A Great End to the Year

2010 has zipped by at an amazing pace and suddenly, I've found myself slap-bang in the middle of December without having blogged since September!

Of course, life as a not-so-new dad has kept me on my toes as has my latest project - setting up my new studio in Chippenham. Besides I've spent several days at the Barn Owl centre in Gloucester, capturing amazing images of raptors with the help of centre-owner Vince. We also managed a family holiday to Norfolk to observe the amazing annual influx of geese and ducks and then the weather turned and next thing I knew, it's December.

In between all that, I received two further gold awards from the SWPP's monthly photo competition for Cherhill Sunset and Stormy Skies in Cromer. A pleasing enough result but I've recently found out that both of those images and my Rook from back in March have been nominated in their respective categories for the SWPP Photographer of the Year awards.

Having seen some of the other stunning images that have also been entered into the competition, I'm honoured to be recognised more than once and would like to extend my congratulations to all the other 'togs in the final few.

I would also like to take the opportunity to wish you all a Merry Christmas and a happy, healthy and productive 2011!

Cherhill Sunset

Landscape photography is not one of my favourite subjects as it usually depends on the convergence of several elements (light, weather, my busy schedule) to produce a reasonable image. Nevertheless, I decided to take a chance the other evening and climb to the top of Cherhill Down to take in the sunset and test my new 14-24mm lens.

The afternoon weather had been a bit hit and miss and I was pretty doubtful that I'd achieve much, but I also wanted to take the opportunity to scout for the local owl population at the same time. Once at the top, the sun broke through, shading the vista with beautiful red and orange streaks. Instinctively, I whipped out not my DSLR, but my iPhone to take an HDR shot to send home to the wife who was busy looking after mini-me. Stupid, stupid, stupid. Because the light can change in an instant and the minute I switched to my camera, bang! It was gone.

Luckily, it slipped out of the cloud again to produce the shot below which saw me take gold in the SWPP August awards, with the image going forward to their annual awards to be announced in January 2011. Please keep your fingers crossed for me!

Raptors at sunset

After having such good fortune with the weather during my recent jaunt to Northumberland, it was typically miserable when I was due to have a photography day at the Barn Owl centre in Gloucester. They kindly traded my one day voucher for two evening photography sessions and I used the first one up this weekend.

Raptors love hunting in the long summer evenings so the subjects were limited to Leighton the Buzzard and Turner the Eagle Owl, but I was privileged to have almost one to one access to them which led to some stunning shots. Vince Jones, the centre manager is a keen wildlife photographer himself and so was invaluable in helping to set the shots up to make the most of my time.

This allowed for some interesting captures of Turner in the "Angel of the North" pose and I even spent time lying prostrate in the long grass with a chicken leg balanced millimetres from my head to try and capture a vole's eye shot of Leighton coming in for his dinner.

Check out my latest image gallery for the first sessions results. I have a feeling that the purchase of a 14-22mm wide-angle lens will be invaluable for my next visit. I've just got to convince the wife it's essential...

Natural Wonders

Bass Rock is quite rightly named as one of the seven natural wonders of the world. To see it is truely awesome. And I've been lucky enough to see it twice.

When you first observe it from the coast road, it looks like a bizarre snowy rock in the middle of the sea, but it's only when you land there that you truly appreciate the sight, sound and smells of thirty-thousand-odd gannets all vying for the best nest site.

This year, I was lucky enough to go during the hot, sunny weather we've recently been having rather than the pouring rain that I suffered last year. The trip was organised by a photographic experience day company (I shan't name them to spare the instructor's blushes) so we duly met on the harbourside in Dunbar ready for the off.

As we milled around chatting about the day ahead, there was an almighty clatter followed by a splash as the instructor's prized carbon fibre tripod with several thousand pounds worth of equipment attached tumbled into the harbour. Great start to the day for him!

Thankfully the rest of the day went much more smoothly and I got some great HD footage of the chumming (where they throw fish from the boat to entice the gannets) followed by some amazing blue sky shots of gannets to compensate for the stormy backgrounds to last year's pictures.

This has to be a must on every serious nature photographer's to-do list. Just one word of warning - watch out for the rear ends of the gannets. Had to drive sixty miles back to base with all the windows in the car open if you get my drift!

North East Photography Trip

My summer holiday this year was spent introducing my baby daughter to the delights of seabird photography. True, she slept through most of it, but I'm hoping that the experience will help to spark a life-long interest in photography and nature for her. The wife hopes so too so that I'll end up doing my fair share of baby-sitting.

