The video lists the kit going in. Ancillary kit – flash, audio recording, tripod etc will be going in the hold.

I’ll be wearing a photo vest as well, just in case I have to take some of this out of the bag and carry it as a personal item

Flight leaves at 0600 tomorrow morning from LHR from where I’ll fly to Zurich. Transfer in Zurich to fly to Nairobi where I will spend the night. Tuesday morning I fly down to the Mara.

To keep up with the updates, either follow my facebook page: www.facebook.com/davidnewtonphoto or the SanDisk Extreme Team page at www.facebook.com/SanDiskExtremeTeam

In other news, the next round of updates will be concerning my trip to the Masai Mara in Kenya….next week! I’m heading there for SanDisk to document a safari trip they are running with some competition winners. So, expect as many of the big 5 as I can get, and some behind the scenes stuff showing how the trip progresses. I will be updating the FB page (above) and this will be picked up and shared on the SanDisk Extreme Team FB page as well. So there will be no excuse for you to miss any of it!

I’ve been fortunate to see the Red Arrows display on quite a few occasions, most recently the weekend before last (14th August) at the Bristol Balloon fiesta. Every time I’ve been amazed at their skill and precision and to think that something went wrong with one of their planes causing a former frontline pilot to lose his life in an air display is very saddening. Since there have been no real details about the crash and it’s causes yet, there is nothing more to say that would be anything but speculation. And that helps no-one.

My condolences go out to his family and team mates.

For now, here’s one image from the Bristol Fiesta, taken overlooking the Clifton suspension bridge as the Red Arrows began their display.

The other week I had the chance to do this again. The other half and I were invited to the wedding of good friends Juliette and Craig at the Hartsfield Manor hotel in Surrey. Naturally, I took a camera (OK, if you want to be pedantic I took two cameras and four lenses…) and once the ceremony was over I set about taking some pictures which you can see below.

The first picture from Cornwall is a reprise of an image I took last year. It was almost the same spot, just a little more exposed on the cliff edge. Sadly, at the point of sunset itself, the sky was heavily overcast in front of the sun meaning only a few rays poking through. Just after the sun had set though, the clouds had moved on and were now providing some interest and depth to the sky over Lands End. And, as is often the case after the sun has gone down, the rims of the clouds were lit with beautiful red light. Sadly the sea thrift was already past its very best so there was less vibrant pink for the foreground, instead I had to make do with the remains of what was around. Equally, because the sun had set there was no light on the cliffs at Lands End. However, all that said, I’m still fairly happy with the result. It would have been nice to have some more light in the image, but sometimes you just have to work with what’s there!

Last week my neighbour knocked on the door to let me know that the blue tits they had nesting in the nest box had fledged and the three chicks had made their way into my garden. He was really just warning me to keep an eye out for them and make sure that I didn’t accidentally tread on one or something equally unpleasant.

Sure enough, I looked into the garden and there they were – three beautiful little chicks and mum and dad going bonkers all around the garden taking seed from our feeder and collecting spiders and flies from trees, bushes, plants and under the eaves of the shed.

I sat and watched them and since they were flying around quite happily near my I decided to go and get the camera. I started off with a few stills and then switched to video to try and capture some of the feeding as one or both parents collected food for their young charges. I intermittently switched back to stills as well just to make sure I had some nice shots.

It seemed like a perfect chance to try out the new EF2x Mark III Extender, a full report of which can be found over on the EOS Network site blog. Since they were very tame, I was able to get quite close as well – though while I wanted to get in and do some macro, the welfare of the animal should ALWAYS come first and I instead stayed a few metres back with the 300mm and 2x.

Once I’d got a good range of shots of the chicks and feeding, I set about the parents a little more. They’ve been feeding in our garden over the last few months – it seems they prefer the sunflower hearts to anything else, so we’ve been working our way through kilos of the stuff.

Because the feeder is in use, I decided a bit of flash might be helpful not just in freezing them, but also in trying to get some nicer lighting than nature was providing. I setup to lights, one for the birds on the feeder, and one for the background. In fact, for the feeder shots in the sequence, there is no natural light at all, just flash. If you want to know more about the lighting setup, keep an eye on the EOS Network blog where I’ll write a bit more about it in the next few days.

For now though, here’s a selection of the images from the day.

Have you had any fledglings drop in recently? If so, did you get out and take some pictures or shoot any video?

