CAPTURE NEW HORIZONS

The Great Wall of China is one of those amazing places that actually lives up to the hype.  I got the opportunity to visit the Great Wall on the recent trip to China with the FIA GT1 World Championship, travelling 2-hours outside of Beijing to a 20km stretch of restored wall with some of my work colleagues from SRO and several of the GT1 drivers. The guide on the trip started throwing some amazing statistics into her introduction.  Parts of the wall date back over 2500 years and at one stage was 10000km long (yes ten thousand!), which makes Hadrian's Wall look a bit of a poor relation.  We spent the morning on the Wall in 30 degree heat, with some steep climbs and steps that changed pitch at irregular intervals (this was a defence mechanism to keep attackers who gained a foothold on the wall off guard).  The climbs and heat certainly gave us all a work out which came as part of the entry price.  An amazing place and very pleased we got to visit.

Penguins - cute, flightless birds that live in the Antarctic, right?  Well, yes, this is correct on the whole. Most people think they are cute, and penguins are definitely flightless, but not all wild penguins live in the cold Antarctic, there are colonies of penguins that live further north, some in South Africa and South America. One of these is the colony of African Penguins at Boulders Beach near Simons Town on the Cape peninsula in South Africa. On our recent trip to Cape Town we put it on the agenda to go to the Cape of Good Hope and on the way we decided to visit Boulders Beach.  This turned out to be a great choice as we've never seen wild penguins before.  These are wild penguins but they are used to thousands of visitors that travel to Boulders beach so aren't in the slightest bit bothered by the human presence.  To keep humans and penguins apart there is a series of wooden walkways that have been built above the beach. You arr...

Many moons ago back in the late 1980s we bought, (or were given – I can’t remember which) a book detailing the best places around the world to watch whales. Top of the list was a place called Hermanus in South Africa, a place where you could watch whales from the cliffs and we made it our goal to visit Hermanus at some point.  Fast forward to August 2011 and we decided to visit Cape Town for our annual holiday.  August is at the end of the South African winter and while the average temperatures aren’t as bad as cold, rain swept Britain, there was an even better reason to go – it was the start of the whale season at Hermanus, which was just 120km from Cape Town. Hermanus Twelve hours in the cheap seats of a South African Airways Airbus was soon forgotten on arrival at our hotel in Cape Town, which was basking in unseasonal 20+ degree sunshine.  Trips were planned for the 9 day stay and top of the agenda was hiring a car so we could get to Hermanus. Car was dul...

The last two months have seen me visit Belgium, Slovakia, France and two weeks in China with the FIA GT1, GT3 Championships and the Blancpain Endurance Series.  During this time we also managed to grab a 10-day family holiday in Cape Town, South Africa.  What a place!  There is so much to see and do and I will post some of the pictures and stories from our stay in this fantastic country at a later date.  The picture of the week is a shot taken of Table Mountain and Cape Town from across the bay on Robben Island, the site of the prison that held Nelson Mandela and the other political prisoners from the Apartheid era.

Some photographers wish for clear blue skies and perfect conditions but, while I agree with this to a degree, there is nothing like the light just before or after a spell of bad weather.  This was the case on a recent trip to Oban in Scotland where the West Coast was being battered by waves of rain fronts coming in off the Atlantic.  The weather could be described a typically Scottish and made for some dramatic images as the rain approached, went through and then the sun would break through the clouds to spotlight areas of the wonderful scenery. The most important thing to remember is to be prepared for the worst that Scotland's weather can throw at you. Wear the correct clothing and protect your camera gear but most importantly don't put yourself in a dangerous position whether on the coast or up a mountain. You also need to work fast.  The sunlight on the waves breaking at Seil Island lasted a few minutes before the rain clouds closed in.  See the picture and a...

Armed with a macro lens your own garden can be a fascination world to discover at this time of year. Insects and flowers are photographed life size or even bigger and details that are almost invisible to the naked eye suddenly come to the fore.   The biggest problem is subject movement or camera movement.  The ideal solution is to put the camera on a tripod but for high speed subjects such as bees I found this impossible and had to hand hold the camera to allow freedom of movement.  Wind can also be a problem and a windbreak was set up for some of the flower images to stop the wind causing movement.  All these images were taken on a Nikon D90 with a 60mm F2.8 Micro Nikkor with a Delta TTL ring flash to provide illumination.  The lens was stopped down to f29 or f32 and  a flash sync speed of 1/125 or 1/200.  ISO was set at 200. ALL IMAGES ARE THE PROPERTY OF MA CLEAN PHOTOGRAPHIC AND CANNOT BE USED FOR ANY PURPOSE WITHOUT PRIOR PE...

Finally after ages of grey and damp horrible winter English weather we finally got a half decent day to get out for a family day out.  We chose Fountains Abbey near Ripon, which is owned by the National Trust and is a World Heritage Site. Beautiful scenery and the remains of the Abbey that was founded in 1132.  Well worth a visit.  Fountains Abbey is approximately two miles outside of Ripon and is one of the largest and best preserved Cistercian houses in the country.  More info at  http://www.fountainsabbey.org.uk/