We stayed in Northumberland for a week, allowing me to fit in a trip to Bass Rock and one to the Farnes - both of which I did in the pouring rain last year - plus additional trips to Coquet Island to see the rare Roseate Tern and the WWT in Washington which has the best bird feeding station ever.

Miles and miles of sandy beaches with hardly a soul in sight meant we not only got to enjoy the pleasures of seeing puffins, gannets, eider ducks and the like in their well known haunts, we were also lucky enough to view them quite "randomly" as we were enjoying a leisurely stroll en-famille.

Please check out the latest images gallery for some of the shots I've managed to upload so far. I have around 20GB to get through so it's a work in progress and I'll find time to write blogs about each trip over the coming week.

Bempton Day Trip

Yes, that's right. A day trip to Bempton from Chez Crowdey and back again all in less than 24 hours. Sheer madness? Possibly.

The sunny weather was just too nice to resist the lure of the famous gannet colony. As a responsible adult, I felt it unfair to leave the wife with the new baby and the dogs for too long so drove up to Bempton overnight, arriving just in time for sunrise and departing before the massess arrived.

And what a great time to go. I was treated to the most beautiful sunrise over the sea and have some beautiful gannet shots where the sea looks as if it's liquid gold. Also pleased to see that our favourite pair of gannets had returned to their nest and are busily hatching this year's egg.

Amongst the other highlights were nest building kittiwakes, fulmars, razorbills and guillemots and a solitary puffin. Must say there were far fewer seabirds in residence than when we visited this time last year. That said, maybe they were all out for an early fishing jaunt given the beautiful weather conditions.

But of course such a day couldn't pass without the obligatory mishap. Weighed down with my lovely carbon fibre tripod, two bags full of camera paraphernalia and my enormous packed lunch, I manage to fall over and break my tripod again. Grrrr!!! Am now back to the panicked situation I was in last month when I thought I might have to cancel the Bass Rock trip in June. Please re-cross all extremities in the hope I can get the tripod situation rectified in time.

In the meantime, check out the latest images gallery in a few days time. As I (by I, I really mean the wife) write(s), I (this time I do mean me) am too exhausted to process the pics, but give me a little time and I should have my favourites up for your delectation.

British Wildlife

I will openly admit that I'm a b*gger to buy a present for. My poor wife struggles every year to find me birthday and Christmas presents that won't be met with a vague grunt of gratitude before being cast aside to gather dust. You see all I usually want is some new socks and some new hankies but she will insist on buying me what she deems to be a "proper" present.

Now don't get me wrong, I do like presents. Just not the kind of present that the wife can readily afford. Or if she can then it has to be the right thing (ie a specific piece of camera equipment) meaning I have to be quizzed long and hard about it before it's bought, thus ruining the surprise.

But this year, she did quite well. I was lucky enough to get not one, but three photographic day gifts. The first of these was to the British Wildlife Centre in Surrey where I got to spend the day photographing all manner of British Wildlife from badgers to marsh frogs.

And the best thing about this time of year is the presence of baby badgers and fox cubs. The image below is of a baby badger that was rescued and taken to the centre after its mother abandoned it.

The centre is only open to the public at the weekend meaning that I had free access to many of the animals in their enclosures (accompanied by their keeper of course!) Well worth the cost of the present to get the opportunity to practice with these beautiful animals in anticipation of more frustrating evenings spent staking out our local fox and badger population.

Check out the Latest Images gallery for the best shots of the day.



My next gift day out is to Bass Rock in June for another gannet watching trip. Here's hoping the weather is better this year.

Super Weston Super Mare

This is a rather belated blog that I asked the wife to write for me some time ago, but she made some excuse about being rather busy and so it's not quite in the correct running order of events. But never mind.

We took a trip to Weston Super Mare recently to check out a nature reserve that has been created near a new sewage treatment facility to compensate for all the trucks that now rumble across the once peaceful countryside.

Unfortunately, there were only the usual suspects - swans, mallards, Canada geese and the like present on the lakes, but I was fortunate enough to discover a whole flock of reed buntings lurking in a hedge nearby.

Another tick in my birdwatchers book and not a bad set of pictures either!

No entry fee required

In the spirit of family life, I took the girls for a day out at Birdland in Bourton on the Water, Gloucs. The park is home to the only group of King Penguins in the United Kingdom as well as a large collection of the usual tropical birds - parrots, hornbills, flamingoes, exotic starlings and the like.

