Mike Fenney Photography

Dumfries & Galloway and Lake District

2020-10-29T12:57:00.002-07:00

If I haven't mentioned this before I absolutely love visiting Scotland.

So many Lochs and every direction you turn is a photo opportunity and add the Autumn colours it's simply stunning.

Here are a few pics I took.

Loch Trool

So that the photos from around New Galloway in Scotland.

Here are a few pics from the Lake District

Ullswater

Brea Tarn

Hope you liked the pics.

Mike

Trees

2020-09-24T11:55:00.002-07:00

I've been watching a lot of photographers lately on Youtube and taking some inspiration from them.

Following the work of Nigel Danson who takes stunning landscape photos, he take a lot of photos of trees.

Its not really something I had thought about previous, but not spotting stunning trees everywhere and more often when I am unable to stop the car 😞.

We have recently had a trip out to Snowdon.

The first shot was taken in Snowdon and a lone tree we spotted from the main road nr Pen-Y-Pass.

The next shot was near Ogwen Falls

I don't normally go for black and white, but thought these jumped out more.

Hope you like the shots.

If you wanted to check out Nigels videos they are HERE and a great watch.

Mike.

Sunset

2020-08-27T13:17:00.003-07:00

Sunsets can be a great thing to photograph.

A few weeks ago we went for a drive around sunset 9pm ish, trying to find somewhere nice to get some pics.

The idea was to try and get a nice tree or decent bit of countryside without too many houses or buildings in background.

A couple of nights in a row we thought we would have a really nice sunset, but was let down due to thick cloud on the horizon.

Finally we dropped lucky, here are the shots I got.

The next couple of shots I took a week later at Anthony Gormley Another Place in Crosby, Nr Liverpool, lovely evening on the beach and a stunning sunset.

Hope you like my pics :)

Mike.

Macro Photography

2020-08-24T13:31:00.001-07:00

This is something I have been trying for a while now and although I have got some decent shots i've never been complete happy with the outcome.

I have been studying a lot of different macro photographers and watching different tips for how they get the photos they do.

Some use extension tubes, some reverse lens and some have a macro lens. The macro lens being the more expensive.

I use a standard DSLR Nikon D3200 with stock lens 18-55mm with +10 macro lens. Nothing special about the set up and probably cheaper than a 1:1 prime macro lens.

The one thing we have added to our setup recently is an external flash TT560 speedlite, again not too expensive at around £28 on Amazon, it also came with a diffuser. I had no idea the difference this would make, but noticed all macro photographers have one, it only recently dawned on me to get one.

I've been out tonight testing it out and here are a few shots.

Amazing to enter their microscopic world and can't wait to get out again and find more things.

Mike.

Landscape Photography

2020-08-23T15:15:00.003-07:00

It's been a long time since I last posted.

The main reason is down to losing my password for blogger and it being near impossible to recover, I have been posting on Twitter and Flickr in the meantime.

I've been wanting to get my blog going again and have a good back log of photos to share.

Firstly here are a some photos I took on our way to the top of Snowdon and for anyone who hasn't done the walk i highly recommended it.

Hope you like the photos and hoping people still visit my blog.

Mike :)

Twitter

2016-04-27T14:40:00.001-07:00

Hi folks,

Not sure if anyone still reads my blog, but at present I am struggling to update, I am however posting to twitter.

So if you are on Twitter please follow me for all my latest photos.

You can either click on the link in the right side bar or click HERE

At some point I sure I will come back to this blog, but for now Twitter is proving much easy to update.

Photos taken with new camera Nikon D7000 + Sigma 170-500mm APO DG.

Robin

Male Bullfinch

Male Chaffinch

Bluetit

Female Blackcap

Male Bullfinch

Cheers,

Mike.

Northern Lights from Anstruther

2016-01-07T13:50:00.003-08:00

Happy new year :)

We spent the new year in Anstruther, Scotland a great little village with plenty of places to eat and drink.

New years eve we had seen that the northern lights where showing around 7, which means they can be seen from north of England, so we went out to the nearby beach and took the following pics.

They were difficult to see with the naked eye and just looked like a grey mist in the sky, you culd make out the spikes though, they camera does all the work and when taken on a 20 second exposure come out a really nice green.

Hope you liked the pics.

Mike.

More from Luing

2015-09-13T06:25:00.000-07:00

More pics from our trip to Luing.

Next pics are from Iona Abbey.

Hope you liked the pics.

Mike.

More from Luing

2015-09-05T12:14:00.002-07:00

Some more photos from my week in Luing.

Hope you like the pics.

Last couple of pics of the Heron found around the coast, plenty of food for them.

Still more to come, wading my way through around 500 photos.

