round to dinner - maybe with Das at the same time. If Charlotte Uhlenbroek were free to join us I am sure it would be a wonderful evening.

If I may return to the Leica for a moment, I find myself looking at the images and wondering if it really merits its reputation. It is hard to put your finger on but there is a certain difference from the typical DSLR output. The colour seems to be purer, the images sharper without any processing, they have a sense of light and harmony that I don't sense in others. The images seem to float rather than be static. And they do convert wonderfully to black and white. It is probably a personal deception, trying to convince myself that somehow just handling the Leica will rub off some of that CB magic, the defining moment will find me (or I it) each time I sally forth on my strolls into Sai Kung. I read somewhere that Cartier Bresson claimed that he often walked 30-40km a day when working a location. I guess I walk about 3-4km. Maybe if I walked ten times as far my photos would be ten times better. But perhaps not.

By close of play Monday I will have taken a significant step on the road to retirement, moving my pensions in to a QROPS and hoping I can make better investment decisions than the existing bunch of trustees. Giving up a defined benefit pension seems mildly crazy but you only die once and I am now the age at which my paternal grandfather died and my father passed on at 65 so somehow I don't feel I'm giving up a lot. If I get to 70 I'll be turning metaphorical cartwheels in my wheelchair. Some days I feel I'll do well to make it through to sunrise. As my dear old Dad used to say, "see you in the morning..... if I'm spared". And of course, on October 22nd 1986, he wasn't. I fell out with religion that day and have never looked back since.

So there we are, not much on birds and bugs but a few metaphysical musings and some books to read. Today I was cheered up by discovering something called the Gutenburg Project, which allows you to download out of copyright books for free and I immediately downloaded some P G Wodehouse. If a younger reader passes by and thinks "who he?" just google for PGW quotes and discover such gems as:

"As for Gussie Finknottle, many an experienced undertaker would have been deceived by his appearance and started embalming on sight."

I also discovered that the swallows in the garage have young and in the hedge opposite a newly fledged Tree sparrow was being stuffed to the gunwales with caterpillars by a loving parent. Hey ho. The Yellow dogs can bark but they can't take the joys of the world away from us.

Your devoted scribe

White Shit.

On Sai Kung sea front yesterday most of the restaurants had these horseshoe crabs on "display". They really are amazing looking things. I believe they are Tachypleus tridentatus.



People were fascinated by them and I have to say they remind me of a childhood game called "Magic Robot". Who remembers this?




I had gone down to see if there were any terns still about but I drew blank. I did however see a Black-crowned night heron, the first I have seen here. The light was just amazing - crystal clear. Today, back to normal - very hazy. All I have seen this morning, apart from some butterflies in the garden, is a flock of 30+ egrets flying in the distance. The sun was glinting off them and it was like a moving pattern of frost on the windows. They circled for ages without landing before disappearing out of sight. They cant be far away.

One of our garden plants has been stripped back to the stalks and stems by caterpillars. This seems to annoy Mrs. Ha and the good old gardener has immediately offered to nuke the lot of them. Sensibly I was consulted before death and destruction was let loose on the poor things so they are still there, munching contentedly on what is left. This is clearly their only larval food plant in the garden as all other plants are untouched. I sense the word "organic" is not in the local dictionary.

The pollution in Hong Kong seems to be getting worse rather than better. Yours truly has been diagnosed as asthmatic and it is all down, it seems, to inhaling the local air. I have no choice as far as I know. Not breathing can have dangerous side effects so I have decided that in my next incarnation I shall come back as a horseshoe crab and if anybody asks me a question I shall swing my tail and point to the answer. Just like the magic robot. Happy days.

Terns

Each Spring terns are regular off the piers in Sai Kung. How long they will stay this time I can't say but they certainly attract photographers and this morning I noticed a few dipping and skimming amongst the moored boats. I went home to get a 400mm lens and then returned to try and capture some of the Whiskereds and White-winged. The light was, as usual, pretty grey and I was dialing in at least +1 in exposure compensation. Not many came as close as I needed but I took a few shots that although not good are bloggable. These are beautiful birds to watch an d easy to photograph once they come within a reasonable distance (i.e to fill half the frame) . Most people ignore them and probably don't even notice them. One chatty American tourist had seen the White-bellied sea eagles from Yeung Chau but hadn't seen the contrasting brilliance of the White-winged terns. I don't have a decent shot of one in breeding plumage but some in non-breeding plumage are passable. I suspect they will hang around for a while and if I have time I shall try again tomorrow.

