Bill Coster Newsletter 1

Hi folks. I thought I would have a go at producing an electronic newsletter which I hope people will find of interest. It is aimed mainly at fellow photographers and I am hoping to build up the circulation list so if any of you know someone else who might like to be a recipient, then please get them to email me with their email address at billcoster@hotmail.com. If you don’t want to receive future Newsletters then let me know and I will remove you from the list. The initial list is made up of most of the people that I have received emails from in the past that I think maybe interested.

My intention is to produce one newsletter a month. Because I’m travelling a lot this may be a little erratic and it really depends on the feedback I get. Please let me know what you think. As this is the first newsletter I’ve sent, there may well be some technical glitches, which I apologise for in advance……………(as well as any spelling mistakes!).

Birds Illustrated Magazine

Anyone that has any interest in bird photography must subscribe to this magazine. It is dedicated to the very best in bird art, whether this is painting or photography. It is produced by a small publishing company on a quarterly basis and is only available by subscription (Well at least it keeps the riff raff out!). It is a large A4 full colour publication and is edited by Dave Cromack, the editor of Birdwatching Magazine. Apart from anything else you will get a chance to read my regular illustrated column on the best locations to photograph birds throughout the world. To subscribe contact Buckingham Press on 01733 561739. Mention my name and they will send you a free sample copy.

Antarctica

I spent February this year in Antarctica on a Joseph Van Os trip which visited the Falklands, South Georgia and the Antarctic Peninsular. The big attraction was the 6 whole days in South Georgia, a place I’d always wanted to visit. Unfortunately the weather was a bit grim, but with digital this is much less of a problem than film.

 Black Browed Albatross and Iceberg

South Orkney Islands

1/3200 second at f8, Canon 1D II, 400mm + 1.4x hand held (400 ASA)

I took a lot of pictures of icebergs in the southern ocean, but it is the presence of the Albatross that gives the scene a sense of scale

 Macaroni Penguin and Surf

 South Georgia

1/400 second at f5.6, Canon 1D II, 100-400mm @ 400mm hand held (400 ASA)

As you can see from the exposure, it was very dark conditions when I took this picture. What made it more difficult was that it was also raining and I was being bounced around on a Zodiac at the time. Despite all this, this is one of my absolute favourites of the trip.

 King Penguin Colony

South Georgia

1/100 second at f16, Canon 1Ds II, 100-400mm @ 400mm tripod (400 ASA)

This picture was taken at the famous Salisbury Plain colony. There was a small ridge which enabled me to gain height and shoot slightly down on the colony. I did many variations on this, but the single clump of tussac grass adds a great deal to the composition.

 Wilson’s Storm Petrel in Flight

Paulette Island, Antarctic Peninsular

1/1250 second at f5.6, Canon 1D II, 100-400mm @ 400mm hand held (400 ASA)

A rare blue sky day (well at least the morning), enabled me to revert to one of my favourite photographic pastimes, flight photography. This small fast moving and erratically flying birds were a real challenge, but great fun to try and photograph.

Crabeater Seal on Ice

 La Maire Channel, Antarctic Peninsular

 1/400 second at f14, Canon 1Ds II, 28-135 @ 28mm hand held (400 ASA)

A calm sunny day and a cruise around the ice floes in a zodiac revealed many crab eater seals lazing around. The trickiest bit was standing up in the zodiac with other photographers as we cruised slowly by. Fortunately, I was bit taller than the others!

2007 Photo Tours

I haven’t got the exact dates and costs yet, but here is advance notice of three trips that I will be running next year, so if you are interested, this is your chance to get ahead of the rush and register your interest!

Griffon Vultures in Spain

A fantastic opportunity to get really close to feeding vultures. We will have privileged access to a WWF feeding station where no other groups can go. This year we had around 200 vultures turn up. I’ll include a few pictures in a later newsletter. This will be in the last week of March.

Extramadura

Photograph Great and Little Bustards on their display grounds, plus Lesser Kestrels, Bee Eaters, White Storks, Montague’s Harrier  and others. Many are hides set up specifically for us. It is illegal to photograph most of these birds in Spain without special permission. We have this permission. This will run in early April.

Pantanal

This famous wetland region in Brazil has a riot of birds and other wildlife to photograph. There is a chance of Jaguar at a regular spot for this elusive species, but I don’t have all the details yet. This will run in August, the best time to visit the region.

Computer Bits

I’ve included this section as it’s become clear to me that with the advent of digital, many photographers are using computers more than ever and there is a steep learning curve for many. Many of the questions I get on my tours or from colleagues are computer related. I do not claim to have all the answers and many of you out there probably know more than I do, but I’ve got a background in IT and this has certainly helped me. Some really simple stuff about image storage to start with. Any questions, then feel free to drop me a line.

Disk Dives and backups

I’ve been quite surprised how many photographers new to digital don’t realise the fragility of computer storage media and the need to store their precious pictures in more than one place. However you store your images, make sure that they are in at least two separate places. There are many ways to store images, but I would say the 3 main ones are as follows:

Internal Hard Drives

This is the easiest way to store your image library. Access is quick and they are always to hand. My PC storage consists of 4 separate 250gb internal hard drives. These have been configured as NTFS drives, which are more efficient than the old FAT32 configuration. If you do have large drives like this installed in your PC, then make sure you have Service Pack 2 installed on Windows XP, as prior to this Windows had problems addressing anything over 80gb.

External Hard Drives

These are either Firewire or USB2 and are separate units that can be plugged in when required. I keep two complete copies of my entire library on a two sets of these. One is a normal backup and the other is stored offsite. I would say that the speed of these external drives is about half that of the internal ones. For all hard drives, I would not recommend exceeding 250gb in capacity. There are bigger drives, but these are much more recent additions and I would always advocate avoiding the ‘latest thing’. In IT circles the term ‘Leading Edge Technology’ is known as ‘Bleeding Edge Technology’ and I think this says it all.

DVDs/CDs

These are a less flexible way of storing data and can only store relatively small amounts of data. I use these to take backups in the field and for sending images to agencies etc. I have had problems with these in the past, with some not being readable after a short period of time. One tip always to write them at a much slower rate than their maximum. Therefore a 32x DVD should not be written above 16x. Again, avoid the limits of the technology as that’s where the problems lie. There are developments in the pipeline for Super DVDs which will hold much more data and these could be very useful for major backups of images.

Software

Never use any software product to run your backups for you. This is just something that will get in the way and is another potential problem area. If the software company goes out of business, you may end up in a situation where you cannot get at you data. Keep it simple by just copying your images to the library and the backup. I actually copy each image twice. Once to the internal drives and once to the first set of backups. This avoids the possibility of simply copying a corrupt image from one drive to another.

[Home] [Photographic Tours] [Custom Prints] [Slide Lectures] [Galleries] [Newsletter Archive] [Newsletter 1] [Newsletter 2] [Newsletter 3] [Newsletter 4] [Newsletter 5] [Newsletter 6] [Newsletter 7]