Owl and Raptor Photography "Trial" Day

As many of you know, I have been looking to add specific "Bird" photography days here at the Centre. Well, after lots of planning and thinking I decided to run a trial day this past Monday to test out a few things and work out what is achievable on one of these days.

I invited along a few regular photographers to the Centre, who have shown us much support over the past several years, to get their valued input and advice. Also invited where Wildarena for their professional input and to see the potential from a workshop group point of view. Oh yeah, and our resident crazy bird lady, senior keeper Katie, tagged along too :-)

Needless to say it was a huge success, with the help of the photographers I now know what we can do and how to do it on official "Owl and Raptor Photographic Days" at the BWC.

Workshops have already begun to start booking in days, and we too will be holding our own photographic bird days in 2011. Watch this space and our BWC website to see listings of the dates when they are launched later in the year.

In the mean time, I will be running a single "Owl and Raptor Photographic Day" this year sometime in early November. This will be a fully priced and scheduled day, allowing you to get some amazing photos, but also allowing me to fine tune the last few things before our 2011 dates go ahead. The date for this will be announced next week and will have 10 spaces available on a first come first serve basis. The day and what you can expect from one of our "Owl and Raptor Photographic Days" next year will be reported along side this announcement.

In the meantime, thanks go out to Mike Taylor, Terry Longley, Gary K Mann, Andy Crtichfield and David & Janet from Wildarena for all their help on Monday. Below are a few of my pics, and I will post a few of theirs next week to show you all the potential of this exciting new venture!

Summer Photo Competition Winner

Congratulations to Karen Jones for winning the Summer photo competition. The turn out for this one far exceeded the Spring competition, and overall I would suggest the standard was higher. Once again the keepers picked their favourites, from which world renowned wildlife photographer Heather Angel judged the winner.

Heather always seems to like movement in her photos, so it was no surprise to see that her shortlist of 3 showed some action. It was a difficult choice, and Heather wanted to list the two runner ups as special commendations (shown below) but ultimately chose the photo above of our roe fawn leaping from cover as her favourite.

Heather liked the way the photo showed some movement, the fawn coming out from the long grass. She liked the way it looked as if it could of been a shot from the wild, and particularly liked the lighting in the photo, the way it had the soft back light coming around the fawns head highlighting it.

Congratulations again to Karen Jones for winning. You can see more of her work on her flickr site linked here.


Special commendations were awarded to

"No you back down" Sean Cameron

"Ooh, that's sharp" Richard Corbett

BWC Summer photo competition

So the Summer photographic competition has ended, the entries have been seen and judged by professional wildlife photographer Heather Angel. But before I announce the winner, I thought I would show of some of my favorites from the over 100 entries we received.

Above is a beautiful portrait of one of our orphaned badger cubs, taken by "nitram0864" via flickr. As well as straight portraits we also got a nice mix of interaction with animals and keepers and even a few arty shots as well.

The most popular animals this competition were the Red Squirrel, maybe influenced by the Spring photo winner, and unsurprisingly our wildcat kittens which have seen many photographers camped out by their enclosure over the Summer weeks.

Wildcat kitten "Really wild" taken by "Scrappergill" via flickr

Eddie our albino squirrel taken by "Shaftinaction" via flickr, I liked seeing some of the less popular animals crop up in this Summers competition.

"Roe fawn leaping into cover" taken by "KarenJ2000" via flickr

Strix and Aluco taken by "Jaydonluck" via flickr

"No you back down" taken by "Sean Cameron" 

"Caught in the light" taken by "Martha Stevenson" via flickr

"Ooh, that's sharp" taken by "Rich3591" via flickr

"I think you are gorgeous" taken by "Linda Fenner"

If there was a competition for best caption, then I think this one would have taken it!

"No photos please" taken by "Peter Hedger" via flickr

It was a difficult choice for Heather, but she chose an overall winner and 2 special commendations. I will announce the winner and launch the Winter competition on Monday.