June 14th, 2010
The trip to Hungary concentrated around hide visits, as mentioned in my first Hungary post. The hides are all in ‘ideal’ light positions, but the light conditions are not always predictable. The forest water station was located in a stream of light, occasionally blocked by the waiving trees.
So, where I normally set my camera to manual mode, if light conditions are constant, here I tried a different setting. Since activity at the water station was quite frantic, with birds chasing eachother away and birds doing their bathing and getting out asap, I opted for a minimum shutterspeed value of 1/1000 (in shutter priority mode), exposure compensation at 0 and auto-ISO: so where light changed, the ISO would be set up if there was not enough light and ISO would drop where there was too much light. To enable the Auto-ISO, just press the ISO button on top of a (Canon) body and dial until the display reads ‘A’, for auto.
With the camera I was working with I knew that if light would drop, my noise could become problematique, but this image was much to my delight:
| Hawfinch (en), Appelvink (nl), Kernbeisser (de) |
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Canon 50d, 1/1000 @ f/4 @ ISO400
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See also: http://www.birdphotographers.net/forums/showthread.php?t=65845 for reviews of this image.
June 13th, 2010
Early May I joined a photographic tour in Hungary (organised by Robert O’Toole, http://www.robertotoole.com/). The main attraction of this tour was the usage of hides. Bence Máté (http://www.hidephotography.com/), the owner of the farm we went to, has specialised in building hides at strategic positions, to get up close and personal with birds you normally never get close to. The next image gives a good impression on how the view on the bird actions is setup. A dug-in hide, with a glass window (grey, one way viewing glass, with a 1.33 stop light reduction), making sure that the birds can hardly see you and that the noise of the camera is largely reduced to background noise. The great advantage of the hide is of course the close proximity to the birds, but the glass does create quite a distortion if images are taking with an angle through the glass.
I was amazed at the amount of birds actually present in a forrest and saw birds and bird interactions I had only dreamt of seeing so far. One of the frequent visitors was this European Goldfinch. A beautifully colored bird.
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| Image created with a Canon 50d and 400mmDO lens at 1/800 @ f/4.5 @ ISO400 |
I will submit a lot more posts from this trip, so keep looking.
June 9th, 2010
Last week we spent a week on the dutch island of Texel, the largest of the group situated in the north of Holland. The wheather was fantastic with clear blue skies and a firm breeze from the north. I visited a number of breeding colonies, mainly habituated by black-headed gulls and northern terns. European Avocets, who stay the whole year around on the island, breed among these birds, to a great cost: in particular the black-headed gulls, but also Herring Gulls and Lesser Black-backed Gulls who fly over, will always try to snatch a chick away. Although the parents are very protective, their young will need to run for their lives until they can fly.
At the first morning of my visit to the ‘Wagejot’ colony, there were about 10 avocet chicks running around.
When I visited two days later, there were none left.
See also: http://www.birdphotographers.net/forums/showthread.php?t=65437 for reviews of this image.
April 25th, 2010
In 2008 I started my own blog and loved the way WordPress handles content. Although working in the IT industry myself, rules I teach my customers I didn’t do myself. Sort of like the handyman not fixing things at home. Things went wrong in October last year, when my server and backups burnt down. A full year’s of work was lost. The images I published I still had, but all the other content of my server was lost. It took me 3 months to get everything back and stumbled on little problems I solved before, wondering how did I do that again ?
To make a long story short, I went through the dust and learned a lot about setting up a website, in particular using WordPress.
Reference sites:
If you need help setting up a website, setting up WordPress, securing your blog or organising it, contact me on kpkes@yahoo.com.
March 26th, 2010
| Exhibition Announcement |
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From 1 April until 30 May I have organised a photo exhibition in the entrance hall of the UBS building (Viaduktstrasse 33 in Basel) where I work. On display is a selection of my work, mainly nature and birdlife. All images are printed on the best quality photo paper and mounted on a double layered aluminium plate: this prevents the image from bending as a result of temperature or moisture. All images (except a few) are for sale and range in price from CHF90,- to CHF 490,- as a mounted image and from CHF50,- to CHF200,- for an unmounted print. Contact me for details on kpkes@yahoo.com.
The images currently available as prints can also be viewed here online, in the Exhibition Gallery.