They've also recently started creating a new nature reserve and have several hides. Sadly because it was a Saturday, said hides were full of annoying chav children who have no respect for wildlife and spent all their time shouting meaning that the kingfishers and dippers who live on the stream gave the area a wide berth.

However, the best spot of the day was before we even paid the entry fee. A couple of grey wagtails were busy performing acrobatic stunts over the river outside, catching insects. I'd've happily stayed there all day photographing them but the wife was insistent that the little one needed to see the penguins (she was very underwhelmed by the whole experience and slept right through it).

On the way out, we stood by the river for twenty minutes waiting to see them again but there was no sign of them. I started to put my camera away. The wife smugly said "I bet they'll turn up now" Moments later she gasps that they're back only to realise it was actually a great tit. (No I don't mean her!) I sling my bag onto my shoulder, survey the river for the last time and lo and behold, back they come, wagging their tails for all they are worth. Typical.

So I unpack everything, swing my lens round and they've disappeared again. Finally we spot them wandering along the brick wall above our heads. I jump up on the lower wall to get a better view and not only do I see the wagtail hovering hummingbird-like catching insects from around the pillar but also a female mallard who has made her nest on top of the pillar, some ten feet in the air. Goodness only knows how those poor ducklings will ever make it to the river!

Check out my latest images gallery for more pictures from the trip.

Think global, act local

Much as I would love to be off travelling the world, photographing exotic wildlife, having a wife and new baby to look after means I have to keep my ambitions in check for the next few years. So while I'm limited in my travel range, I've been making the most of the current sunny evenings by visiting my local woodland area to photograph the local wildlife.

The woodland area is teeming with small bird life and lots of nest building activity. There are countless blue tits and great tits feasting on bugs hiding in the tree blossom. Occasionally the long grass is full of long tailed tits. Robins and chaffinches are abundant. The two pairs of bull finches are still present. And the corvids are doing a pretty good job of terrorising the local buzzard family.



The open fields play host to a vast number of rabbits (and possibly a hare but I've yet to get photographic evidence that it's not just a bunny on steroids) and these were my first target. Fortunately for me, they are also the target of the local red fox who has kept me on my toes trying to get him in shot. I take a 500m, he gets so close to me he could clean the lens with his brush. I take a shorter lens and he sits just out of range for me to get a decent shot. I find his den, set myself up so I'm not disturbing him and so he sticks his head out, looks at me and then walks off in the opposite direction.

And so the battle of wits will continue. I intend to take my hide with me over the next few days so as to not disturb him too much. Hoping that there may be a Mrs Fox there too and that they may have some cubs for me to capture (with the camera!) over the coming months.

I'm sure we're both hoping to catch some baby rabbits too!

Going for Gold

I'm a member of the Society of Wedding and Portrait Photographers (SWPP) and occasionally enter my images in their monthly competition. Last year, my only entry was my picture entitled "Stormy Day" which is of the gannets on Bass Rock. I was awarded a Bronze categorisation for my efforts.

In February, I entered the red kite image that was published in the Daily Telegraph. Despite this making national news, it still only merited a Silver from the SWPP.

So this month, I chose a simple image of a Rook that I took while on a visit to Chew Valley Lake in Somerset. And lo and behold, it won the Gold award. The image will now be published in the next edition of the SWPP magazine and will be put forward for judging in the annual prize awards for the wildlife photographer category. Please keep everything crossed for me for further success!

This week I have been mostly hunting for ravens

The wife has a thing about ravens. She has this stupid joke about how you can tell the difference between various corvids. Because the dancing one is "a ravin'" Get it? No, neither do I. But the slightest mention of the largest of the corvid family is enough to send her off into a world of her own where she thinks she is the funniest thing since Michael McIntyre.

Anyway, this week, we discovered that ravens apparently live in one of our local nature reserves so after a lot of arm twisting, off we set with a map of destinations to try to locate these majestic birds. Did we find one? Well we found a wood named after them. We also clocked some jays (as always, I was driving and the camera was on the back seat) and a kestrel, several buzzards, but not a raven in sight.

I have a feeling that as soon as baby Crowdey is big enough to fit in her baby carrier, the wife will be dragging me to the woods every weekend in the hope of spotting a raven, all so that she can tell her stupid joke again.

Don't get me started about the time she got me to spend £15 on a cuddly toy otter just so she could tell her otter joke...

