HOWARD'S BIRDSPOT: 2024

Monday 2 September 2024

Trail Camera kingy.

Yes I'm still alive! Its a very long time since I posted here on my blog. I've been recently experimenting with a trail camera on behalf of an Elderly friend who isn't very mobile himself. He loves wildlife and lives in a prime location for many species of birds and mammals. Daily visits by a kingfisher to his house located on a local lake is the reason for this post. Yes, I could use my pop up hide and shoot using my Digital SLR and get superior photos and video. But that isn't what I set out to do. I wanted to help get him some pictures with his own kit. So let the challenge begin!

After many different set ups and some improvisation with the camera lens, we have some pretty good video and still shots. The camera cost just £70. Which is pittance for a camera nowadays. I think we've done OK. See what you think. Comments most welcome.

HOWARD'S BIRDSPOT

Hello and welcome to my blog. Firstly, I am not a professional photographer or a bird or wildlife expert. Most of what I have learned about photography and wildlife or birds is self taught from books or what I have learned from friends and wildlife photographers and birders. I owe a lot of my sucess to friends and photographers for their guidance. I am still learning and have many subjects I still want to photograph. I am very passionate about birding and bird photography. All of my subjects are wild birds or wildlife in the wild. I do not photograph captive birds or wildlife in a staged setting. It's just not my thing. I get no satisfaction from photographing captive sujects. That's not being disrespectful to those who do, I'm just not comfortable with it, and would rather go without pictures of rare subjects than take photos of captive ones. I do however respect the work of captive breeding programs and caring for injured birds and wildlfe. I belong to the local bird study group which records breeding birds on my local reserve. This has helped me to gain increased results in locating species to photograph from an increased knoledge of birdsong and bird behaviour. I have enjoyed increasing sucsess with my work in having work published in books and magazines including birdwatching magazine, in national newspapers and countless web features and articles. I was also the winner of the 2011 wildlifextra.com national photography competition "birds" category. leading to the publishing of the winning picture in the competitions book. The same picture is liscensced for sale by Getty Images through the Wildlfe and wetland trust, who featured my photo in a published article. My photo's have featured many times on flickr explore. I have also had pictures feature on the BBC springwatch red button site on television and have received the Springwatch photo of the day award. I've also had them used during the BBC and ITV weather forecasts and on the BBC Earth and BBC Nature websites. I also featured in a BBCTV look north feature shown on BBC 1 about my competition win and my love of photography on the Far Ings Nature Reserve. Thank you for visiting, and I hope you enjoy viewing my pictures. Please feel free to contact me with regard to using any of my images. I rarely refuse, but do like to know where my images are being used. I don't sell my images in print format due to the fact that I don't have the time at the moment as I am in full time employment. If you have any questions regarding my photography please contact me via email.