Blog - Colleen Slater Photography

Out of office

Colleen will be away from 6 January until 8 April 2015, working on a reef conservation project in The Philippines with Coral Cay Conservation. The image above is of Sogod Bay on Leyte Island in the Philippines which is where the organisation is based.

The areas Colleen will be working in are remote and living conditions are basic, with diesel generated electricity for a few hours a day and without internet access most of the time. If you need to contact Colleen during this time, please allow for the fact that it make take some time before she is able to reply to you but don’t give up as she would be pleased to get your message.

She will be taking part in scientific surveys, collating data on the condition of underwater habitats to provide maps which are used to identify ‘candidate sites’ where conservation efforts of local communities will be best placed to create sustainable management plans. Funds are directed towards the training of local people to join the survey work. There will also be workshops to educate and raise awareness of the serious issues in relation to the threats facing reefs and forests and what action to take.

A bit about Coral Cay

Since 1986 CCC have run over 20 successful conservation projects in more than 10 different countries around the world involving more than 10,000 volunteers, training several hundred scholars and publishing more than 300 key scientific research papers.

Across the world, CCC have had several internationally notable accomplishments such as the introduction of several Marine Protected Areas including the creation of the UNESCO World Heritage Site in Belize; The Danjugan Marine Reserve and Wildlife Sanctuary for Negros, Philippines in 2000; The Limasawa Community Managed Marine Protected Area for Southern Leyte, and Philippines in 2008. CCC actively campaigned for the designation of the Chagos Marine Protected Area, which is now the world’s largest.

http://www.coralcay.org

Coral Reef Conservation on Koh Rong Island, Cambodia

Coral Reef Conservation – Last winter, I took part in a conservation project with Coral Cay Conservation, a UK based NGO, surveying the reefs around Koh Rong island in Cambodia. The base was in the village of Prek Svay where people make their living from fishing like the rest of the estimated population of 1,100. The island lies 25 km off the mainland and is supplied by boats loaded with provisions including factory-made blocks of ice for refrigeration, that come daily from the mainland port of Sihanoukville, a fast-growing tourist beach town.

Coral Reef Conservation

Coral Cay Conservation (CCC) were invited by the Fisheries Administration (FiA) of the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries (MAFF) to conduct detailed baseline marine assessments of the coastal resources around Koh Rong and Koh Rong Samloem Islands. This project, known as the Cambodia Reef Conservation Project, carried out survey dives along the fringing reefs of the islands between 2010 and 2014. The surveys collected data on reef health, human impacts and biotic and abiotic information including benthic, invertebrate and fish abundances and diversity. The work was carried out in order to support the development of a large Marine Protected Area around the island of Koh Rong.

Fisherman with family, Prek Svay

The island is quite possibly that imagined, cliched island paradise with pristine white sand beaches, turquoise water and limited development. However, since 2010, the island has been undergoing significant development in order to support future tourism-related operations but there are still no roads, power is by locally placed generators and rubbish has to be sent back to the mainland where the nearest medical facilities are also located. I was bitten by a dog in the village and had to endure five 10 hour round trips to the mainland to get vaccinations in the clinic at Sihanoukville. The supply boat is very slow and the water was often rough! I was also plagued by sand-flies and mosquitoes.

My new Nikon 1 AW1 underwater camera failed on the first dive, see other blog post,so I have no underwater images but here are some of the shots I took out of the water during my 3 month stay.

More of my images can be seen on my Flickr site here: https://www.flickr.com/photos/16142730@N05/sets/72157647885480559/

Riverside houses in Prek Svay

Returning on the supply boat from a clinic visit in Sihanoukville

Chalk Grassland – A Fragile, Endangered Habitat

Fragile Chalk Grassland

The flower-rich chalk grassland of the Sussex Downs is a rare and fragile habitat that needs careful management if it is not to return to a scrub-land of grass, gorse and bramble. These grasslands are a semi-natural habitat originally created by tree clearing in Neolithic times and are maintained by grazing and cutting. They only occur in North West Europe. The UK, and in particular England, is thought to contain about half the world’s chalk grassland, Therefore, this is a habitat of international importance.

