The Western Counties Photographic Federation held their weekend away again this year. This time it was “secret Dorset”. Saturday was a blustery visit to the Abbotsbury swannery to see the swans with their newly hatched cygnets. A small point, here; signs to the swannery proudly exclaim “baby swans”. You’d think that they would at least call them by their proper name – ignorance from those who should know better smacks of dumbing down, and it irritated. Young swans are cygnets, what’s difficult about that?
Minor gripes aside, the relatively flat lighting made for some nice close-up shots of the mute swans. There are also black swans nesting there and this is something of a rarity – the first time for 600 years apparently. Anyway, here’s a picture:
The mute swans also provided some photo opportunities:
I’ve posted some more over on my photo blog.
Sunday took us out to one of my favourites; a bluebell wood. This is so typical of the English countryside in late spring.
Fortunately, my latent migraine that surfaced mid morning on the Saturday and again on Sunday (staved off with copious doses of “migraleve”) didn’t put too much of a dampener in that I have a couple of hundred pictures to wade through.
The final insult was the bike not starting and having to be ignominiously transported home on the back of a flatbed. The problem appears to have been a damp connection causing a discharge from the battery – at least that appears to be it… The bike is starting now after a night connected to the battery charger.
The first time in 600 years?!?!?!? Wow! I love your pics Mark, you have the ability to be able to see how the pics are going to turn out before you snap them. I know that sounds mad but when I take pics, they rarely seem to capture what it was I saw that made me want to take them in the first place. Loving the swans and bluebells pics. I’ve had a terrible headache these past couple of days, it’s a sinus type of thing and comes on at this time of the year so you have my sympathies.
Each of these images has been cropped to tighten the composition. To be fair, I do consider this when initially composing the image in the viewfinder. There’s also the matter of waiting. The black swans were moving about – I knew that there would come a point when the two adults came together to provide that nice pose – I just watched and waited for the moment.
You also have to bear in mind that I took around 200 pictures over the two days. 😉