Wong Chuk Yeung revisited and birds in flight

Some readers may be aware that there is an election imminent in a remote, developing kingdom called "The United". And so my top image is the door to Number Ten, dedicated to nobody in particular.

Yesterday was my birthday (please send cake) and in the morning Mrs. Ha and I did a long ramble up the hill and on to Wong Chuk Yeung. Hazy on the way up and clearer on the way back the road was busy with walkers, dogs on (and off) leads, runners, mountain-bikers and the occasional motor vehicle. Everybody it seemed wanted a Saturday morning constitutional. The village itself hasn't changed much. I had already learned that the site is under option to a developer (very sad) but I was also told that as long as the last remaining resident doesn't sell up there is little chance of impending clearance.

There is a great deal of broken glass and both dogs and people need to tread carefully. The lizards were out yesterday, basking in the warmth of the May Day sun. I hope they avoided the shards. One letterbox remained with a hopeful bill (I suspect) from CLP stuffed into it. There is no escape. The other word of warning is that mobile phones may not work so as this is quite remote do take care.

I am not sure what the root in the (brandy?) bottle is and I found it slightly odd that such a thing would be left. Likewise the sole rubber shoe. Why would a single shoe be abandoned in this way. It is quite obvious that this is a beautiful location. I have not walked beyond the village but a neighbour tells me there is a marshy area that buzzes with dragonflies. Something else to explore. I can well see why people would want to bring the village back to life and I suppose it depends exactly what is intended. Small dwellings matching the height and footprint of the old ones would be fine. But expanding the village would mean more traffic on a very narrow road. I can see that the next step would be road widening and then perhaps a filling station for petrol, a 7-11 or a Park'n'Shop, a restaurant or two, and why not a "war games" area, where toy soldiers can pretend to act out the horrors of war - give them one of Don McCullin's books to read along with every ticket. Rumour has it they are already "invading" Yeung Chau at night and have driven away the breeding White-bellied sea eagles. Personally I'd put the lot of them on Lap Sap Chau.

I also mentioned birds in flight - a more demure version of Pigs in Space.





It is the season to be breeding and the birds are actively nest building. The swallows are building their mud-cup in our garage on top of the security light. Each evening when I park the car they are already roosting and give me never an "evenin' all" as I trigger the lights, unload the day's junk and stagger exhausted up to the front gate, maybe checking the mailbox on the way. They are very tolerant, far more so than I. The shots were all taken from the comfort of my home, where I can sit with a cup of coffee and the 400mm lens, patiently waiting for the next fly past. Swallows, by the way, are tricky. They don't fly in a straight line, they are small and they are more difficult to train than a dog. Shouting "heel" has so far had little effect. Strangely it does little for our Pomeranian either. So there we are. Enough for one afternoon. Goodnight campers.

We're all gloomed

Hong Kong seems to have been living in grey and white for months. No blue sky days to lift the gloom. I have done trips to Dubai and Korea this week. The former was 35 degrees Celsius and the latter zero degrees. Seoul had its coldest April day for 45 or 100 years, depending on your informant. All I know is that I arrived in good health and left with a chest cough and sore throat.

I was looking forward to unpacking my new camera when I arrived home. The sense of anticipation was not especially high as the new version is not dramatically different from the old one but does perform better in certain key areas such as auto focus, noise levels etc. What I had not bargained for was a second new camera courtesy of Mrs. Ha, bless her cotton socks.

She decided that I needed a new Leica as my old one is now a mere 51 years old and takes that strange old stuff called film. Well whoever it was who allegedly said of I am a Camera, "Me no Leica", I am sorry, me Leica very much. A brand spanking new black M9 with a stunning F0.95 Noctilux lens was waiting to be trialed. So this weekend the Canon has been much neglected and the Leica has been in constant use. And what better conditions can you ask for to test a low light speciality lens than Hong Kong Gloom.

For those who are not already asleep at more camera-porn the M9 is a digital rangefinder. It has no autofocus and in sum it is dramatically simpler than a multi menu, multi custom function modern Nikon or Canon DSLR. It also takes amazing pictures. The clarity and crispness is probably unparalleled and it has a full frame sensor with no crop factor. It also weighs a fraction of the amount of a pro DSLR and as I am using a 50mm lens, albeit quite a hefty one, this is a fraction of what I normally sling over my shoulder on a tripod. As this is supposed to be about birds and / or bugs here is an example of a shot taken with the new toy at F1.4, ISO 200, 1/1500 sec. The sharpness and colour are astounding.