On the way back, we stopped off at Lower Moor Farm to see if there was any sign of activity in the heronry. Unfortunately, there seems to have been an awful lot of building work going on at the site over the last twelve months and sadly, most of the birds seem to have found themselves other homes. We did manage to see a pair of grebes, a red crested pochard and a family of coots with three chicks, but typically, all were too far from the hide to warrant any decent photographs. Hopefully the works will finish soon and the birds will return as this was one of my favourite photographic spots.

Coate Water Park

A lovely sunny day took me over to Coate Water Park near Swindon as it has a lovely, flat, family friendly walk around the reservoir. The main entrance was populated by the usual collection of swans, mallards, gulls and Canada geese, but a little further along, I spotted four Great Crested Grebes spaced out across the water.

Grebes are such majestic birds, yet difficult to photograph as they continually dive beneath the water to catch fish, often resurfacing yards from where they dove. By the time you've re-located them, found them through the lens and re-focused the camera, they've found another fish and dived beneath the surface again. Even having the wife on hand to grebe spot didn't really help. And to make matters worse, at one point, one of them surfaced literally two feet from the end of my lens. Perfect shot. Except I was using a 300mm with a 1.7x converter so could only stand there and admire him, rueing my missed opportunity.

At the southern end of the reservoir, the woods plays host to a variety of small birds. A couple of blue tits were captivating during their mating ritual and we tried to locate the woodpeckers we could hear drilling, but to no avail. And then, I got my spot of the day. Four black caps! Another tick on my list and some great shots, some of which will be in my latest images gallery when I've had a minute to process them.

Disaster Strikes

As compensation for playing the perfect father to my new daughter Abigail over the last few weeks, the wife let me sneak off to Slimbridge by myself for a few hours. Leaving home in blazing sunshine, I was full of hope for a great day of photography. Sadly, whilst cresting the hill at junction 18 on the M4, I discovered that torrential rain was going to be the backdrop to my afternoon. So much for British summer time.

Having promised to be back home by 4pm, I only had a couple of hours at my disposal so chose to settle under the "bus shelter" by the Pochard lake. Managed capture some great rainy shots of wood pigeons, mallards and then lucked out by spotting a female Mandarin duck in the same shot as her more flamboyant mate. Maybe it's because the females have such neutral colouring, but I've never noticed them before, but finally, the two got it together for me.

Leaving in time to get back by 4pm as I'd promised, I hurried across the quagmire that was masquerading as the car park, only to slip over in the mud. Ruined jeans, a huge and bloody hole in my knee, massive bruises on my hip and - horror of horrors - I broke my extortionately expensive new carbon fibre tripod :o(((

Bang goes my planned trip to the Bass and the Farne Islands in June as the broken part is notoriously hard to source and purchase. I recently recommended the tripod to a friend of mine who is now ahead of me in the queue to get the part I need (grrrr!) so am now hoping that it can be fixed by the original manufacturer. Please keep your fingers crossed for me and watch this space for updates!

Chew Valley

Having discovered a shortcut to Chew Valley which circumvents the need to go round the Bath one-way system, I cunningly convinced the wife that we should take a family duck-feeding trip there and put my cameras in the car "just in case".

Enjoyable afternoon photographing native species, especially the Rooks who are one of my favourite Corvids.

Now I just have to figure out convincing excuses to take the family to all my photography spots so I can get out and about even more now I'm a dad.

Five minutes of fame from 3 hours in the snow

During my recent visit to Gigrin Farm, I was lucky enough to capture a series of shots  (currently in the Latest Images gallery) of an aerial fight between five red kites over a single piece of food.  The behaviour is fairly unusual for Gigrin as the birds are supplied with a veritable banquet of top quality steak on a daily basis by the owners of Gigrin, but with the harsh weather conditions competition for every scrap was fierce.

And this time, I was privileged enough to have the images published in the Daily Telegraph and on the Telegraph's website.  For me, this was quite an achievement having submitted other pictures to other newspapers in the past, only to have my five minutes of fame dashed by trivial world events such as Obama's inauguration or the trials and tribulations of Cheryl and Ashley Cole.

A scanned copy of the article from the newspaper is below.

Gigrin in the Snow

With all the bad weather we had earlier in the year, I've been hoping to get to Gigrin for some snowy shots but every time I'd been able to go, one of the major roads between my home and Gigrin has been closed due to "adverse weather conditions".  But this weekend, fate was on my side, providing a light sprinkling of snow in South Wales and a lot in the Midlands -- which freed up a last minute space for me in one of the photography hides.

