It turns out that if you lie on the grass and hide the toy under your leg, you can get Toby to pause just long enough to focus the 135 STF ;-)

…and then you get a lick to convince you to throw the toy

Here I am!

And there I am again

A quick drive to get the kids asleep (and to get Daddy out of the house) took us to Minard. I’ve been here before shooting (but that was at night) and I’ve played poohsticks at this bridge as a kid, but I hadn’t noticed the nice curve of the stream into the distance towards the mountains near Anascaul.

I was processing a few photos from my previous trips to Inch and I realised that there’s a theme developing in the images I like: isolated figures walking down the beach, often processed in black and white.  I’m not sure what will come of it but I feel there’s a project here

No, not those wrens ;-)

This is the first time I’ve been able to photograph a wren and this little fella happily posed for me with his meal. He even allowed me time to change lens

Actually, this was taken on the evening before yesterday’s image and was what convinced me that there was some photographic potential here. The tide was a bit higher at this time so there are as many visually useful rocks to play with. Still, I like this one too.

I have a special place in my heart for Choughs: they’re not too well known, they are fast and graceful flyers, they seem to have tender relationships (often seen flying together) but mostly because they look like a crow who got too curious about a can of red paint!

I often take a walk along the cliffs at Inch Strand to see what birds are around and this is Chough season. Unfortunately, there was only one pair this time but they seemed to be breeding. In previous years I’ve seen 2-3 pairs so perhaps the recent sea defense works have disturbed them.

Anyway, I know that selective colouring is a bit passé these days but I couldn’t resist with the above image. Here’s a few more of them

Do you see how hard the nest is to spot?

Graceful flight

Nice silhouette

I used to go fishing with my dad and brothers at a little place called Bunaneer. It’s just off the Inch to Annascaul road, where the river meets the sea. Anyway, it’s been year since I was down there and they’ve since put in a very nice slipway and some conveniently positions roads. This was with the 10stop filter just to smooth out the water and highlight the stationary rocks.

Hilary needed some photos taken for a crochet competition. This was one of the rejected images as apparently “it’s all bokeh” and you can’t tell it’s on Inchydoney beach. Bah! Well, after the artistic stuff I took a few to satisfy the client ;-)

This lamb was a master of the art of escape: whilst his brothers and sisters maaaaaa’d helplessly, he’d jump the little barrier inside the pen and then try to crawl underneath the door. A sheep with initiative? It seems not all sheep deserve their flock-following instincts. If he was a photographer, he wouldn’t shoot Canon or Nikon so I guess I felt some affinity with him :-)