Thanks for checking in, Mike.

Isle of Luing, Scotland

2015-09-01T13:29:00.001-07:00

A recent holiday to the Isle of Luing, Argyl, Scotland, approx 16 miles south of Oban and an absolutely stunning place

Here are some of the many photos I took of this amazing place.

Plenty more pics to come, hope you liked these.

Cheers, Mike.

Dragonflies & Macro Mere Sands.

2015-08-12T12:35:00.001-07:00

Great evening to be out and about around Mere Sands.

Plenty of dragonflies and butterflies around, I focused on the dragonflies.

Hope you like the pics:

Thankfully this one had caught a fly and stayed still for a while eating it.

Final two shots are Macro using the reverse lense mentioned in the previous post.

This dragonfly somehow looks really happy about something!

The last photo was some kind of jumping spider approx 5mm across, you couldn't see the blue dot on its back I only found that out when editing the photo (3 images stacked).

I'm not great on the ID of the Dragonflies or the spider, so please feel free to comment and I will add the captions / ID's to the photos.

Cheers, Mike.

Bit of macro

2015-07-19T01:17:00.003-07:00

Here are a few practice shots from yesterday.

I'm using a reverse lense adapter setup as shown in the 1st image.

The red string at the end of the lense is just to hold the shutter open.

This is the plant where I took the pics of the bee, its a Budlia in my garden.

Hopefully more photos to come as I get more practice.

Mike.

Garden visitors

2015-02-23T10:58:00.002-08:00

Just a few shots from the weekend.

We recently had two Goldcrest visit the garden, they have been coming and going during the week, so this weekend I spent most of Saturday waiting for them to come back, typically no show.

During the wait we had a number of different common garden visitors, here are a couple of pics.

Great tit first, enjoying my sunflower hearts:

Secondly a Song Thrush:

Bit noisy, but hope for better light next weekend.

Hope you liked the pics.

Mike.

Mere Sands Wood

2015-02-08T13:06:00.001-08:00

Its been a while since my last post.

We had planned for over a week to get out today and go to Mere Sands because the weather albeit cold has been nice and bright.

Not today though, heavy fog and mist was obscuring anything at distance. That said I managed to get a couple of shots of a Reed bunting and shoveler duck.

Here are the shots of the Reed bunting.

And the Shoveler duck, the last two photos where just before the duck landed on the frozen lake and went for a slide.

Hope you liked the pics.

Mike.

Camera is fixed.

2014-03-23T13:14:00.001-07:00

Well after buying my new camera and trying to stick with the manual focus, I gave in.

The D70 is fixed and touch wood will last me a bit longer.

Typically though there was hardly anything about to give it a test run so Squirrels it was.

Here are a couple of shots from this afternoon.

Hope you like the pics and hopefully I will be posting more.

Cheers, Mike.

Northern Lights

2013-12-04T14:04:00.001-08:00

I have just got back from a trip to Lapland, mainly to see Santa, but we were lucky enough whilst there for the couple of days to see the Northern Lights.

It is something I have always wanted to see and photograph, we got a call from reception in the hotel to let us know that they could be seen, to be honest to start off with you couldn't see anything more than just a haze, but the camera was picking up a lot more than the eye.

We waited until around 9pm and head up the main sledge/ski slope to get away from the street lights.

I didn't really know what setting to have the camera on so I did a little reading on the internet before we head out, ideally its something you would practice, but as we where only there for 2 nights and it was cloudy on the first night I just had to wing it.

Here are the pics I got, sorry but there are quite a few.

Hope you enjoyed my pics.

Mike.

Garden this morning.

2013-11-10T12:39:00.002-08:00

Just a couple more pics from this morning, the Nuthatch is still avoiding the camera and hitting the feeders without perching first, but I will get him.

Just another Blue tit and Robin today,the coal tits are just too fast.

I'm hoping for something a bit different by next weekend, we will see.

Hope you liked the shots.

Mike.

This mornings garden

2013-11-09T03:50:00.000-08:00

Got a quick half an hour of sunlight this morning.

We had a number of visitors, Nuthatch, Robin, Blackbird, Great tit, Coal tit and Blue tit. Just your regular crop for these parts, Nuthatch was a nice surprise as I haven't seen it in a while.

I managed to photograph the blue tits, here are the shots i got, all manual focus (think I'm getting the hang of it).

Blue tit

Hoping to get a better selection over the weekend.

Hope you liked the pics.

Mike.

Leighton Moss RSPB reserve

2013-11-03T13:55:00.001-08:00

This weekend we headed up to this year home for Autumn Watch.

