Another year, another trip up to York for the annual Yorvik Viking weekend. No photogenic snow this year, and no buying of new cameras either. And as usual, I mostly got pictures of the birds of prey show. It was the same

No owls this year, and a lack of falcons as well. But a good display from a Bald Eagle, various vultures and some caracara for light entertainment

Pretty happy with these snaps. All taken on the 30D with a sigma 70-200 2.8 EX and then fettled in LightRoom.  One regret was not taking a tripod along, but I didn’t fancy carrying it around York all day. Might have helped get some of the action shots a little sharper:

Though it’s not too bad as is :).

All the birds were supplied and flown by http://www.birdsofpreydisplays.co.uk/ who seem to do this event every year. So it’s always a decent show as he knows what he’s got to work with.

Photos of actual vikings (or of actual accountants impersonating vikings) to follow:

Woke up this morning to find that my dreams of heading out on the bike had disappeared under the snow. Other people seemed to be OK on bikes, but I’m attached to my one piece collar bone so decided that discretion was the better part of valour so headed out with the camera to Wollaton park instead. Unfortunately only 1 deer fancied being photogenic, the others wanted to huddle en masse in the trees and didn’t look like they fancied meeting photographers.

Now to try and thaw out a bit before working on the others.

Came home from work to find this little creature lurking by our front door, so the camera was duley fetched and some pictures taken:

This was taken with a 30D using a Sigma 24-70 2.8. Liked the capture given that it was handheld and dim. Pushed it through a little light Pshopping for to remove noise, sharpen and sort the levels out.

Keep seeing this little spiders and bugs around, think the urge for a proper macro lens is going to get a lot stronger in the near future.

Something slightly different from the gigs. Waking up to a nice bright bank holiday sunday we decided to put our National Trust memberships to use and head over to Calke Abbey for a little wander around.

We had a nice walk around the woodlands and parklands, grabbed some food from the cafe and then wandered up tot he church to sit and eat it.

The grounds are huge and very green at that time of year. As can be seen from the photos I was quite taken with the Bees and Cows around the place :)

All photos were taken with the Sigma 24-70 2.8 DG on a 30D. I had a CPL with me but never got around to attaching it. Quite impressed with the bee photos given that:

• it’s not a true macro lens
• I was handholding the camera
• The amount of wind, those purple flowers were all over the place

Got to admit that I am very tempted to get a proper macro lens now, just have to justify the pennies to myself.