Overlooking the Woodingdean to Falmer road near Brighton

Since the 1940s, as more intensive methods of agriculture have been used, it’s estimated that 80% of chalk grassland have been lost because of urban development, extensive road building and failure to manage it, especially in the south east.

Fragrant orchids at Castle Hill nature reserve: Chalk grassland is characterised by short, springy turf with a diverse mixture of lime-tolerant grasses, sedges and wildflowers with few shrubs or trees. These grasslands have a high biological diversity and consist of an exceptional variety of different species including a number of rare species of plants and animals. These include, pyramidal, fragrant, bee and spider orchids and skylarks and corn buntings. The thin, low-nutrient soil can be incredibly rich in plant life supporting up to 40 species per square metre. Plants include thistles, ox-eye daisy, cowslip, kidney vetch, bird’s foot trefoil, scabious, quaking grass, yellow rattle, viper’s bugloss and many more. Some species are found nowhere else, such as the Adonis blue and Chalkhill blue butterflies.

Scarce Common Blue butterflies

Meadow near Castle Hill: For the last two summers, I have visited The Gallops on the edge of Friston Forest near Cuckmere Haven in East Sussex and have taken many photos of insects and plants there.

Tortoise Shield Bug

Chalkhill Blue butterfly, The Gallops 2013

Flowering plants, The Gallops, 2012: I was disappointed last week to find that the grasses had become dominant and there were far fewer flowering plants than previously. Consequently, I found it much harder to locate interesting specimens or any interesting behaviour to photograph. I was told by a local, walking her dog that the horses are not using the area so much for training and that the grass is not being cut down for them. Already, there were young bramble plants, which the rabbits and sheep don’t like to eat, appearing throughout the area. This is where an estimated 850,000 Chalkhill blue butterflies appeared two years ago this week.

Scarce Green Forester moth, The Gallops 2013: I was equally disappointed on revisiting an area near Wilson’s Avenue in East Brighton. The grass seemed to be taking over and I saw only one roosting Marbled White butterffly at dawn and just a few Six-spot Burnet moths. The field scabious was struggling to be seen as the tall grasses towered above the flowers.

How quickly the habitat can become degraded.

Diving with the Nikon 1 AW1

Nikon 1 AW1 Diving

This winter, I took part in a coral reef surveying project in Cambodia with Coral Cay Conservation. I was involved in a similar project in The Philippines in 2010, when I took with me, a Ewa Marine U-BXP 100 housing to use with my Canon cameras underwater – see previous post. The main considerations, as previously, were cost, weight and image quality.

I have been reluctant to invest in an Ikelite hard housing for my Canon 5D Mark II because it will only fit that camera and not the 7D and should I upgrade to the 5D Mark III, I’d have to buy another housing.

The Ikelite hard housing for the 5D Mark II is £1285 with around £300 extra for two different ports to fit different size lenses and a further £340 for an 8” dome port should I want to use a 15mm fisheye lens. A strobe light and fittings would add from about £460 upwards.

So, the Ewa Marine ‘bag’ housing had proved inadequate and the Ikelite housing too expensive. I searched for another option and found that Nikon had recently launched an underwater, interchangeable lens camera that did not need a housing, the Nikon 1 AW1. In this camera, Nikon had combined the robustness of the all-weather compact Coolpix AW110 with the core features of the Nikon 1 J3. It was marketed as the world’s first system camera with a 1in, CX-format sensor that can be taken to a depth of 15 metres. It particularly appealed to me because it could shoot RAW images.

The first time I used it when snorkelling – it worked perfectly, as it did out of the water on the second occasion. However, it wouldn’t fire any shots the first time I dived with it to 9 metres and after that I discovered that the battery chamber had water in it with signs of corrosion. I tried using it again out of the water but the lens and LCD screen was fogged. Shortly afterwards, the camera broke down completely and wouldn’t switch on. I had followed the care instructions meticulously. I was now without any means of taking underwater photos for the whole 14 weeks of my trip.

