Wordless Wednesday:Tussac Bird

Some like it damp

After a beautiful October, November has got off to a damp start. But for some things that is not bad. On Saturday I was down in the Forest of Dean on an annual foray into autumn. As has been the case in recent years there was not really the light to capture the full glory of this beautiful place. We did enjoy a trip around Puzzlewood (well worth the visit if you are in the area), and the fungi at least seemed to be revelling in the conditions.

Fungi

Wordless Wednesday: House Martin Chick

Flights of fancy...

Yesterday I was back in Bushy Park. I didn't take many photos this time because I was doing some one-to-one wildlife photography training. The light was not the best for wildlife photography being a sold grey overcast. Conditions like that do, however, act as a giant soft box which does makes for interesting effects when shooting all white birds.

Towards the end of the day we were focusing on action shooting, so I headed to the main pond where people feed the ducks. There was lots of bread being thrown and the seagulls were very active, so whilst my client was occupied I grabbed a few shots myself. I now have rather too many flight shots of gulls - but I love the way that each new batch reveals new wing shapes and patterns. Here are a handful of my favourite shots from the day.

"V"


Angel's Wings


Walking on Air

Wildlife Photography Blog: Full steam ahead

Three months ago Wildlife Photography Blog was a twinkle in my eye. The initial concept of an RSS aggregator for wildlife blogs. It was only after I started working on it that the idea to publish its stream via Twitter occurred to me. Now heading towards November, it is the Twitter feed which is enjoying the most success.

The main site gets a reasonable amount of traffic, and performs well on Google searches, but it is not generating many clicks for its member sites. The RSS feed so far has less than ten subscribers and I have seen no evidence of it generating any traffic at all.

By contrast the Twitter stream has 350+ subscribers and is definitely referring traffic for member sites. At present the numbers are not huge - between 7-20 clicks for a single tweet. Where a WPB posting is retweeted by other twitter users this can increase to 40+.

The experiment is still live; it is too early to tell if the page rank element will be successful. For traffic generation, however, Twitter definitely seems to be the way to go.

So how can you help? Even one retweet of an entry significantly increases its visibility. And more followers means more traffic. So if you’re a wildlife photography blogger you can help the other members by retweeting their posts and encouraging your followers to follow WPB.

There are some wonderful blogs being written with fantastic photography, and I know there are hundreds of people out there who love great wildlife images. Hopefully over time WPB can be a way of connecting that audience with our blogs! Lets keep it moving…

Wordless Wednesday: Brown Skua

Diving Gannet

Having seen the gannets diving on Autumnwatch last night reminded me of an image I took on Mull but have not posted up so far. Over the week I was there I saw a lot of gannets diving along the cliff road by Loch Na Keal, but the weather was mostly too wet to even contemplate photography. The one day I did pass by and it was not raining there was just one gannet.

I watched it for about an hour and it was mostly too far away. I almost missed this shot as I was looking the other way as the gannet came closer. I turned just in time to see it do that little stall they do before drawing in their wings and plummeting like a Stuka. I fired off just three shots and this is the best of the bunch.

Diving Gannet

Not the best light, but I'm not unhappy with the shot. Now I need to find a friendly fishing boat and see if I can find them in larger numbers....