Wild Birds in Flight
This was the expressive title of Alan Saunders’ talk on 24 March. So members were intrigued to see that his first projected image was that of a Badger, without wings! Alan hastened to assure us that he had widened his presentation somewhat since having to think of a suitable title a year ago. But indeed he presented us with a feast of birds flying, swimming, and in a variety of poses. Amongst the 300 plus images were Blackbirds, Blue-Tits, Bramlings, Chaffinches, Curlews, Ducks, Dunnocks Doves, Fulmars, Flamingos, Gannetts, Geese, Guillimots, Goldfinches, Gulls, Herons, Kingfishers, Lapwings, Magpies, Mallards, Moorhens, Nuthatches, Ospreys, Owls, Pied Wagtails, Pheasants, Pigeons, Pintails, Razorbills, Robins, Ruffs, Rooks, Red Kites, Ringed Plovers, Swallows, Sea Eagles, Stone Chats, Sedge Warblers, Swans Sandpipers, and Woodpeckers,
To end the first half of the talk Alan gave a Pictures-to-Exe presentation of giant mechanical birds; a range of aircraft. To conclude the evening Alan gave a P2E of Grey Seals of Donna Nook; both P2E’s with musical accompaniment, Alan thanked Martin Currie for assistance in producing his two P2E’s. Amazingly Alan has only been a keen photographer for about five years, and has been a club member for three years. But in this time has done well in International Photographic Salons and he was pleased to get a FIAP Gold medal award for the best set of 4 prints in the 29th Northern Counties International Salon of Photography in 2008. More information can be gleaned from his Web site. Members were interested to know how the images were captured and what camera and lens was used. Alan had recently acquired a Canon 1DsMkII. Advice was that it locked onto the birds in flight better than the 1DMkIII. His previous camera had been the Canon 20D, but with this Camera he had missed more shots than he had taken. He needed to use high ISO values to allow the faster shutter speeds needed to get sharp pictures, but this often produced noisy backgrounds, which he had to deal with in PhotoShop
In his vote of thanks Phil Riley expressed admiration for Alan’s images and the dedication they involved. We had seen, in two hours the results of many months of early mornings, sitting, cold, waiting for the birds to appear. We had seen a very professional presentation.