On my return, Park Cameras gave me an immediate, no-quibble refund, I had paid £925 in total for the camera with two lenses and the silicon cover and Nikon have since admitted that it had been faulty.

As it was newly released, there weren’t many reviews available to read, by people who had used the camera, when I bought it in December 2013. There are currently, 4 reviews on Amazon’s UK site and 29 on their US site. Of the users that state that they dived with the camera, 45% ie. 4 users, experienced no problems but for 55% (5 users), the camera flooded and was unusable. Of the 4 reviews by users in the UK, the camera lens and LCD screen fogged, one camera was permanently unusable. One user, Oilman ‘Owen’, mystifyingly gave a 5* review for the camera even though it flooded on the first dive. Another user who gave 3* dived with it but didn’t like it. Most users were not taking the camera underwater and most were using auto everything.

To be fair to Nikon, more people who experience a problem are likely to write a review than users who are happy with their product. Also, there are plenty of reviews of other underwater compacts whose users have experienced flooding but they paid considerably less for their cameras than I did.

I barely used the camera but there were things about it that I didn’t like such as the lack of a histogram. Why have exposure compensation if you don’t have a histogram display to see the effect of the adjustment? For me, the lack of a viewfinder made manual focus impossible and autofocus was hit-or-miss. The image on the LCD screen was unclear for focusing in the water and, in the tropical sunshine, it was barely viewable.

It’s clearly designed for point & shoot users who will simply leave it on Auto. There are too many menus to scroll through to change settings for the Creative mode.

I will be going back to The Philippines next winter and will have to find another way to shoot underwater images of reasonable quality at a reasonable cost.

Artist’s Open House Exhibition 2014

Colleen will be showing her work at ‘Ilana Richardson and Guests’, on the West Hove Trail as part of the OpenHouse exhibition in the
Brighton Festival.

66 Langdale Gardens, Hove, BN3 4HH

Tel: 01273 726 464

e-mail: art@ilana-richardson.com

Open every Saturday and Sunday in May from 11 am – 5 pm

Colleen Slater – Photography
Ilana Richardson – Paintings and Prints

Out of office

Colleen will be away from 6 January until 20 April 2014, working on reef conservation projects in Cambodia and the Philippines with Coral Cay Conservation. The image above is of Sogod Bay on Leyte Island in the Philippines which is where the organisation is based.

A BIT ABOUT CORAL CAY

Coral Cay website

Macro Lighting and Diffusion

Macro Lighting

A considerable amount of my work-time is spent researching macro photographic technique and equipment on the internet. Recently, I have been looking in particular, at the lighting set-ups other photographers use. I’ve found a useful thread on FredMiranda, ‘Post Your Set Up! where many people have shown their set-ups with their resulting images.

http://www.fredmiranda.com/forum/topic/780820/0

It’s important to diffuse the light, from the sun or flash, to achieve successful images. In the past, I‘ve tried, with limited success, to diffuse sunlight with a round, flat diffuser. It is difficult to keep that kind of diffuser in place either by holding (not enough hands) or on a stand which all too easily gets blown over with the slightest puff of wind. This summer, I tried using a white umbrella on a stand instead. I think it’s made a big difference to my images and I’m very pleased with the results.

The equipment I bought cheaply on Ebay broke so I’ve just invested in a better quality Lastolite umbrella and Manfrotto MN-026 adapter with which to attach the umbrella to the lightstand. I stabilize the stand with a beanbag on the base.

http://www.wexphotographic.com/buy-lastolite-80cm-translucent-white-umbrella/p12391

http://www.wexphotographic.com/buy-manfrotto-mn026-lite-tite-swivel-and-umbrella-adaptor/p1005217?cm_mmc

Recently emerged Six-spot Burnet moth, Zygaena filipendulae stephensi, resting on its chrysalis case, where it is expanding its wings in preparation for its first flight.

Green Forester moth, Adiscita statices, on Scabious.

