CAPTURE NEW HORIZONS

This is Day 6 of my 7 Day Nature Photo Challenge which I was nominated for by Tom Hodgetts of Skye Walks and Photography. This shot was taken at Belhaven Bay just before sunset.  The seabirds had congregated in the surf as the tide was coming in to feed.  The birds were silhouetted against the brightly lit wet sand and I took several shots of the scene on the Nikon D800 and Nikon 80-200mm f2.8. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- PLEASE SUPPORT THIS BLOG BY VISITING THE ADVERTISERS ON THIS PAGE By clicking on the adverts you are helping support this blog - thank you. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ALL IMAGES ARE THE PROPERTY OF MACLEAN PHOTOGRAPHIC AND CANNOT BE USED FOR ANY PURPOSE WITHOUT PRIOR PERMISSION MacLean Photographic run Tours and Workshops in East Lothian and th...

Today is day 3 of the 7 day Nature Photo Challenge set by Tom Hodgetts and today is a picture from one of the natural wonders of the world, which is right on our doorstep.  I am talking about the Northern Gannet colony on Bass Rock in the Firth of Forth.  We see The Bass every day (when there isn't any sea fog of course) from the end of our road and after two years I still marvel at the annual spectacle of 150,000 Northern Gannets ( Morus  bassanus)  living, eating and breeding in such a small area. In 2014 I had the pleasure of landing on Bass Rock as part of a Scottish Seabird Landing Trip and it is still one of my all time top three Wildlife experiences (whale watching in South Africa and the Sea Eagles on the Isle of Mull). I took hundreds of images during the three hours I spent on Bass Rock but this shot of a Gannet spreading its wings is one of my favourites.  The wingspan of a Gannet is impressive but it is even more so close up. This image wa...

This is another shot from the trip out to the Isle of May in June and it was the main reason we made the trip by boat out from North Berwick, it was to see the Atlantic Puffins that nest on the island during the spring and summer. The Puffin or Fratercula arctica, eats sand eels by the bucket full and and they also have to feed their young which are in burrows on the cliff tops.  The Puffins usually stop with a beak full of eels making sure the coast is clear before flying to their nest site.  It is just a matter of being patient and catching a bird before they fly off. This shot was taken on the Fujifilm X-T1 and the XF55-200mm f3.5/4.8 lens. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- PLEASE SUPPORT THIS BLOG BY VISITING THE ADVERTISERS ON THIS PAGE By clicking on the adverts you are helping support this blog - thank you. ---------------------------------------------------------...

This image was taken on last weekend's trip out to the Isle of May and shows thousands of Gannets circling Bass Rock.  This was taken from below them on the RIB and I love this shot for the sheer power of nature.  Bass Rock is one of the natural wonders of the world and I feel quite privileged to be able to see it everyday from the end of the road here in Dunbar. Image taken on a Fujifilm X-Pro1 + XF18mm f2R lens

Well worth the wait! That was the thought when we got off the RIB on the Isle of May.  We'd originally booked the Scottish Seabird Centre's Isle of May landing trip in May but it was cancelled the morning of the trip due to bad weather, so we had rebooked for the 28 June.  The weather forecast was looking decidedly 'iffy' but we arrived at the SSC's North Berwick Harbour office to find that the trip was on - phew. The skies were grey and overcast as we headed out into the Firth of Forth and our first stop was Bass Rock.   I'd done a landing trip on The Bass in June 2014 and this time we sailed slowly around the base of this monolith with 150000 Gannets covering every nook and cranny.  It is a spectacular sight and the smell of fish was quite pungent.    Our skipper Colin then gunned the engines and we off skipping across the waves towards the Isle of May. As we approached the island the weather had improved and blue skies wer...

Yesterday we took a Scottish Seabird Centre boat trip out to the Isle of May in the Firth of Forth to photograph some of the 200,000 seabirds that live on the island, including some of the many thousands of Puffins that breed on the Isle of May each year. Today Fujifilm launch Firmware Version 4 for the Fujifilm X-T1 and I have been testing a beta version of the new software for Fujifilm that significantly improves the autofocus on the Japanese manufacturers flagship Compact System Camera (CSC).   The trip to the Isle of May gave me another opportunity to test the Zone and Wide Tracking Focus on the updated software and photograph these small birds in flight with the XF50-140mm f2.8. Atlantic Puffins  ( Fratercula arctica ) are only 32cm (13 inches) long and fly low with their wings beating at 400 times per minute.  They are very difficult to track with the camera because they fly so quickly but there are so many of them on the Isle of May I had plen...