On Saturday 4th October I spent the morning at the Cat Survival Trust in Welwyn, Hertfordshire.

The trust occupies 11 acres of land behind a pet food store just outside Welwyn Village on the B656 to Hitchin. It’s not open to the public but members of the trust can visit by arrangement. I visited with fellow Letchworth photographer, mark Tiller, who has been associated with the trust for the last couple of years & organises photo shoots for other photographers.

They have over 30 cats of various protected species from around the world. Most of them are rescued from other organisations in danger of being put down due to old age, lack of space or the closing of the organisation.

The Caracal, above, is often known as the desert lynx. It comes from Africa & the Middle East. The Trust currently has two males & two females.

The Bobcat is found almost exclusively in the USA & looks much like a very large domestic cat.

One of the most beautiful examples of the big cats has to be the Snow Leopard. Unfortunately, while I was there the snow leopards were engaged in a heavy bout of sleeping, we were treated to only a brief period of open eyes, their curiosity in our presence very short-lived.

The Trust provides opportunities for photographers on group trips during which they can have access to the inner sanctum of some of the pens. Most of then pens have a single cage and you can, with care, shoot through the bars. Other pens have a double cage with a path between the inner & outer. It’s impossible to eliminate the inner bars photographing through the double cages. With a group session a member of staff can allow photographers in to the inner section.

Unfortunately, two people pulled out of our visit at the last moment so as there were only two of us we couldn’t shoot some of the cats (photographically!) as the trust has to provide a member of staff to accompany the group.

The Cat Survival Trust is run entirely by volunteers; they have no paid staff. Part of their work & fund-raising goes to support their reserve in Argentina.

Their website (which is currently quite old & being redeveloped) can be found at www.catsurvivaltrust.org.

I went to Knebworth Park today to a country show with my wife and two of the girls. We all took cameras although  think only me & Sarah ended up taking pics. Laura really needs to be in the right mood to use her camera & she was more interested on going on the stalls, buying sweets & chips than taking pics.

As we walked into the show ground I saw a group of photographers around the falconry arena. I instantly recognised a guy called Mark who has bright ginger hair & matching beard, he goes by the name of mtiller on the DSLR User Forums. He was standing with Daisy (Carol) & Debbie from the same forum so I went up & said hello. I arranged to see them a bit later & went off with the family for a look round.

This was the biggest falconry display I’d seen. I’ve been to various shows before which usually have a falconer & associated birds but Knebworth had 5 or 6 who all had big tents containing many varieties of bird of prey. The star of the show had to be a Golden Eagle. We listened to a talk by the guy who owns/flies her including lots of graphic detail about how they imprint on their owners & how the owners get to breed them.

We then saw a display by a working-dog trainer before moving up towards the main arena and some handy chips.

Throughout the day I kept wandering back to the falconry arena for either the regular talks or displays. At one stage all of the falconers brought a Harris Hawk each into the main arena. Unfortunately, even with the 100mm - 400mm Canon, they were a little too far away from the crowd line for decent shots.

I met up again with the DSLR User crew & arranged for Mark to give me a lift home so the family could leave me to it. I don’t mind walking round these places too much but after 10 minutes or sho my trigger finger is itching to take more photos, which isn’t always possible with a wife & 3 kids in tow.

Most of the shots of the birds were taken under canvas & lighting was pretty poor outside let along in the tents. This meant upping the ISO pretty drastically which just adds loads of noise to the shots. I tried to keep it down as much as possible but sometimes it was hard not to stay below ISO 1600 or even 3200 hand-holding the 100-400. I definitely need a faster lens.

We listened to a talk by a professional wildlife photographer - a Nikon user - who let me have a play with his D2X, 500mm prime on a Wimberely gimbal - some serious cash involved in that. It just reminded me of the Canon primes I got to play with at Focus on Imaging a couple of weeks back and made me realise how much I need this lens!

After the last flying display we had a chat with one of the falconers. Mark had previously mentioned speaking to him about us going down to Shropshire to photograph him at work with some real falconry. He suggested June for some nice photo opportunities or after October for some good hunting-type shots. I hope we manage to bring that meet to fruition. I wonder if I’ll have my 600mm by then…

I saw on the DSLR User Forums that one of the members, TammyLynn, was organising a meeting at Gloucester for Sunday March 2nd. I was off that weekend so decided to tag along leaving my wife to take my mother out for Mother’s Day!

I arrived in Gloucester around 10.45 after a journey of two & a quarter hours & parked near the Historic Docks. I spent a while wandering round the docks & getting a few snaps before heading off for the cathedral to meet the others at 1pm.

There were 6 members from the forum who turned up plus 2 wives. It’s always interesting meeting people you’ve never met before & have just conversed online with.

We wandered around the cathedral for a couple of hours. I took quite a few HDR shots - the interior of churches is bread & butter for High Dynamic Range photos because of the huge differences in light levels in different parts of the building. All of the HDR shots were taken over a 5-stop range, all tripod mounted.

After the main part of the cathedral we went into the cloisters for a few shots. i recognised this section of the cathedral as the cloisters in the Harry Potter movies. Occasionaly choristers wandered back & forth making for some nice shots in their red cassocks.

After the cathedral we went into the town centre & found a coffee house for some well-earned refreshments before walking back down to the docks. I had the canon 100-400mm on the camera at this stage, having taken a few shots of seagulls flying near the cathedral. I was able to grab a few more shots around the docks with the 100-400 before the light faded too much.

I managed to get lost on the way out & 10 minutes after leaving the car park I recognised it as I drove past in the opposite direction. I eventually got home around 8pm.

A long day but very worthwhile even if it did take me 2 days to process the shots. Always great to meet some fellow ‘togs.

My first meeting with some ‘togs from the DSLR User forums was one I organised to St Albans on the 2nd February. Having seen one or two other meetings taking place on that website I decided I was missing out due to always being working when they were organised. I realised that the only way to guarantee being able to go on one was to organise one for myself.

In the end four of us from the forum turned up, I met members Debbie, Daisy & Saladin, who traveled all the way from Wiltshire.

We spent the first hour or so around the park at Verulam shooting the ducks, geese, swans & herons. The weather was sunny & fresh. It was pretty cold and some of the ducks looked hilarious struggling across the ice of the smaller lake.

We then took a break at the nearby Waffle House for some well-earned refreshment before wandering back through the park & up to the Cathedral.

I’m currently into HDR shots at the moment so this was an ideal opportunity to try some shots for the HDR portfolio. I’d contacted the Cathedral during the week to make sure it was OK to use tripods inside, so I set the tripod up for the multiple-exposures required for HDR. Most of the shots were done in aperture priority & consisted of 5 separate shots ranging from minus 2 stops to plus 2 stops. (later combined using Photomatix software).

I mainly used the new Sigma 10-20mm lens which is rapidly becoming a favourite. The Sigma 18-50mm was stuck on my daughter’s Canon 300D & did get a few shots also.

There shooting was pretty uneventful although daisy & Saladin were "told off" by the organist for photographing the choirboys during their practice - apparently it’s not allowed.

We ended the evening with a nice meal at the Fighting Cocks public house which is just down the hill from the cathedral (I keep saying ‘cathedral‘ although technically it’s not a cathedral but an abbey).

The others then left while I walked back to the cathedral for some night shots. On the way back to the car park I got a phone call from Saladin whose battery had died, so I assisted with a jump-start before heading off home to process the shots.

A writeup of the photoshoot appeared in the News section of DSLR User Magazine’s April issue.