Burton Point To Point 3

More horses. The paper got back to me for some extra high ppi edits so they could run them in large format so that will be nice.

Burton Point to Point 2

Horses.

Burton Point to Point

Burton Point to Point, held at the Market Rasen Racecourse. I was really proud of myself here, because I am a very very shy person, but I was going at it like a pro, asking total strangers to pose, getting their names etc, sliding through bits where I wasn't supposed to be. For my race shots I sneaked into a viewing tower for a good view. For me this is extremeley brave - I was intimidated by the Slavonian Grebe.

Great Crested Grebe

I think these are Great Crested Grebe but I don't claim to be an expert and if anyone wants to disagree I'm prepared to stand corrected. They do a strange courtship ritual in which the male fetches some weed from underwater and offers it to the female. I'm going to do some checking and if it's that time of year I might try going back to get some shots. The light was horrible here - white skies and the light was bouncing off the water towards me, causing strange murky glare, but if it gets nicer then maybe I'll get some better ones.

And finally - the Slavonian Grebe

And here it is. After several visits involving extreme cold and damp, the derision of assorted chavs and the collection of several pounds of mud on my clothes .... this is the rare Slavonian Grebe. Rare around here that is. If anyone from Slavonia happens to visit this page they'll probably say 'What's the fuss about, they're ten a penny round here'. I don't care - it's nice to have some pictures of a rare bird, regardless.

Today I'm going to another Point to Point. The pictures from the last one got into three papers. I thought they might scrape into the reader's pictures section but they went in in full colour, large format as sports content, which was very encouraging. Today I am going officially for one of the local papers and I'm getting paid !! Not much - but enough to cover my entry fee and buying a programme. So you're in for a few days of horse pictures again.

3 Robins, a Chaffinch, a Coot

Sheffield 2

Sheffield 1

Having failed to get any great shots up on the moors I decided to wander round Sheffield, which has some very nice buildings both ancient and modern, and fail to get some nice pictures there too. More of these tomorrow. Oh you lucky people.

Caught up - Cavedale 3

Last few - I have some shots from Sheffield itself for a few days next. The castle is Peveril Castle. The small white horses are sheep.

Catching up - February 20th - Cavedale 2

Cavedale is a steep valley which heads South from Castleton (which is in the Hope Valley in Derbyshire) up onto the White Peak. At this time of the year the path is a stream. It is one of my favourite places - I think they may have shot parts of The Princess Bride here - it certainly looks like it.

Catching up - February 19th - Cavedale 1

So we went off to Sheffield and I confidently expected to be able to find some connectivity - but no luck. This trip was the first we have ever planned specifically around taking pictures - but the sun refused to shine - I was on ISO 400 and up and still fighting to get a reasonable shutter speed.

No time again

No time again - so here's a plant. We're off to Sheffield for a couple of days - if I can find a hot spot I may be able to keep posting - otherwise I'll catch up on Wednesday.