To go along with the showcase I wrote a testimonial about using Photocrati and why I like it as a platform. And no, they were not paying me to say that, it really is that good!

If you’re looking for a new platform to build and design your website, go take a look at the Photocrati offering – if I can make it work, then I’m pretty sure most anybody can… and being part of WordPress means there are a million and one (possible exaggeration as I’ve not counted them!) plugins you can use to add extra functionality you might want.

For the regular blog readers here, you’ll have seen the last post all about the curious case of the missing badgers. Well, guess what? I found them!

Graham, Calum and myself went back to the badger sett last night. Well, Graham and Calum got there early while I got stuck in traffic and arrived a bit late. However, the badgers are getting braver and more the regular feeding means they are very comfortable around their turf and happy to be photographed.

Instead of going for the more risky area, we stayed in the most common sighting area and I put up a couple of lights to provide some illumination to the scene. In the case of these two images, it was a silver reflective brolly camera right and a Lastolite Ezybox camera left. Being dark, even with a torch on the photo area, AF was out, so I had to rely on manual focus. In fact, this wasn’t a problem as the EOS-1D Mark IV has a very good viewfinder.

These two images were both taken with an EF500mm f/4L IS USM lens as we didn’t want to disturb the badgers and so kept a little distance away. The lights were triggered with the ever reliable Pocket Wizard Mini TT1 and Flex TT5 radio transmitters and with the use of the AC3 Zone Controller I was able to adjust the flash powers quickly and easily from my camera position.

These shots aren’t perfect, but they are the first time I’ve photographed wild badgers so I’m pretty happy with them…they certainly provide a base from which to develop and improve. I’ve just got to wait my next invite to the badger sett now

Have you ever photographed badgers? If so, how did you get on?

On Saturday afternoon I packed up the car and setup off. It’s not a long drive, maybe 45-50minutes and I was full of excitement for the evening ahead, constantly running over how I was going to shoot this subject.

Well, we arrived and began setting up. There were two locations known to be in use – in use in that food put out the night before had been snaffled up completely, even those bits hidden in holes and hollows. the signs were looking good. With two locations, we each  had to choose one to shoot at. I looked at the more guaranteed area and decided while I wanted to get shots of this species, I’d try something a bit harder and go for the second location that was obviously on the run, but maybe not quite so well used. However, it made for a much more photogenic location. Graham choose the main location and Calum decided to come with me and head into the woods for a different shot.

Half an hour before dusk we were all setup and took our places to wait. And wait. And wait.

Looking to our left, Graham was waving at us frantically – he had them and his lights were firing quite happily. He was getting shots. We quietly moved from our location knowing if they were up at the main place we’d see them move down towards our location and have time to get back to our observation spots.

This went on for ages. The subjects would pop their heads out, Graham would take some shots, they’d play, he take more shots and after a while they’d head back in. A little while later the process would repeat itself.

By 11:30pm the temperature had dropped and Calum and I had had none of our subject appear down at our setup. We decided to call it a night and set about packing up. With the car loaded Calum set off past the main location and what did he see? The subjects we’d been waiting for. They’d gone back in for what we thought was the night but were now out again. He called us over and we then spent half and hour watch three very young badger cubs playing outside their sett, snuffling up the remains of the food we’d put down and generally paying no attention to the three photographers standing 6 meters away, jaws agape watching them.

We watched for about 30 minutes and once they’d gone back inside we quietly made our away off ready to head home. Graham was happy because he had some shots, but Calum and I were equally happy despite not getting any shots at all. And that’s the moral of this story. If you are going to photograph wildlife, you need to accept that sometimes it doesn’t play ball. Yes, I’d love to have some beautiful badger shots to show you now, but I’ll be going back again soon and hopefully having more luck. In the meantime I can bask in the memory of having seen 7 badgers, of which 3 were cute cubs – not something most people ever get to see. And all done without disturbing them in any way.

They say don’t work with children or animals. But if you’re really into your wildlife, ‘working’ with animals is not that frustrating. Simply re-base your aims – go out to see the wildlife first and photograph it second. You’ll be less stressed, and crucially you’ll be more likely to put the welfare of the animal ahead of your desire to get the picture.

If you’re interested in learning about photography and about the EOS system then head on over to www.eos-network.com and take a look around. There is also a newsletter you can subscribe to there to keep up to date with what’s happening on the site and to get exclusive info that won’t be posted on the site.