By the way, this is a captive bird and not on the Hong Kong official list. It was seen outside Harrods.

The next shot shows the colour rendition and brightness in poor light.




And finally, to keep vaguely on the nature theme, our dog.



But the real bonuses this weekend were finding a Little bunting in the communal garden and seeing a flock of 64 Chinese goshawks migrating over the house. They were very, very high so this shot with the new Canon and a mere 400mm lens is no more than a record shot.




I suspect these birds were from Po Toi, where a major influx had been sighted by Geoff Welch earlier this week or they may just have been a smaller, later flock. Either way, it was sheer coincidence that I happened to be outside at the time and spotted, first, one, then two, then three then the big flock coming together over Shan Liu.

And if you can't tell one bunting from another, this is the Little bunting.



So even when the skies are grey we can still put on a happy face.

A grand night out or "It would be rude not to..."

The Three Men were not in a boat but in a dark wooded area somewhere in the hills behind Sai Kung. We started chez moi, where Mrs. Ha provided pumpkin soup and beef stroganoff sloshed down with green tea. The cool box was filled with fruit, water, some fizzy poison-ishy stuff and dare I say, beer. When I returned home at 1am everything was untouched. Except the beer.

We drove up to a clearing where we set up the lights and we waited. The weather was on the cool side of pleasantly warm. Or if you prefer, the warm side of pleasantly cool. It was dry over one trap and mizzly over the other. They were barely 50m apart. There was very little wind. In fact this was ideal moth weather. Around us the Brainfever bird called incessantly. Collared scops owls hooted and R swore he heard a Slaty-breasted rail. We were so remote that in the 5-6 hours we were on site not a car passed and not a soul walked past us. The only people likely to have done so were the boys in blue to be honest.

We had our regulation dull coloured clothing on except for M who had escaped from Stalag Luft Mandarin O and deserted his wife for the evening. Good man! The pale blue sweater was a great disguise.



And it attracted moths too.

Now I have to point out that R & M are rather expert with the leps, whilst I am a bumbling amateur. But be that as it may, we all set about the traps with equal gusto and the cameras were produced to keep digital records of the evening's catch. Occasionally, just occasionally, a particularly fine specimen would solicit a different reaction. The option existed not just to photograph the beasts but also to give them a more tangible chance of fame. Out would come a small plastic tube or pot and well, "it would be rude not to....."

Here are just a few of the close to 200 species seen yesterday evening.







I think it is fair to say that squeamishness and moths don't go hand in hand. They do tend to get in your hair, on your limbs, down your shirt, up your trouser leg and as poor old Colin Plant in VC 20 once discovered, they can dance a fine tarantella on your ear drum. How many men can boast of having been hospitalized by a Flame Shoulder? The trick is to make sure that all of the moths have been removed before you crawl into bed with your spouse in the early hours of the morning. I can testify from past experience that beetles are no more welcome in our marital bed than moths and I have NO idea how it got there!!

We ambled from trap to trap for about 5 hours, barely noticing the dampness of the air increasing. Some may have called it drizzle but we were too absorbed in doing a final check for exciting species. And the glorious thing about moths is that the small ones can be every bit as challenging and indeed beautiful as the big brutes. We had only one break and that was for R & M to savour the beer that reaches the moths other beers cannot reach. Somewhere R has a photo of a moth trying to sip a little for itself. I haven't seen the photo yet but I think the intruder was Plutodes flavescens.

Finally we did decide to pack down. The evening was over, camaraderie had reigned supreme, fine moths had been sampled, though net in the gourmetic sense, and all went home happy.......... with the exception of those lucky specimens, whose proud families may return one day to see their fallen relatives preserved for posterity.

If you think moth-ing is potentially for you (and you should, by jove) keep an eye out for National Moth Night. I am serious. There will be public sessions open even to the lowest of the riff-raff (that includes me) and you might even have time for a beer.

Cheers!

Moths are dull looking brown things - NOT

I am still checking whether this is Argina astrea or A. argus but whichever, it is a cracking moth! Enjoy.

