All of these are very nice Woodsider79.

Nice shots. The first is my favorite.

Nice but I would use Photoshop to get rid of the bottle and the thing on his lap.

It has been just too hot here to even think about photography. So here is a little sub par set that I shot for my Romanesque project. Santuario della Bastia, in isola della Scala, near Verona, was near a place I had to go to for a site visit. it dates from 1126, and is in a pretty location. Wrong time of day, so the pictures are a bit so, so.

Amazing result from a phone camera. PP in camera or in post?

Interesting that the tiny sensor has given you a huge DoF.

It is always enjoyable to watch the sun slipping down behind the horizon. I think this was the best moment.

I like these intricacies of stone, brick, mortar etc. Absolutely amazing variety.

It seems surprisingly verdant there in this first shot. You've actually still got some grass!

Thanks. In post.

Very nicely composed!

There area nice warm yellow colour and light here

It is just magical!

I can feel the humidity from your shots!

It is a pretty building

Early Morning Encounters

The excessive heat throughout July has made walks in the countryside feel like something of a chore. As a result, despite managing a few woodland walks, I didn't get out very much during most of it. However, the temperatures dropped a little last week, staying on the right side of 20C on most days, at least up until mid morning, so, thanks to a series of early starts, I was able to get out onto the moors without spontaneously combusting.

I was hoping for some animal encounters while out and about, so I persuaded myself to bring the Nikon Z8 and my longest lens, the hefty 100-400. In a concession to reducing the weight of my bag ever so slightly, I swapped out my 24-70 f/4S lens in place of the usual 24-70 f/2.8S which is a bit of a lump. I was still grumbling at the weight, but it was manageable and at least it wasn't the GFX kit (which would have been useless for what I ended up photographing anyway, although the tripod might have been handy).

A Lone Kestrel

On Monday, I saw a number of Kestrels, but didn't manage to get anywhere even remotely close to them, so, despite grabbing several shots of them in flight, they were all very small in the frame. Returning to the same spot on Tuesday, I spotted this female, resting on a fencepost. Again, I didn't manage to get very near to her before she flew off, but I was close enough to grab this shot, which is about half the height of the uncropped frame, so it didn't need upscaling.

The Deer In The Woods

After the Kestrel flew off, I hung around for a while, but she didn't return, so eventually I made my way back through the woods and was pleased to stumble across this Roe Deer. He watched me for a few minutes as I crept closer, then, when he'd decided I was too close, he calmly trotted off down the path, eventually disappearing into the ferns.

A Very Vocal Buzzard

As I neared the edge of the woods, I heard the haunting cry of a Buzzard overhead. Sure enough, as I stepped out into the open I could see a pair of them circling overhead, calling out at they did and no doubt striking terror into any small mammals and insects running for cover in the field beneath them.

Determination

Another shot of one of the Buzzards, looking very determined in its quest for food.

A Gap In The Trees

Wednesday morning and I'd just entered the woods. I was halfway up the embankment that leads to the main woodland path when I heard that sorrowful cry once again back in the direction from which I'd just come, so I turned around and headed back down the path towards the edge of the woods. As I neared the boundary, I heard the cry once again, only lower and to my left. Looking in that direction, I spotted a large shape moving through the air, just beyond the trees, so I lifted the camera and tracked it until it passed a gap, taking this shot as it did.

Unsurprisingly, the autofocus failed to snap to the target, giving me a slightly out of focus bird, but as the Buzzard was relatively close to me, I didn't need to crop the image, so a sharpening pass in Topaz helped to mask the issue quite successfully, probably because it had quite a lot of pixels to work with.

I like how, despite being well hidden in the shadows of the woods, the Buzzard easily managed to spot me as it swooped by. Glad I'm a bit bigger than a fieldmouse.

Survey

Once I was back outside the woods, I remained there for a while as the Buzzard continued to survey the field in long, slow loops, gradually rising higher on thermals and eventually moving on to other hunting grounds.

Mystic Moors

Taken from my vantage point on the edge of the woods, looking towards Black Coppice. The light was really nice on this early morning, with a soft glow over the moors. Here, the sun has just got high enough to clip the tops of the trees on the upper slopes of Black Coppice.

