My love of the Dipper started as a small boy, I’d catch two buses from my home with my bag packed with cold toast and a flask to get to Lathkill Dale, in the Peak District. Once I got there I’d sit and watch these incredible birds play out their lives before me.
Simplicity is often the key to composing a successful photograph. A well composed image should never look cluttered, and the main focal point or subject should be obvious. When composing an image decide which parts of the scene are most important to you and try hard to exclude any elements that are not, or don’t have a role or detract from the composition you are trying to achieve.
Our seasons are changing now from summer into autumn, the nights are drawing in and the light and colours are stunning as the sun becomes lower in the sky. Its a great time to be out with your camera, providing you with some of the most beautiful and intense colours of the year.
There a few places in the UK where you can experience the sights and sounds of nature any better than the North Norfolk coast during the Spring tides that start in earnest from this month onward and for me herald the onset of Autumn and Winter.
They live in some of the harshest environments in the UK, once a year the heather there turns this wonderful colour, showing off the moorland habitat to its best. A true specialist of this environment, the Red Grouse is cruelty killed each year, forced from the ground by beaters, taking off in a blind panic and into the guns of paid shooters from a day they name the “Glorious Twelfth”
There is an aura of power and majesty about the Tiger, unchallenged while patrolling their territory. In the famous Jungle Book Rudyard Kipling acknowledged the undisputed status of the mighty Bengal Tiger by introducing Shere Khan as the King of the Beasts. Although the cat family includes many impressive and attractive animals, the Tiger for me is the most beautiful of them all.
The Dippers in the Peak District have been incredibly active over the last few weeks, they are normally early nesters and have two broods per year but with this month’s glorious weather giving the feeling its summer it seems to have spurred the Dippers on even more and they are already mating and checking out nest sites and building new ones.
On 31st March I will be part of a masterclass photography seminar for Campkins cameras in the grounds of University of Cambridge. Photographers from the world of portrait, landscape , street, food and wildlife will be there to inspire you with their work, techniques and advice. The day is designed to help in all aspects of photography.