Although the snow was rapidly melting by the time I arrived, the clear blue sky and winter sunlight made for some excellent shots of the birds.  As always, the mass of red kites were joined by buzzards (both regular and pale variant) and many corvids -- with the ravens providing another interesting set of images.

In amongst the melee of birds scrabbling for meat, I was also lucky enough to capture shots of a black kite which has recently taken to feeding at Gigrin during the cold snap.  When I initially reviewed my pictures, I was under the impression that a darker looking red kite was the fabled black kite, but once I'd trawled through all 2,000 shots, it emerged that black kites are very different to their red counterparts, their markings being more buzzard-like and dark brown rather than truly black.  In addition, black kite has a distinctive black, rather than yellow beak.

Check out my latest images and raptors galleries for some of my favourite pictures of the day

LCC-Images now on Vimeo

After finally getting to grips with Final Cut Express and putting together my first wildlife video I needed somewhere to put it on the internet - Facebook is ok but the video is soooo small, and after all, this was shot in HD.

YouTube does a sort of pseudo HD, with HD settings and consequent long upload times, but less than true HD quality, and anyway, YouTube is so yesterday. Some of my stills photography friends pointed me to Vimeo.com, a HD video sharing website similar to YouTube, but better quality less quantity and true HD, and best of all, for one HD upload a week it's free!

You can see my Starling Roost video, in true HD, on my new Vimeo Channel

I'll be posting more soon - bookmark and keep checking back

'Model' destroys photographers dream.

For those of you that have been following the story surrounding the doubt over the integrity of the stunning  'Story Book Wolf' photograph which won the Veolia Environnement Wildlife Photographer of the Year competition - the organisers of the event have concluded that the photographer, José Luis Rodriguez, did in fact use a "model" and consequently as this contravenes rule 10 of the competition rules the photographer is disqualified.


The following is a link  directly to the WPOTY website

It saddens us to confirm that after a careful and thorough investigation into the image, the storybook wolf, the co-owners of the Wildlife Photographer of the Year competition, the Natural History Museum and BBC Worldwide have disqualified the winning entry of the photographer José Luis Rodríguez. The judging panel was reconvened and concluded that it was likely that the wolf featured in the image was an animal model that can be hired for photographic purposes and, as a result, that the image had been entered in breach of Rule 10 of the 2009 Competition. The judging panel looked at a range of evidence and took specialist advice from panel judges who have extensive experience of photographing wildlife including wolves. They also considered the responses to specific questions put to the photographer José Luis Rodriguez.

The competition rules clearly state that photographs of animal models may not be entered into the competition and that images will be disqualified if they are entered in breach of Rule 10. Wildlife Photographer of the Year competition rules are available to all entrants including versions translated into several languages.

Wildlife Photographer of the Year is the world’s most prestigious photography competition of its kind. Any transgression of the competition rules is taken very seriously and if entries are suspected of breaching the rules they are disqualified. José Luis Rodríguez’s image will be removed from the exhibition and tour.

Mr Rodriguez strongly denies that the wolf in the image is a model wolf.

2010 Projects

Photographically 2009 was in many ways an important year for me. From walking atop Bempton Cliffs to view the spectacle of thousands of Northern Gannets, Kittiwakes, Puffin and Fulmar soaring high above the ocean or nesting on the rock face, to driving up to the Scottish Highlands to capture Osprey fishing at 5am in zero light and pouring rain and then finally fulfilling my long time ambition to visit Bass Rock - all of these were a first for me and I was excited, awed and humbled by these experiences.

But that was last year - this year I have some exciting projects in the pipeline, but first, a quick plug for my Facebook site recently set up:

LCC-Images on Facebook

this Facebook site is a small project grown off the back of my main website, I hope it grows over time and I'll be adding new content, pictures and videos when I can, but back to the pipeline, I am going to be experimenting with the art of “time lapse’ photography, using my trusty D3 and intervalometer, I hope to capture some stunning time lapse wildlife images which I will share both on the blog and my main site.

My other project, which I am thinking will run for this year, is a foray into wildlife documentary making, something I have never tried before but I have a story and location in mind and hope to start some work on this soon, when my newly acquired Sony HDRXR520VE High Definition Handycam Camcorder arrives - I’ll be posting a review of this too once I have used it for some time as that is another project I’m hoping to start up - a reviews section on this blog.

So lots of stuff going on for me this year, and along with these projects, my day job, and my new family arrival I still have to find time for Skomer, Kent, North Wales and others.

Thanks to everyone who reads this blog and keeps up to date with LCC-Images here’s wishing you all a belated happy and prosperous 2010.