River Dee | Mark Simms Photography

River Dee Finale

Before anyone says anything – yes I have posted these images previously (on Sunday just gone in fact under the title “Messing About On The River”) and no I’m not going mad, well no more than usual anyway!

Let me explain. On Monday late afternoon, and again this morning, I started to receive a series of comments/pingbacks to the original post from some rather dubious looking WordPress site(s) – in total I must have received a hundred or so. As you can imagine this quickly became very annoying. So I’ve marked them all as Spam in the hope that Akismet will recognise them in future. I also took the decision to delete the original post – my thinking is that surely I can’t receive anymore comments (spam or genuine) to a post that no longer exists?

Touch-wood and fingers-crossed, I haven’t received anymore dodgy comments since about 8:30am this morning. Hence the reason why I’m re-posting these images again now, under a different title.

So, for the second time of asking, here are my final half-dozen images from the River Dee shoot. As you can see there were a number of other people enjoying the river that day, not just the various rowing clubs in the head race that we had specifically come to see:

Fingers crossed that this post doesn’t attract the spammers again……and to those spammers I say bugger-off and get a life!!

© Mark Simms Photography (2013)

Wet Dog

Whilst we were down by the River Dee taking shots of the rowing action, we were also entertained by the antics of two dogs playing in the water and on the river bank:

© Mark Simms Photography (2013)

After The Rowing

A few more shots from the “Head Race” on the River Dee that we attended last month, but this time concentrating on the events after the rowing was done:

© Mark Simms Photography (2013)

Rowing on the Dee 2

A few more shots of rowing action on the River Dee in Chester:

© Mark Simms Photography (2013)

Rowing on the Dee

In my last post Birds In Flight, I mentioned that we were actually down by the River Dee in Chester to see friends of ours from York City Rowing Club compete in a “Head Race” against other clubs from around the country. Well, as promised, here is the first of a series of shots from that event…..hope you enjoy!

And yes I’ve been playing with Nik’s Silver Efex Pro 2 again…;0)

© Mark Simms Photography (2013)

Birds In Flight

This time last month I was in Chester down by the river Dee. We were actually there taking shots of friends of ours from York City Rowing Club involved in a “Head Race” against other clubs from around the country – I’ll be posting a selection of images from this event in the not too distant future.

However whilst I was standing on the river bank I couldn’t help but be distracted by the birds flying low over the river. Now, I have little experience of trying to capture birds in flight, but I thought it was the perfect opportunity to give it a go. I had my 70-200mm lens already mounted and set the camera to high-speed continuous shot, AI Servo mode, F4 and ISO 800 – this was giving me shutter speeds of around 1/4000 to 1/5000. With my EOS 7d able to capture 8 frames per second it wasn’t long before I had racked-up 100+ shots. However my keeper-rate wasn’t great. I reckon I had ten or so useable images, of which the two below were the best:

The main difficulty I found was with my panning technique – the birds were just moving too quickly for me to keep up, also the little critters refused to fly in a straight line and were dodging and weaving all over the place. I think my keeper rate would have been improved by sacrificing a little shutter speed for a narrower aperture – I think something like F6.3 or even F7.1 would have given me a more useable depth of field and something a little more forgiving from a focussing perspective. I must remember that for next time.

Overall, although I enjoyed the challenge, I came away (and especially later after I had reviewed the shots) thinking that this type of photography is a little too hit and miss for my tastes. I’m sure, as with most things in life, that if I was to practice more often that I would achieve better results and almost certainly increase my hit rate of useable shots. However I still can’t help feeling that regardless of how experienced or skilful one becomes with this type of photography, that the results will always owe as much to luck as to judgement…..but then maybe I’m being a little unfair, what do you think?

For those who follow this blog regularly you will know that I’m involved in a photography competition run by the Digital Lightroom. The current round is “Movement & Motion” and birds in flight would make a great subject for this theme. It’s still not too late to enter as the closing date isn’t until Friday 19th April. So why don’t you check out the details of the competition on The Digital Lightroom and give it a go – there are prizes to be won!

West Kirby Golden

This shot was taken a couple of weeks ago and is a view from West Kirby on the Wirral looking out across the Dee Estuary towards Hilbre Islands sitting on the horizon.

I’ve used Nik’s HDR Efex Pro 2 software to combine together three bracketed images of the same subject but with three different exposures.

This is my first ever HDR image and as such I would particularly welcome your feedback on this one.

Old Boats

The River Dee shoreline in Heswall is another of my favourite local photography haunts. It’s always very muddy, regardless of the weather, and it really doesn’t matter how careful I am, I always seem to come back caked and splattered in the stuff…..but that’s probably just me…..;0).

It’s worth the visit though because of the old boats that lie neglected and decaying along the shore…..it really is a bit of a graveyard.