Nice Light

After returning to the woods and exiting higher up on the other side, I had this view of the soft light spilling across Anglezarke Moor. I'm not crazy about the composition, but I like the mood.

A Dispute

As I returned to the location where I'd seen the Kestrels earlier in the week, I was treated to a brief appearance of one of them sat on a rock. As expected, she flew away shortly after my arrival, so I sat and waited for ten minutes in case she returned. She didn't, but I could hear a series of angry squawks coming from somewhere distant on my right. These were distinctly the sounds of Kestrels, so I went to investigate.

I ended up sat at the edge of a nearby field watching a pair of Kestrels flying in and out of a distant tree. They were making quite a kerfuffle and I had no idea what was going on. Eventually, one of them left the tree and flew off, closely followed by the other.

I tracked them with the camera as they crossed the field, but they quickly ended up too far away for decent shots. Still, I took a sequence anyway that, upon review revealed one of them was carrying a fieldmouse that the other was attempting to steal. Clearly there's no honour amongst Kestrels. Here's another shot from the sequence that shows one of the mid air attacks. By this point they were at the other end of the field to where I was, so it's a very heavy crop (it's also a 16:9 ratio as I cropped this for use in a video I put together).

On Guard

The Kestrels disappeared over a hedge in the direction of the quarry I'd seen them at earlier, so I wandered back up to there, to see if anything was going on. When I arrived, one of them was sat on a ledge, tightly grasping its prize in its deadly talons.

Come Closer If You Dare

As I tried to get closer the Kestrel spotted me and gave me a menacing look.

Phoenix Rising

Shortly after, the other Kestrel returned and made a further attempt to steal the poor mouse. There was a protracted battle on the ground, but despite some very determined attacks, she managed to keep a firm grip on her prey and fended off the opportunistic foe.

Here she is taking to the air, with the mouse in her beak, while her ambusher lurks in the grass to the right.

In Search Of The Next Meal

Having systematically dismantled and eaten the mouse for breakfast (I have an entire video featuring this gory process) she sets off again, no doubt in search of lunch.

Small Tortoiseshell

After Wednesday's excitement, Thursday was more sedate. No sign of the Buzzards, a glimpse of one of the Kestrels and a brief sighting of a deer in the woods. However I did see a lot of Butterflies, so many in fact, that I couldn't resist grabbing a few shots of them with the 100-400. It's not a macro lens and quite often plain refused to focus on them, not even trying to hunt unless I did most of the work and manually focused it first. But when it did manage to focus, it did a pretty nice job of rendering them in the bright sunlight.

The Red Admiral

Oddly enough, I've always thought the previous type of butterfly was a Red Admiral, but apparently not according to Google image search.

Bike Fest

Today was bike fest in Narva and I went there with my OM-3 and 25 mm fixed lens. This setup was bit limiting and I wished that I'd taken some zoom with me but with custom button set to 2x digital zoom I managed to get some shots.

Head of column

Column was several hundred meters long, here is first part of it, it goes bit to the left and then behing that background building with tower.

Column was organized along city's main square and there was quite lot of people participating and looking.

Look at that...thing.

Look at that...thing. Again.

Look closely.

Owner's jacket backside was also piece of art

Oh, it's Yamaha

End of column is there somewhere. All these bikes started to move at 13 and as you can imaging it was very-very loud.

Great set, second with night water flying seems to be fun to the max.
I think that in first shot the waves should have more attention, so maybe cutting third or even half from bottom brings more attention to it.

Nice use of multiexposure in first shot.
Great light on second shot.

The other shots are nice, but this is great, although it really needs to be seen big to appreciate it properly.

I climbed Bowfell a couple of times, including one quite epic route that also included Pike O'Blisco, Crinkle Crags and Esk Pike. I'm sure I'd have gone back many more times by now if the whole heart problems thing hadn't kicked in. The image I use for my avatar was taken up there on The Great Slab.

Good point! Good thought.

Some pretty funky looking bikes, there. I love the skeletons.

I get the appeal of trying to capture BIF shots, similar to hunting them with a gun but far more humane. Exciting series, some excellent shots to peruse, I like the 'rescued' shot, particularly the feet. But I really like the light in the deer shot here.

Jesus! Johnny Depp, eat your heart out.