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All images and text © ADRIAN WINTER 2008.

Atlantic Puffin, Fratercula arctica. Handa Island, Sutherland.

I'm not long returned from a trip to Scotland where I paid my fourth visit to Handa Island, just about my favourite place, anywhere. Sea birds in general are having a hard time at the moment with a lack of breeding success over the last couple of years due largely to a shortage of sand eels, the main food for a number of species including puffins. Whether this shortage is due to climate change, over fishing, a combination of both, or is just part of a natural cycle is at the moment uncertain. What is clear is that it would be a tragedy if sea bird colonies like Handa and the many others unique to the British Isles which are of global importance began to diminish.

 
Grey Heron, Ardea cinerea, Stanley Park, Blackpool, Lancashire

There is a well established heronry in Stanley Park on an island in one of the lakes which one can get very close to. This time of year the birds are busy nest building and can be seen constantly coming and going with nesting material. The early morning seems the best time both for the light and activity. This image needed a lot of cleaning up in Photoshop and I'm pretty pleased with the result of my efforts, it took about 3 hours!

To what extent can digital manipulation be considered as legitimate retouching and how much is just plain cheating? To my mind putting in birds (or whatever) which weren't there in the first place is cheating, unless an image is clearly stated to be a composite but the removal of branches or restoring a heron's toes is simply enhancing what is already there.

 

 

Banded Demoiselle (male), Calopteryx splendens, River Stour, Dorset.

This image is in fact a composite of two exposures taken within seconds of each other; in one the head and legs were in sharp focus, in the other the wings and body. In both exposures the insect was in a fairly similar position in the frame so, with the help of Photoshop's layers, it took only a little adjustment and the eraser tool to enable me to seamlessly blend the two together. The only tricky bit was the area of transition between the in focus regions of the two images, luckily this occurred at the natural junction of the wings and thorax: I defy anyone now to see the join. This is the kind of digital manipulation which to me makes sense, using the benefits of Photoshop to enhance the reality of the image rather than to create a false one.

 

Short-eared Owl, Asio flammeus, Forest of Bowland, Lancashire.
I was up in Bowland trying to photograph breeding waders when I saw a distant owl flying over the moorland, at one point on its hunting circuit it came very near the road so finding a place to pull in and with camera at the ready on my trusty double bean-bag, I waited.....and waited.....eventually it returned, catching me totally by surprise as it arrived behind me and I failed to get a single shot. Another long wait and it returned, this time in the right direction, giving me time - just - to lock on the bird with auto-focus and get one sharp exposure. The light coming through the wing, the highlighting around the head and the curl of the wing tip just lifts this picture out of the ordinary. A nice shot of a wonderful bird, probably one of my best images to date. A mixture of persistence and sheer luck.