Nesting Robin (29^th & 30^th May):

We were lucky to have a pair of Robin’s nesting in our hedge and every morning they would appear with sticks and moss and pause on the support cane before disappearing. I thought this would make an appealing subject for the exercise about exploring positioning within the frame. Unfortunately, I just couldn’t get the exposure and the movement right. The first set were all over exposed so I tried again the following morning, while these were better and served to illustrate the point of the exercise they are still not as strong as I would have liked them to be. I guess I may not be a natural wildlife photographer!

While this was a subject I was interested in and engaged with its choice for this exercise was perhaps not the right one. I needed something more static with a relatively uniform background so that I didn’t have to work with too many variables at once. This has been valuable in helping me think more about what I am trying to achieve and how best to go about it. It has also shown me that I am still ‘consciously incompetent’ about some of the technical aspects of working with a DSLR. It was another useful step in getting me going though.