Last year I bought myslef the Canon S95 and tried for the first time to do some landscape photography.  My results of Garda stack on Foula were my good enough to make me think I could capture some decent shots, since then though I've realised just how difficult it is to get shots with anything approaching a WOW factor.  Composition is the one I find hardest and I'm beginning to think I don't really have an eye for it.  So with this in mind I've been reading a few tutorials on t'internet and in some old magazines a mate gave me in an attempt to improve.  I'd come to the conclusion one of the most important things is an interesting sky, it seems a good sky can make up for a lot.

So I've been checking the weather forcast trying to predict which day this week would give me a decent sunrise to go play with some ideas on the beach at Hornsea.  Wed saw me there waiting for the sky to get light only to find it was misty and the sea and sky were all the same colour, bollocks I could have stayed in bed.  I reasoned that while I was there I may as well have a crack at it anyway so on went the wellies.

Lesson learned, the lack of a visible sky actually made it easier to see the composition for some reasonable shots.  Plus when back at home photoshop works wonders when applying a bit of levels to the sky, seems the camaera could see the divide even if I couldn't make it out.

Another thing I've been reading about a little is hyperfocal distance for getting good depth of field, although I kind of understand it I had to make an educated guess at distances for focus points due to the not being able to measure into the sea!!  I worked quite well though with most of the image in focus.

Anyway here's my four best shots from the morning.

There is one small problem with not being able to see the divide between sea and sky, I couldn't tell if my shots were perfectly level but I don't think a slightly sloping horizon detracts from these shots too much.

Should I stay or should I go.......

That's the question I've been asking myself lately!  I've been struggling to find time to write updates and I'm experiencing a bout of blog apathy, I've really just been going through the motions when posting without putting much effort into what I'm writing, for the first time in my life I appear to have nothing worth saying!!!!!!!!

Anyway in an effort to see if it was worth carrying on with this blog I had a butchers at the stats to see how many people looked at it, I was a bit surprised it's managed over 20,000 pageviews, no idea how that compares to my friends blog stats but it gave me some encouragement, not least because two of them were from Russia!  I can only assume they were really fit young hotties called Svetlana and Natalya looking for a husband, well they've come to the right place, oh no they haven't they fucked off without leaving a message, bollocks!

They did however look like this, I just know they did!

You would, you really would wouldn't you?

 

Well now that I've relived that little fantasy again here's a quick run down of the birds I've seen lately.  A Glauc and a couple of Iceland Gulls at Hornsea and Scarborough, some Little Gulls and Little Auks on a boat job, a Red necked Grebe in Scarborough Harbour, Green winged Teal at Fairburn and some Bean Geese at Hornsea, including a Taiga.  I was going to post something about claims of Taiga bean in Yorks but maybe I'm learning!  What I wanted to see was this,

 

 

Not that one obviously but that species.  I just haven't had the time, maybe next week.  Here's a few pics of the stuff mentioned above.