I've been wanting to try out my new camera with the 500mm lense which I have to manual focus, the old D70 is still playing up and not sure what it would cost to repair.

Here are some of shots that I took today.

I think its quite hopeful and if anything I've proved that I can still get decent shots, think I will still get saving though and either get a new decent 400mm lense or camera with internal motor.

I have more pics to follow which show part of the reserve itself.

Let me know what you think of the photos.

Cheers, Mike.

Daddy Long Leg Spider

2013-10-27T09:35:00.003-07:00

Just a bit of macro for this post.

I had hope to get out and get some stormy sea shots, but the weathers been quite mild.

These shots where taken in the garden this afternoon.

Photo Taken with Nikon D3200 with Nikkor 18-55mm + 10x adaptor

Hope you like.

Mike.

Fairy Glen

2013-10-20T09:30:00.000-07:00

I've been itching to get out all week, we went to the local walk Fairy Glen, not sure why its called that, I can only imagine it because of all the fairies you get to see there :)

There is a nice little waterfall and I wanted to try the slower shutter speed which gives the nice water trail effect.

This is my first attempt at this, but I think the pics look ok, good excuse to go back and get more practice.

Click the images to view them in lightbox.

Taken with Nikon D3200, shutter priority
5 second shutter

I was also keen to capture the Autumn colours that I see everyday on the way to work, here are some of the Autumnal shots.

And finally a bridge which I thought would look nice back and white.

Hope you liked the post.

Cheers, Mike.

New Camera

2013-10-13T04:21:00.001-07:00

I finally had to invest in a new camera, my old D70 kept playing up and for a while I lost faith in taking photos because I could never be sure that when I got home the images would be there to transfer.

I picked up a Nikon D3200, as much as I would have liked to spend thousands on the very best camera I just don't have the budget and to be honest this packs in quiet a bit for the price.

My only issue so far is that it doesnt have an internal auto focus motor so for my big 500mm lense I will have to attempt manual focus or try and just keep this with my D70 and hope for the best.

Here is a test shot I tried, shutter 1/60 so should improve in better light, unfortunately no birds at all around so found some buds around 7 mtrs away to try and focus on. Years of digiscoping have served me well :)

Photo taken with Nikon D3200 with Sigma 170-500mm manually focused

I am trying to get more into the landscape photography and macro so I think the D3200 will be great.

This is my first sample shot testing it with my macro adapter at x10 magnification.

Photo taken with Nikon D3200 + Nikkor 18-55mm VR + x10 macro adaptor

I think it produces a nice sharp image and the colour looks nice considering it is really dull at the moment.

I'm now waiting for some decent light to see if manual focusing will be practical and if not I will see what can be done with the D70.

For now tho I think most of the image I will be posting will be landscape and macro which I am starting to really enjoy.

Let me know your thoughts on the photo and manual focusing.

Cheers, Mike.

Llanberis

2013-04-04T14:04:00.000-07:00

Well it's been a while.

I've been itching to get the camera out for a while now, but haven't really had the opportunity.

A weekend away staying near Llanberis in North Wales gave me a good chance to get the camera out and take some snaps, recent snowfall made for some great back drops.

Here are a few pics I got.

All photos taken with Nikon D70 with 28-100mm Nikkor lense

Hopefully now the weather is starting to warm up a bit I can get out more and post more.

Mike.

Tufted Duck

2012-02-19T12:52:00.000-08:00

Today we popped along to Ainsdale beach in Southport.

I went originally in the hope to spot the odd wader, but even though the sun was out it was just too cold in the wind.

Next to Ainsdale beach is a small lake which gets really busy with ducks, geese and your usual gulls.

Having looked around I decided to concentrate on the Tufted ducks, which in my opinion are stunning to look at and as they generally come in close, they are great to photograph too.

Heres the shots I got, you can click an image and go through the lightbox to see them all large.

The first set of images are males.

and secondly females.

and finally the rest of the images I took, Please click to view larger.

And finally who can resist a Mute Swan looking really chilled out.

All photos taken with Nikon D70 + Sigma 170-500mm

I hope you liked the pics.

Until next time.

Mike.

First post for 2012

2012-02-05T09:09:00.000-08:00

Well so far my plans to get out more and do some photography have gone down the pan, I could be being paranoid but there appears to be a link between me picking my camera up and the sun going in.

So for the first post it was a few snaps in the garden.

I have made the mistake of moving my feeding station and where it is now positioned is rubbish for getting close up shots, here are a couple of shots I got when the sun came out for half an hour this afternoon.

Its a goldfinch, we regularly have around 16 on the feeders and have recently brought a couple of Siskin along with them which I am very happy about.

Here are the pics, hope you like.

Until next time.

Mike.