My partners first Novel: Tainted Love

I don't usually write posts unrelated to photography, but in this case I have too. My partner has just released her first book Tainted Love - available to download to kindle through Amazon. The pen name is Erin Cawood. The genre is Contemporary Romance, but both darker and edgier. Writing this book and getting it through the processes of editing etc. has been epic - and it seemed like she would never get there... But now, the book is finally published. There has already been excellent feedback from professional writers in America who applaud the writing style, so please have a look..

Tainted Love can be downloaded as an E-Book through this link at Amazon 

Let's hope she can sell thousands - and then maybe I'll come into some shiny new camera equipment...? Sounds good to me..!

www.naturephotographycourses.co.uk www.paulmiguel.co.uk

Pink Footed Geese Flock in flight

Pink Footed Geese Flock in flight, a photo by Paul Miguel on Flickr.

I photographed these stunning pink footed geese on one of the coldest mornings of the year. Huge flocks regularly fly to their feeding grounds at dawn and return to roost at dusk. A clear sunrise with bits of cloud made for some wonderful light. Photographed at ISO 500, 1/1000 second at f 5.0 with a 300mm f4 lens.

Roaring Red Deer Stag

Red Deer at Studley Royal, a photo by Paul Miguel on Flickr.

This stag was one of the best from today's photography workshop at Studley Royal. Everyone got a series of shots as he strutted his stuff and crossed the road. A truly beautiful animal.

Backlit Deer Hinds

Backlit Deer Hinds, a photo by Paul Miguel on Flickr.

A simple backlit image of two deer hinds that posed perfectly for at least two seconds..! Taken on my red deer photography workshop at Studley Royal.

Mature Cygnets in early morning mist

Mute Swan in autumn, a photo by Paul Miguel on Flickr.

Photographed early this morning as the mist began to lift from the lake.

Juvenile Mute Swan in autumn

Juvenile Mute Swan in autumn, a photo by Paul Miguel on Flickr.

The trees at the edge of this lake have just started to change colour, reflected stunning colour in the water. This makes the perfect backdrop for portraits of the ducks and swans.

Photographing Autumn Squirrels and Crows

It feels like a while since I did any decent wildlife photography. This morning I headed to the park to see if I could entice some robins and blackbirds down to the lawn. No joy... but I did come across some beautiful red autumn leaves where a couple of squirrels were scampering about.  Now I'm not generally that drawn to grey squirrels, but the surrounding colour was to good to ignore so I put out a bit of food down and captured some nice portraits - definitely autumnal shots.

I noticed a couple of carrion crows hanging about in the trees... not unusual - and they had clearly spotted the food. The next thing I knew there were two of them down on the ground amongst the leaves. Wonderful stuff! I've seldom had the opportunity to photograph these birds at such close range. You could say they were almost tame..! I spent a good half hour photographing the crows as they constantly ambled around searching through the leaf litter. The light was tricky - the sun kept going in and back out again. With this lighting and a dark bird I tend to stick to manual, so it meant I was constantly having to change shutter speeds - 1/100 in the shade; about 1/500 in the light. As often is the case, I much preferred the bird when it was in the shade. The red leaves were just perfect, creating lovely autumnal shots and completely natural images of a wild bird that was showing me bags of character.

To end my session with one of the crows, I was treated to some entertaining behaviour as the bird decided to try and get into the plastic bag that had now run out of food. The crow dragged, pecked and stamped on the poor bag whilst I fired away, capturing some fascinating behaviour and witnessing the intelligence of this wild bird.

www.naturephotographycourses.co.uk  www.paulmiguel.co.uk