autofantasia's photos with the keyword: Great

Last of the dogs as spotted at VW North West 2011 , for the moment at least, and as you can see I left the biggest till last!

A 'nearly ran' for this week's Sunday Challenge , for which we were asked to photograph a bird or birds . After struggling to get close enough to a group of village ducks on the river at Great Ayton, or to get many decent shots, this particular duck's actions summed up how I was starting to feel. I'm also not entirely convinced that it was just diving for food. I tell you, being mooned by a duck isn't all it's quacked up to be!

For this week's Sunday Challenge , for which we were asked to get out and photograph a bird or birds . Now that may sound like an easy challenge to many of you out there. I mean as one of our 'leaders' pointed out everywhere in the world has birds: you can visit a lake, a woodland, a wetland or even take pics of the garden birds from the comfort of your own home. They can be flying, up a tree, in a bush, on the ground, in the water, or a budgie in a cage. Yes indeed, all true. However, I quickly came to realise that much of what you can achieve in this area is down to the equipment you have at your disposal. Now whilst I am lucky enough to have a Nikon D90, I only have the 18-105mm kit lens that came with it and although it's proven to be quite sufficient for most of the photographs I take it does have obvious limitations. For this particular challenge I found it very difficult to fill the frame with my chosen subject even when I'd zoomed in as far as I could. And when I tried to get closer to the subjects to compensate for this I found most birds flew off before I could get close enough to get the shot I was after. So, accepting the limitations of my equipment and my poor field craft I decided to pay a visit to nearby Great Ayton. This small village, a few miles from Northallerton, has a large duck population and so I thought they'd be more used to people and so might be more tolerant of any would be photographers. Once again though what sounded easy became more complicated on the ground and taught me much not only about my camera, but also ducks in general. For example, I thought with it being a sunny day they'd be on the village green or sunning themselves on the river bank meaning light wouldn't be an issue ... no such luck! No, it turns out that when it's warm and sunny these ducks prefer to be in the water underneath the shade of the densest trees they can find. And whilst I might normally try to overcome that by shooting at a slower shutter speed I couldn't do that because these pesky birds rarely seem to stay still for a second: constantly moving, flapping their wings and doing anything they can to make getting a decent shot of them nigh on impossible. This meant that in the end, from literally hundreds of shots (yes really), I only managed to get a handful that I was happy with ... proving that shooting birds isn't all it's quacked up to be!

EDIT: 11/112014 This was originally produced for a Sunday Challenge a few months ago. I had hoped to revisit this theme in time for Armistice Day, but sadly haven't managed it. So I hope folks will forgive me for moving this to the front of my photostream to help mark this special date. The original description can be found below: Those that follow the efforts of the Sunday Challenge crew will know that a recent topic was ground level. Whilst this shot was not taken until after the challenge closed, and so wasn't a likely entry, it was certainly inspired by that particular challenge. It also enabled me to capture an image that I could use to produce something to commemorate the start of The Great War back in 1914. The subject is the war memorial at Romanby on the outskirts of Northallerton. I've tried to process the image sympathetically to give emphasis to the monument and the poppy wreath place on it. I also took out a few more modern features which were visible on the horizon that I felt detracted from th scene such as various TV ariels and a 30mph speed limit sign. The words are from Laurence Binyon's poem entitled "For the Fallen" and seem just as apt today as they did all those years ago when he first wrote them. So sad though that whilst people across the world look for ways to commemorate that particular war and all those who served on both sides, many millions of whom lost their lives, the news is full of stories of conflict still happening today. Seems whilst many of us will always remember there are still thousands who are either unwilling or incapable of learning from the past and coming together to make the world a better place. View large for best effect!