I was fortunate to spend yesterday on a ‘farm’ in Devon with these wonderful Kune pigs.

I put farm in quotation marks because Donald and Rebecca aren’t farming the land.  They are cultivating it to some extent but only to enjoy it and to develop it as their own nature reserve where they can relax and watch the variety of wonderful wildlife who also call it home.  There are parts they took us to which they hadn’t visited themselves in six months.

They keep three kune pigs as pets.  They are huge impressive beasts with a voracious appetite but they are also very welcoming and I really enjoyed the time I spent with them.  The vegetation on the land is quite dense so after the top has been cut off an area the pigs move in to eat the roots and brambles which initially turns the area to mud, but then the pigs move on and it recovers.

We had barely arrived when a kestrel appeared.  Having come to photograph pigs I wasn’t set up for this but quickly fetched a telephoto and approached low and slow.  It wasn’t to be, but that will be one of the challenges for a future visit.  The kestrels are frequent visitors and we saw the remains of a meal later in the day (a long trail of fresh pigeon feathers).

There is a large area of woodland occupied by approximately 15-20 badgers as well as fallow deer and plenty of woodland/farmland birds.  Donald and Rebecca also keep chickens, so their land is virtually an adventure playground for someone like me.  At one point Donald even offered to build a hide for me to come and use, but quickly followed with the line “I hope you won’t expect me to come and sit in it with you!”

I almost forgot the little lady ….. a wonderful Jack Russell called Madeleine who accompanied us for most of the walk.  Later in a field Donald kicked a basketball around for her so that I could photograph her amazing ball control!

It was a fun trip, and I hope to do some more in-depth work later this year.  I hope you enjoy the pictures.

The eyes of these gentle giants are absolutely beautiful, but really hard to capture as often covered by the vast amount of hair

The pigs like to root around in the mud to make sure they haven’t missed any food…

Feeding time was quite difficult to photograph as they all got very close to each other with their heads down, but when the time came for them to have a drink, camera shake was the problem – we couldn’t stop laughing!

Big Foot was the largest hen, while Madeleine showing off her ball skills concluded a wonderful few hours

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A couple of weeks back I was fortunate enough to dive Silfra Crack in Iceland, pictured above.  This channel is just six metres wide and has been formed by the separation of two geological (tectonic) plates which are moving apart at two centimetres a year.  Iceland is like a cookie, gradually breaking in two.

Yep you read that right.  In the image above, the rocks on the left hand side are the edge of the North American continental shelf.  The rocks on the right are the edge of the Eur-Asian continental shelf.  That on it’s own would make this one rather special dive site.

On top of all that the water comes from the Langjökull glacier 50 kilometres away. Over 30 years it filters through lava rock meaning that by the time it reaches Silfra it is oh, so pure.  The visibility underwater is in excess of 100m which might not sound like much to non-divers but believe me, it’s incredible.  It’s so pure that you can drink it while you dive and at 2 degrees celsius it’s perfectly chilled.   I just took my regulator out of my mouth at 15 metres underwater and took a drink!

Anyway, you didn’t come here to hear me eulogise about how wonderful this dive was – you want to see the pictures.  You’re going to see some interesting colours – that’s because water filters light, starting with the shorter wavelengths like red.  One of the features of this amazing visibility is that white balance varies throughout the scene meaning that images will get greener and bluer in the furthest parts of the image from the camera.

As I said before, the crack is 6m wide but in places the rocks come close enough that you can touch both continents!  At the end of the crack the water feeds into an amazing lagoon where that visibility really becomes clear.

What a terrible pun to end on.  I hope you enjoy the pictures

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A couple of weeks back I was fortunate enough to travel to Iceland to undertake a dive which every list places in the top 3 cold water diving sites in the world.  Silfra (Icelandic for ‘Silver Lady’ – due to the silver quality of the light/water) was truly amazing, and I’ll post some images from the dive starting later tonight.

We arrived during the evening so set out in the bracing (-4 degrees celsius) cold and wind of Reykjavik to have a look around and find some dinner.  We visited Sólfar, by Jón Gunnar Árnason which represents vikings arriving in longboats.  It’s quite a famous work in Reykjavik – one of the locals described it to me as the most photographed site in Iceland!

As you can probably tell from the over-saturated colour this was a long exposure taken in near total darkness.  It was a fitting start to our trip, and likewise a good place to start telling you of the wonders which were to follow.

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Let’s be honest here, one of the first things we’re all eager to teach a newbie who’s just bought their first SLR camera is how to make water look all misty.  This type of image has been completely overdone, and unless it’s spectacular (and this one’s not) it has no place on any self-respecting photographers blog.  Or does it?

Mediocrity in photography is a major problem.  People’s waste baskets are never big enough.  I used to take 1,000+ images in a full-on day of photography, and if I got 1% that were usable then that was a good day, but I still kept far too much rubbish.  Now I’ll take significantly fewer (a couple of hundred on Saturday, and that’s only because there were gulls) and keep even less – if I get one or two that I’m happy with then great, but it takes a lot to make the grade.

That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t do clichés for fun though, and virtually everyone who went to Photowalk London last weekend was using a tripod or balancing a camera on a post to make this kind of image at this waterfall.  Don’t hold that against us – we’re just doing it because we can, and it’s not as if anyone was simultaneously giving a lecture on Sunny 16!

In underwater photography the equivalent is an image of a clownfish coming out of an anemone, but don’t say that to a very experienced diver who’s proud of the picture he’s just taken.  I did once ….

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You know what it’s like.  One of those days when you’re lounging around trying to get a bit of rest and just keep your head above water, then some idiot comes along and ruins it.

Just bloody marvelous!

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