Macro Monday... Seagulls on the Wing...

29 November 2010

We decided on a walk on Sunday...  I can't believe that this is only the 3rd walk I have gone on in the past 2 weeks... this appalls me... I look outside at the cold weather, give a shiver and turn back to the warmth...

These are not quite as close-up as I usually try to do for Macro Monday... but I did get some close ups of the Seagulls on the Wing... so I thought I would use this set of images for Macro Monday...

Other wonderful Macro photos can be seen at Lisa's Chaos...

We took the new Christmas camera with us... took two lenses, the kit lens 18-55mm and the 55-200mm lens that was already on the camera.  We ended up keeping it on as it was too windy and cold to risk trying to change the lens without getting dust into the camera's inside...

I have been reading a couple of books by Bryan Peterson and one of the things that he suggests is going out with a theme in mind... along with your camera...

My theme was Seaguls on the Wing... and I hoped for some close up images for Macro Monday...

Initially I had some problems... it was windy... it was bitterly cold 2 deg Celsius... and I was shivering...

At which point I wondered why on earth I had opted for the second hand 55-200mm Nikon lens that didn't have the VR...  many of my images were very blurred... probably due to my shivering...

Also, in the wind the seagulls seemed to swirl and swoop in the air at such speed...

I found myself spinning around in a weird pirouette trying to keep the particular seagull in focus...

or at least still in the frame...  many images had parts of seagulls... a tip of a wing, a tail, as they disappeared out of my picture...

I have always wanted to take photographs of seagulls flying... Flight is so amazing... they are so graceful...

The sea was incredibly rough... Crawfordsburn doesn't usually have such high waves... normally we travel up to the north coast to see the big breakers coming in from the Atlantic Ocean...

I loved the way the were able to move their wings so that they could literally stay still in the air... while watching the water below...

Many of the seagulls I photographed today were immature birds who don't have their adult plummage yet...

I loved the textural quality of the rough water...

Looking up I realised that the sky was starting to get its pinky sunset colours...

They looked so elegant from behind...

Now I need to work out how to keep warm when taking photographs outside in the middle of winter...  at least we only had -2 deg Celsius last night... my sister Pip had -17 deg Celsius in Powys...  incredibly cold weather when we are still in November and winter hasn't quite begun...  maybe I should invest in some type of thermal clothing and knit a pair of fingerless gloves to stop my hands going mauve and white...