Gylly Hotel Fire Night

Just went back down to see what was going on and to take some shots at night. They are still hosing down the building and there is still smoke and stream rising.
These are a couple of the shots that I took very tricky lighting due to the brightness of the floodlights coupled with some very dark shadows.

Fire at Gylly Hotel

Had a go at some press photography today. Gylly beach hotel caught fire at about mid day today so after my lecture I went down and joined the masses of photographers taking photographs. I missed the flames and drama but I found the smoke quite an interesting subject matter. 

The Lizard

I went to the Lizard yesterday on a field trip with David Chapman. Although we were looking at plants there was a lot of bird life to photograph including some amazing opportunities for Jackdaws. I also saw my first Chough which are returning after extinction in Cornwall, however I was unable to get any good photographs. These are just a few snaps that I took while we were walking.

Top to Bottom: Pony, Jackdaw, Meadow Pipit

Scotland

Mountain Hare

Male Red Grouse shot from the mini bus window

 Male Red Grouse again shot from the mini bus

 Black Grouse leck 

These images were shot after spending a night in a hide set up right next to the lek site. They started to lek at 5:30 am and finished around 8:30. I was trying to capture the action however at f. 2.8 it was not easy to capture the action and focus correctly.

 Two males and a hen

 Strutting about 

 Badger 

I went to Photograph Pine Martins one night however they didn't come to the hide on this particular night. I did have some Badgers to entertain me though. This one was shot full frame 24mm 

 Mountain Hare

while people tried to get as close as possible to them by stalking I decided to position myself down the hill and wait for the Hares to run down towards me. I wanted to show the spectacular landscape that they live in and include the hair. 

 Ptarmigan 

These birds are so well camouflaged that I walked right past this one and had to retrace my steps to capture it. 

 Another one, this time a female shot just as the sun was going down.

 These two shots were photographed in a blizzard, very tricky conditions for photography. The wind kept blowing snow into the front of the lens and composing/focusing was very tricky due to ice building up in the view finder.

The view from where we were staying