Visiting Swell Wood

Sometimes a change is good. Visiting Swell Wood near Taunton was a big change as woodland conditions are very different to those of the wetlands I normally photograph in.

Swell Wood is a RSPB site with an excellent hide. In spring it is a heronry, now in September this hide provides an excellent view of small birds perching, feeding drinking and bathing. After photographing in the open wetlands, the biggest change was the much lower light levels, with the challenges this provides.

Most of the birds I saw were small and fast moving. When stationary lower shutter speeds could be used. A perched bird could be photographed with a burst at a lower speed with the hope that one or two of the burst would be without movement. The slower speed I found was still fast 1/500s.

Much higher speeds were needed to capture the birds activity and character. This led to extremely high ISO values and noise in the images, up to 25000. Noise reduction in processing is essential, and has to be thought about in the search for the cleanest photos showing action and charactere