Tim Collier Photography

A New Calendar – Flowers of Argoed

As you’ll have noticed from a post a few weeks ago we’re embarking on a new calendar for Caerphilly County Council this year and it all starts this Sunday, 1st April.

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Nikon D300 v Nikon D3s – When To Use Which One

Having recently bought a Nikon D3s and still using the D300, I’m now actually working with two different sensor formats. The D3s has the FX sensor whilst the D300 has the DX.

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Tawny Owl by Torch Light

There’s been a Tawny Owl around our area lately and last night it was flying from ariel to ariel just across the road.

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Dinas – 3

Early on the second morning I decided to locate at the far end of the reserve and stay for a couple of hours to see what turned up.

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A Couple of Days at Forest Farm, Cardiff; Day 2

I arrived again soon after nine with wonderful light and high optimism – but the day played out as before, only this time there were no Water Rails and the smaller birds were few and far between.

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A Couple of Days at Forest Farm, Cardiff; Day 1

If I was feeling lucky with the Barn Owl recently, the attempt at a Bittern at Forest Farm has evened things out somewhat.

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Some Technical Thoughts From Gigrin

Luecistic and Red Kite at Gigrin - 500mm + 1.7 converter

In response to Julian’s recent comment from Gigrin I thought I’d do a post that looks at the parameters of working on such a shoot.

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All About A Heron

At WWT Llanelli today running the intermediate photography/wildlife course. Wet but not at all cold.

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Videocast #1: Graduated Neutral Density Filters

Laycock

We took a group of students to Laycock Abbey today, an essential for anyone interested in the history of photography.

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New Equipment – Old Habits

For a long while now I’ve wanted a camera that I can carry around with me, isn’t heavy, has all the manual features I enjoy on a camera and compliments a lot of the long lens photography I’m currently involved with.

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An Antidote to HDR

The vogue at the moment within photography is high dynamic range imaging (HDR) and whilst it has certain applications where it can function effectively it is, at the moment, over played. These images are an antidote to HDR and celebrate the subtle within photography.

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Fields of Yellow

There are a couple of fields locally that are, at present, absolutely stunning and with the weather as its been lately it was too good an opportunity to let go.

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Quick Tip 5: Use a Smaller Memory Card

Which memory card would you put in your camera out of the two above? It seems an obvious choice, the 4.0GB. Not always, think again.

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Quick Tip 4: Get The Most From Your Camera

1. Read the manual

Spend a few nights tucked up with the manual – Some are pretty dense and are not exactly user friendly and I would recommend buying a specific guide for your model. I wouldn’t  be without the Magic Lantern Guides written for the Nikons by Simon Stafford. Well laid out, clear, concise, to the point and simply invaluable.

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Quick Tip 3: Take Better Pictures With Less Equipment

All too often we’re led to believe that the more equipment you carry with you on any photographic trip the better pictures you will take. In many cases the reverse is true. Photography is essentially a simple act complicated by an aggressive consumer industry that needs to keep selling new and ‘improved’ equipment.

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Working with Ambient Light and Flash at Night

It’s been an interesting 24 hours, with a good fall of snow last night and a further heavy shower for a couple of hours this morning. When it comes down like this, and that’s not very often round here, you have to make the most of it and it simply draws me out. There’s no possible way I can sit in doors knowing of the opportunities just beyond the comfort and warmth of the house. So between 11pm and 1am last night I roamed the streets! The dampened down sound created by freshly fallen snow is something I have always loved and by eleven last night Llantrisant was under the spell.

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Quick Tip 2: Changing the angle of View

Such a simple tip for producing arresting images is to change your angle of view. Most photographers seem to see the world from  5’5″ and pretty straight on.

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Quick Tip 1: More from your Monopod

A simple technique to photograph new and exciting angles. By using a monopod and the self-timer setting on your camera you can extend your imaging into places otherwise impossible to work from.

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Workflow and Post Processing

To help explain this side of my work I’ll take a typical days shoot and describe how I process the images from downloading to saving as final ‘print ready’ photographs. Back in the autumn I was at Ogmore Estuary when I came across three Grey Phalaropes. I stayed with them for about four hours and took 701 JPEGS. They’re a fairly obliging bird and continued to ply a predictive route up and down the river all afternoon. As the session wore on it gave me more and more opportunities to try something different as I was confident I had secured some fairly decent ‘stock’ images.

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