431_whitehalkhill_51_pnt_16_s_u_srn_pfo_web2

Chalkhill Blue butterfly, Polyommatus cordon, on grass.

Chalkhill Blue butterfly, Polyommatus cordon, on grass.

Honeybee – Apis mellifera, on Scabious.

I used fill-flash for the images with scabious and natural light only for the rest.

Bumblebee Wash and Brush-up

Bumblebee Wash

It had been raining heavily when I discovered this bumblebee sheltering beneath an aster flower. Bees can’t fly too well when they are wet, which provides an opportunity to shoot them while they are relatively motionless as they dry out.

Canon 5D Mark II, 100mm f2.8 L IS lens, 1/100 @ f7.1, ISO 1000

This bee eventually climbed up to the top of the flower where it sat preening itself for long enough to enable me to take a series of about twenty five shots. Here are just some of them. They were all taken with the same camera and flash settings.

Canon 5D Mark II, 100mm f2.8 L IS lens, 1/200 @ f8, ISO 1000, fill flash, monopod

Bee Orchids in Sheepcote Valley, Brighton

I saw Bee Orchids for the first time last week, on a walk in the rain, around Sheepcote valley. There weren’t many of them, about 36 flowering stems in about an acre of grassland and only one of those stood proud of other vegetation, so that was the one I photographed.

Canon 5D Mark II, 300mm f4 L IS lens, 1/320 @ f6.3, ISO 640

As you can see, it was past it’s best, with some browning on the leaves and flowers but I was so pleased to find any at all, that I shot it anyway. Now I know where to go, I’ll go back next year and hopefully do better. You need a lot of patience for nature photography.

I used a 300mm lens with a 1×4 extender resting on a beanbag on the ground and used mirror lock-up with a remote shutter release. It was quite windy, so I used a Wimberley Plamp (concealed from view) to grasp the flower stem, reducing movement as much as possible. I also used a fast shutter speed, aiming to achieve maximum sharpness.

I got very wet and I’d concealed the Plamp so well, I forgot to take it with me when I left. Ah well…

Identify British Blue Butterflies

British Blue Butterflies

Castle Hill, on the edge of the city of Brighton & Hove, is a Nature Reserve within the South Downs National Park. The habitat of chalk grassland and mixed scrub has been designated a Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI).

The reserve contains some of the UK’s rarest and most endangered species of flora and fauna including the now uncommon, though widely distributed, Common Blue butterfly. The Adonis Blue, Chalkhill Blue and Small Blue, which is the UK’s smallest butterfly, are also seen here.

It can be difficult to identify the different species correctly as there can be wide variations in colour between the species and between males and females. The following URL links to an excellent site for comparing and identifying different British butterflies.

http://www.ukbutterflies.co.uk/species_family.php?name=all&stage=imago

Adonis Blue male on Fragrant-orchid

Canon 7D, 100mm f2.8 L IS macro lens, 1/800 sec @ f8, ISO 400

It is perhaps easiest to identify the male Adonis Blue with it’s stunning, intense azure-coloured wings – the others tend to have duller blue colouring.

The Common Blue is one of the country’s smallest butterflies with a wing-span of 29-36mm. The image below shows one on Park Ranger Paul Gorringe’s finger tip.

Common Blue butterfly

Canon 7D, 100mm f2.8 L IS macro lens, 1/250 sec @ f8, ISO 1000

The tiny Small Blue has a wing-span of 18-27mm. The male has greyish-coloured upperside wings with a scattering of blue scales whilst the female is brownish, without the blue scales. The underside of both is a silvery grey. Outside of it’s stronghold in the south of England, colonies exist in isolated pockets often in coastal regions.

Small Blue male

Canon 7D, 100mm f2.8 L IS macro lens, 1/250 sec @ f7.1, ISO 400

Sussex is a fortunate to have 45 of the UK’s 59 species of butterflies although some of those such as The Duke of Burgundy, The Purple Emperor and The White Hairstreak are very restricted and seldom seen.