Thursday, February 2, 2012

Mylittleeden

I know this blog is mainly photography, but I do like to feature some talented artists from time to time, and this is one of them, and also subject related since there are birds. Sarah is British but moved to rural Australia in 2010. Her flower and animal paintings are just stunning, and here are some of them: An eagle owl, a kingfisher, two beautiful irises - a yellow and a purple one, a wonderfully lifelike rabbit portrait and a red chrysanthemum. Find out more by visiting her Zazzle store, Mylittleeden, or clicking on an image below. These are available as wrapped canvas prints /and or posters, as well as on some other products.
Portrait of an eagle owl canvas fine-art print wrappedcanvasKingfisher Ornithology portrait fine art print printIris inner beauty (warm yellow) square canvas wrappedcanvasFlag Iris (purple and mauve) poster print printPortrait of a rabbit grazing boxed canvas print wrappedcanvasRed floral canvas original fine-art print wrappedcanvas

Tuesday, January 31, 2012

Last years birds

Well, I did manage to take one or two birds last year, the first is this nuthatch sitting on the garden table. It's a European or Eurasian Nuthatch, Sitta europaea, which is slightly different in colouring to the American version. They are quite tame here and always on the bird feeder in winter. Taken with the nikon 18-55mm kit lens
I'd taken a series of photos before, but none of them big enough to use on their own, so I had the sudden brainwave to make a collage. It's all the same bird but in different poses. This one was with the Nikon 70-300mm lens
Another collage is this Middle Spotted Woodpecker and chick, Dendrocopus medius. We had just parked near a lake when I saw the hole in a tree, and the woodpecker fly up to it. I took this with my "new toy", a 400mm Novoflex. It's a huge lens and I was in contortions almost on the floor of the car to get enough angle to point the lens out of the window. It had to be a collage as the chick disappeared every time the parent arrived!
Another lucky encounter was this Common Sandpiper, Actitis hypoleucos, again from the car while we were parked by a lake. In fact, it was so well camouflaged sitting about 10 feet away, that we didn't notice it until it moved.
Another photo taken with the Novoflex, this time the Goldfinch, carduelis carduelis, was only about 6 feet away as it came to drink at the garden pond, so I needed to use the macro bellows.