PhotoBombed by a Crow!!

Every society photographer gets it, you know, do a mother and baby portrait session in the countryside and along flies a wacking great big black crow!

I did ask the mother to wash her "muddy" knees, but she just LOOKED at me. As if I was the stupid one. Doh!!

Always nice to see new life, this suckling calf couldn't have been more than a couple of days old and obviously the mother was very protective of her little fluffy one, hence the stare and the distance (over a gate and 400mm lens!) this afternoon.

What  can I say? HUGE and MASSIVE thanks for all the attention on the Bournemouth night time. I don't deserve it, though maybe the photo does. You can imagine my surprise and delight when THAT popped up on the camera screen after waiting for the exposure, the LR noise reduction and that over those 30 seconds or so, you observe what takes place and what happens and you quietly wonder how those will look and affect the final image.

You can adjust by 1/3rd stop, or add a few more seconds and it can look totally different. The shot straight after was same exposure but the washed in sea looked totally different.

I came up with the title long before I left the beach, despite the moon itself not actually showing in the frame. It was high up (I noticed today that it was already 'out' mid afternoon) and would have required too wide a lens to fit in - I used my old but very nice Sigma 24-70mm EX HSM f2.8, a lens I know a couple of you other Blippers also own. At only f3.2 or smaller, the bite of its sharpness and contrast really show up grains of sand and stars in the sky wonderfully. 

I had taken a torch - but it had no batteries in it. The one that did,. I had taken out of the rucksack to shine over electricians and plumbers heads so they could see what they were banging, hitting and cursing at - they now say I now need  a whole new hot water tank. The amount of physical abuse it's received from the 'experts' over the past week, I'm not surprised!

 Back to the lack of the torch, as I could not see by the (half) light of the moon the focus distance scale, the bright viewfinder from the constant f2.8 was essential for focusing, not so much for bright and obvious shots like this but for ones out to sea, which were a lot darker.

Anyway, I hope you like Moo-ther and baby portrait and thanks again!