When the weather is calm and you know there will be good light then Pennington Marshes is a great place to go this time of year.  The terns are back and I love photographing them when they are fishing.  Either as they dive or when they hover.  This morning I was lucky enough to find a pair of Little Terns bonding through feeding.  Very sweet.

The snow this time was better for photographs here in the New Forest because it was a bit warmer and it was sticking to the trees and plants so I ventured out early this morning to play with the camera.  Found some Red Deer and a Roe Deer but couldn’t find the Fallow Bucks.

This photo is from a shoot with Louise Rogers.  I decided to use it as a competition entry at the camera club and wanted to focus on her muscle definition and her veins which is why I cropped it the way I did.  I rather cheekily called it “The Weaker Sex” and that is one reason why I deliberately kept in the lipstick and enhanced the light falling on the nail varnish.  The flash of blond hair helped too.  These touches would have been lost if I went down the route of monochrome so I kept the colour image.  It’s almost impossible to predict how a judge will react to a photo like this in a club competition so a felt pleasantly surprised when it was awarded 10/10 and a Seal of Merit.

I have a couple more body building shoots lined up soon but this time it will be men.  When you get subjects that through disciplined training and years of dedication become extraordinary you have a great opportunity for very striking photos.  It’s something that I truly respect which is why I like this genre.  Watch this space.

On a cold snowy “FIRST DAY OF SPRING” I though I would try to capture some bullfinches at the bird table.  Even though they come regularly it’s much more difficult than you think to get the timing right together with the focal plane and they don’t always cooperate with their line of approach either.

Today I wasn’t keen on going for a run.  It was raining and my injured Achilles still didn’t feel great but my daughters Viszla Vincent needed to go out and my wife Jo insisted.  Rather glumly I went but half way round I accidentally scared up a Short Eared Owl.  These are pretty rare anyway but even rarer for this part of the New Forest.  This was the first one I had seen in this location in the 35 years of living here.  Half an hour later, armed with my favourite wildlife kit, with the sun starting to break through I found him again.  I hope he stays for the winter but I don’t think this habitat will give him enough food so I expect he will move on.

But before you go, many thanks for brightening up a rainy day.