CRITTERS SUNDAY - DUCK CLOSE AND PERSONAL

Flamming June was a flamming cold, it was not Hotter than July and August has been just plain Awful. Welcome to the world of the Great British Summer! So only one type of critter I could post today to go along with all the rain, the one creature as they say it's nice weather for is a duck.

Now what duck this is I couldn't tell you. Anyone out there in Blogland know, throw the answer this way. Do you like his quiff? Along with his bright face his head feathers brushed back really drew me to him. I think he was all spruced for his this little duckette girlfriend, which is why I was able to snap him. Poor thing she never did turn up.

I wasn't a close to the duck as it looks. For this shot I had what's called a telescopic lens. Not as scary as it sounds. It's a longer fatter lens as opposed to the shorter slimmer wide angle or portrait lens. To get the blurred out of focus background, and the focus on the foreground in this case the duck it's dead simple. Just turn the zoom on full, and focus on whichever part of the image you want as the main subject, in this case the duck. The light was really poor so I had the ISO on 600 which is not ideal. The higher the ISO the less definition you get, but you can compensate with practise by honing in as sharp as you can on the focal point, your subject. Again it's a manual shot. Auto would have just bleached the white feathers into a block of colour due to the poor light, and the background would be too dark, not allowing the duck to pop out of the image.

So was that info of any use or was it as clear as mud? Just trying not get too technical, but impart the know how as simplistically as I can.

For more wonderful camera critters see MISTY DAWN Camera critters.

ODD SHOTS - A BIRD IN THE HAND

This is a chafinch that flew straight at the window of my house. I went out, put him back on his feet and sat trying to coax him round for hours. Eventually, he jumped on my hand and wouldn't go away. I already had the tripod set up, so I used the remote to snap him. I had to run round the garden flapping my arms trying to get him to fly off. The neighbours really thought i'd lost it this time.

Finally he left, finding the courage to take flight. I feed the birds in the back garden, so I quite often spend hours warding off cats and sparrowhawks, but this is the only one who jumped onto my hand. I hope this one qualifies for an odd enough odd shot for today.

For more odd shots see KATNEY

Katney's Kaboodle is also the place to join odd shots monday.