Bonus bird

Amateurish Photography

Anybody who has followed my intermittent blogging may recall that my first camera was a Brownie Cresta 3. I used this for a while before being given my father's old Leica M3. From the ridiculous to the sublime! I moved through Canon SLRs to DSLRs and that is what I generally use today. I had a very brief dream of being a photo-journalist but the Career's Officer at school persuaded me that university was a good route to go and by the time I graduated I had drifted out of photography with any real intent. I have often dabbled but never seriously. I have recently begun to think about the world after work and taken my photography a little more seriously in the sense that I self-critique more. I delete more aggressively those images that are mediocre. I think more about light, exposure, composition and of course content. It is my sole creative outlet. My father was musical. He played piano well and as a boy was broadcast on the old Third Programme as his voice was compared to that of Ernest Lough. He loved the human voice and was a huge admirer of Kathleen Ferrier. I don't recall what sparked his interest in photography but he taught me to process my own black and white films and the bathroom served as a darkroom.

The book that started me thinking about photography differently was National Geographic - The Photographs. The haunting eyes of The Afghan Girl, captured for immortality by Steve McCurry, really gripped me. I still dream of taking such an iconic image. Look at Steve McCurry's blog to see just what a fine artist he is. But that was years ago and against all advice I tried to photograph birds instead. I had started birdwatching semi-seriously in the early 1990s as an antidote to The City. A professional bird photographer told me early on that you can't be a bird watcher and a bird photographer. Either or but not both. They are not compatible. I have spent 10 years trying to prove him wrong.

This week I spent a delightful morning at Mai Po (see previous post) and was then invited to join J&J to look for a nocturnal bird, Savanna nightjar. This was preceded by a potter around Long Valley and some tantalising views of Painted snipe, a bird I see regularly but which refuses point blank to strut its stuff in the open for me. So I end up with what I call "bird-in-habitat" shots and for which others have a different word. Birdwatching can take you to some odd places and so it was that we sought out the nightjar at what J assured me was the old grenade range. Happily this is a fairly off-the-beaten-track sort of place so little chance of young Johnny stepping on unexploded ordnance. Did I hear his mother whisper "shame"? As the light faded the calls started, described in the book as "a single piercing 'chweep' at short intervals". And then the first bird rose up. The silhouette of a nightjar is highly distinctive, like a flying anchor, almost falcon like. They are enchanting to watch but trying to get an autofocus to work in fading light is tricky and eventually (and too late) I switched to manual. Looking through the viewfinder of a camera you lose track rather of all that is happening but I guess there were 5 or six birds. They circled around and then moved away, hunting for their evening breakfast. Their whole performance lasted barely 10 minutes and I took 5 photographs. Two missed the bird completely, one was too small in the frame and the other two, though sharper were still in need of a decent crop to produce reasonable sized pictures. As J kindly said, "not bad for a first attempt". I think that is known as being damned with faint praise but he was right.

It is always more than somewhat depressing to review the images on the laptop when I get home. Invariably I find most of them destined for the trash basket. Some I hang on to in the hope that over time they will look better but without fail they look worse. DELETE! And so I need to do something different. Benjamin Franklin said, it is alleged, "The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results." Already I have a couple of great suggestions from web-gurus.

The one I like best is from David duChemin at Pixelated Image.

It says: Stop buying new gear. That's it.

He does then continue and demand that instead you go out and take more pictures. Simple isn't it. Spending money or spending time practising. Hmmmm. Why did I just order that new Canon 1D mkIV body?

I have bought a couple of his $5 e-Books (does that count as buying gear?) and they are full of good ideas but the message I particularly liked is:

"Waiting is also a much under-rated photographic skill. Be patient, watch what happens, and be ready when it does. Don’t settle for good when waiting a few minutes might give you something truly revealing or great."

This is all about Cartier-Bresson's "decisive moment". In simple terms one moment is better than another and the difference may be a fraction of a second. In bird photography this is especially true. The turn of a head and the contact is lost, the catchlight in the eye is gone, the light has changed and on occasions, the bird flown. Portraits are nice, action shots are better. Action shots with a story to tell are better still. Sitting in a hide at Mai Po I often struggle with the conflict between singling out a bird and waiting for it to do something interesting or looking at the landscape and trying to catch the action as it happens. If I go for the latter I often find the bird I had, literally, been focussing on has gone. Such are the dilemmas of the photographer's life.

I am also learning about how much more Photoshop can do. Processing is an art in itself. But that's another blog. I'm off to take a load of images.

IMAGES TO CRITIQUE.......



Gloomy Day in Sai Kung




Savanna nightjar




Yellow-bellied prinia




Female Painted snipe