Bill Coster Newsletter 2

Firstly, I’d like to thank all of you who emailed me after I sent out the 1^st newsletter. All supported the idea and nobody (so far) has asked to be removed from the mailing list. One person even asked me if I was going to charge for the newsletter in the future! The newsletter is completely free of charge - of course if anyone wants to send me money………..

I appreciate all feedback, so please feel free to email me at billcoster@hotmail.com with comments or if you have any questions about the content or something that you would like covered in future.

My website at www.billcoster.com contains lots of images in several galleries, but I haven’t updated it for some time. I’m waiting for connection to talk talk later this month so that I have broadband at last and I plan to redo the website then. By the way, the Talk Talk deal is excellent. The £20 a month fee includes line rental and all calls in the UK, most of Europe and other places notably the USA as well as 8 megabyte broadband!   

I spent the whole of June in the Shetlands, so this newsletter is a little later than planned. We had really good weather in the Islands, with only a couple of half days lost to rain and a total of 11 Sunny days out of 28. Apparently June 2005 was dreadful, with almost constant rain. This was the best trip I’ve had in the UK and I photographed just about every species I had planned on and several I hadn’t. Breeding waders and seabirds make up the bulk of the species and the wader chicks were just hatching when we arrived. I even managed to photograph a wild otter. I edited quite hard during the trip, but I still have over 3,000 pictures to consider for the final edit and then conversion. Looks like I’ll be sitting at the computer for the next few weeks. Hopefully, I’ll have a selection ready for inclusion in the next newsletter.

 Orkney – Info Wanted

After my Shetland trip, I thought I might try Orkney next year. Most people that go that far north push on to Shetland, but Orkney certainly has more bird reserves. If anyone out there has visited Orkney for photography, then please drop me a line as I would appreciate any info I can get.

Birds Illustrated Magazine

Don’t forget – You cannot consider yourself a bird photographer if you don’t subscribe to Birds Illustrated magazine. To subscribe contact Buckingham Press on 01733 561739. Mention my name and they will send you a free sample copy.

Extremadura

As promised the pictures in this issue are from Extremadura in Spain from this year’s trip that I led in April. All of the tour participants managed to get pictures of our number one target – the Great Bustard and all seemed to have a good time. For those of you that are LVNP members, Reg Mellis and Alan Boutel were on this trip so if you want an independent view of what these trips are like, then I’m sure they’ll provide it if you ask them nicely.

Great Bustard – Male Displaying

Extremadura

1/125th second at f5.6, Canon 1D II, 500mm + 1.4x (400 ASA)

This male appeared early in the morning before it was very bright, resulting in a slow shutter speed. Resting the lens on the hide ‘window’ and with image stabilisation on, this was a not a problem.

Bee Eater in Flight

Extremadura

1/1250 second at f8, Canon 1D II, 500mm + 1.4x (400 ASA), Tripod, Wimberley Head

The Bee Eaters were not as obliging for flight shots as last year, but I did manage to get this one on a clear blue sky day – the best conditions for flight photography.

Little Bustard - Jumping

 Extremadura

1/1000 second at f11, Canon 1D II, 500mm + 1.4x (400 ASA), Tripod Wimberley Head

The jump display of the Little Bustard was always something I wanted to photograph since I saw a picture of this behaviour many years ago.

White Stork – Coming in to Land

Extremadura

1/1600 second at f8, Canon 1D II, 500mm + 1.4x (400 ASA), Tripod Wimberley Head

We always spend a Sunny afternoon at local stork colony, which gives everyone the chance to make flight shots of these beautiful birds.

Lesser Kestrels - Playfighting

 Extremadura

1/1600 second at f5.6, Canon 1D II, 400mm + 1.4x, hand held (400 ASA)

In the late afternoon, the Lesser Kestrels fly around the top of a grain silo on which they breed. There were several aerial encounters between birds and I managed to capture this image. It helps to be at eye level and we have access to the top of the silo where we can shoot out of glassless windows.

2007 Photo Tours

Still no prices, but expected this month. Let me know if you are interested and I’ll email you as soon as I have a price.

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.

Stop Press – Roller has now been added to this trip, with hides set up on breeding pairs.

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

UPS

This stands for Uninterruptible Power Supply and really is an essential bit of kit.

Earlier this year I was working away on my PC when there was a short (just a couple of seconds) power failure. The PC rebooted itself and everything seemed fine, although I had lost some work as the shutdown hadn’t been controlled and I hadn’t saved everything. An hour or so later the same thing happened again. In the following days my PC seemed to be developing a few problems and I got my support guys in to check things out as I was about to upgrade anyway. They ran a check on my C drive and found some disk errors that had corrupted some of the system files. Fortunately, they were able to recover enough of the system disk to transfer to the replacement drive. If they hadn’t then the whole system would have to have been rebuilt from scratch. The failing disk was only a year or so old and it seems very likely to me that it was the power failures that caused the problems.

To avoid any potentially disasters in the future I decided to invest in a UPS. The one I opted for was made by Belkin and has enough power to not only run the PC, but also the half dozen or so external drives that may be powered on at any one time. The unit is a small metal box about a foot long and 8 inches high. It has a 13 amp plug for the mains and four output 13 amp sockets, three of which are power protected. You plug the box into the mains and then plug in the PC and external drives, modem etc. into the protected sockets. Scanners use too much power for the unit to handle so should be plugged into the unprotected socket.

The unit is quite heavy as it is essentially a storage battery and converter. It is permanently in position between the PC and the mains supply. I tested it out by turning the 13 amp mains socket off and the PC carries on as if nothing has happened. A warning light and audible alarm goes off when the mains fails to let you know what has happened. If the power cut is not just a blip then you then have plenty of time in which to save all your work and shutdown your PC in a controlled manner. Mine cost around £80 – not much to pay for peace of mind and protection against system damage. Now we are all digital, we are completely dependent on the PC for storing and handling our precious pictures, so protecting it from potential damage makes a lot of sense.

Stop Press

British Airways becomes photographer friendly!

I could hardly believe my eyes when I saw the note at the back of the latest LVNP magazine that BA has changed it’s policy on hand luggage, but it’s true!

With it’s silly 5kg hand luggage restrictions, BA has always been the bane of a travelling photographers life and I would never fly with them because of this. Now they have not only relented, but have exceeded most of their competitors with no weight limit on a single piece of hand luggage as long as it will fit into an overhead locker (and you can lift it up there unaided!), plus a laptop bag! Brilliant news. I shall certainly be considering BA flights in future.

Incidentally, I thought the article by Dean on ‘Exposing to the right’ was the clearest explanation I’ve come across for this technique (something I’ve been experimenting with recently) – worth the LVNP subscription on it’s own!

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