All other images, in other galleries, are available for print as well, but require some more time in preparation. See All Galleries for more images.
March 9th, 2010
Foto Video Marlin and I are proud to present the announcement of a photographic tour to South Africa. The venue will be Black Rhino Game Reserve in the Pilanesberg, 200km north of Johannesburg. Black Rhino is a privately owned game reserve in the far north of the Pilanesberg. The game reserve offers all of Africa’s big game, a great number of birds and is a malaria free area. Part of our group will be Erwin Marlin, the owner of the store in Basel and Peter Kes, a semi-professional photographer. Foto Video Marlin is professional dealer for Canon and Nikon photographic equipment. The objective of this tour is to photograph the African bush with ‘birds of a feather’.
Continue reading Black Rhino Photographic Workshop (Update)
February 26th, 2010
Last weekend I went for a short trip to Holland to visit family and to go out and photograph. The day I went out to shoot was a little short of abysmal, rain rain rain. But I still managed to get a few nice birds in the viewfinder.
Continue reading A Rainy Day
January 28th, 2010
Last October I entered a few images of my portfolio to the UBS Employee Photo Contest. A large number of images were submitted, total more than 4000. The jury evaluations required a bit more time than anticipated. Today it was announced that I won the second price in the category “Nature & Landscape”.
Continue reading Award: Swan Snooze
January 12th, 2010
Shashe Farm is located in the far-east of Botswana, located in the Tuli Block area. This area mainly consists of privately owned farms, but the eastern part is also known as the Tuli Game Reserve. This area is trapped between the Shashe and Limpopo river bordering Zimbabwe, making it a unique piece of bushveld. Sadly though, since poverty is bad and worsened under the Mugabe regime, poaching is increasingly an issue. This, and the general tranquility of the region, make game quite hard to approach. We were invited to join a week’s stay at the farm and we were in a group of 12, to enjoy the festivities to say goodbye to 2009 and welcome 2010. The farm is located in the remotest part of the Mashatu Game reserve, where electricity and other related luxuries are not present: water was and is pumped from a bore-hole.
The trip to the farm posed a few obstacles. One of them was foreseen, the Limpopo River was full, so a detour needed to be planned to get across to Botswana. Unforeseen was the crippled landcruiser upon arrival at the docking station. The dashboard panel was dismounted, the battery was flat and the braking system was dis-functional. We managed to get the engine running, but the brakes needed to be sorted out later.
Continue reading Shashe Farm 2010, Moons & Kingfishers
December 3rd, 2009
Next destination was Jock Safari Lodge. This lodge is a private concession completely in the boundaries of Kruger Park. Jock in a word is the heritage site of the legendary story of Jock, Sir Percy Fitzpatrick’s dog, a Bull Terrier. Sir Percy lived in the 19th century, one of many gold hunters, seeking wealth and fortune in the area formerly known as the Transvaal, South Africa. Barberton was the center of the gold buz and over time, it looked like this hype was overly exaggerated. There was not that much gold at all in this region and many fortune seekers soon ran out of cash and were desperately seeking for alternative means of income. During this period, the farmer community migrated at the same pace into the region, but was stopped at the boundaries of the tsetse fly, a vicious insect causing certain death under mainly cow stock. Behind the tsetse curtain lied the area now known as Kruger Park or the Great Limpopo Transfrontier Park. This park was in those days packed with great herds of animals and their fate was sealed in the late 19th century. A great number of gold rushers turned into hunters and within 20 years, Kruger Park had only a handful of elephant left. Lions were eradicated and many of the special species (like Roan and Sable antelope) were gone. This went on until Paul Kruger fought for declaring the Kruger region to national park, then named Sabie Game Reserve, the area tied between the Sabie River and the Crocodile River. A former army officer, James Stevenson-Hamilton was nominated as the first park ranger. In later years, the Shingwedzi Game reserve was proclaimed and finally in 1926 the area between Shingwedzi and Sabi was allocated to national reserve as well and the combined area was from now on called Kruger National Park. From 1927 onwards, the park was opened for the general public.
Jock Safari Lodge keeps this story alive with all its historic dramas and heroes and this is where we spent the next 5 days with some amazing experiences. I will take you through our journeys with some images.
Continue reading Kruger Park September 2009, Jock
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