Amazing scenery

The combination of clear mornings, snow and higher tides has made me late for work on two consecutive mornings! I should explain. Yesterday I took the dogs out for their normal walk along the beach at Heysham. The early morning light and the snow on the Lake District mountains made for an amazing view. As the tides are high in the morning, the Oystercatchers, Dunlin and Curlews are gathered in large groups close inshore. SO.... rather than go to work on time, I got caught up trying to take pictures of the scene. It does get worse though-while driving along the Morecambe promenade on my way to work, the light and the snow and the boats on the tide "forced" me to stop and take some more! Sorry bosses!Anyway, I was on my way out the door thismorning, and Caron was taking the dogs out, and guess what-take two! The views are just so beautiful! Both mornings, I was playing with my Sigma 170-500. I think the moral is that I need to tripod mount it to get the results I want. I will post up some pictures later though

XIT404

Another kudos to type post, but also a heads up for those interestedXIT404 are a specialist company making some truly esoteric bits for enhancing your underwater housing!I bought an oversize focus wheel knob from them-it is fantastic for using with my big glovesCheck out www.xit404.com

Caving in the Dales

I went up to Lost Johns Pot near Cowan Bridge in Yorkshire yesterday, and together with Dave Elliot, had a fantastic trip down Lost Johns Pot. We dropped down about 6 pitches, in smooth walled, very dry clean cave, and then came back out again! I'd forgotten how physically hard SRT is, although it was good to feel that I was getting back into my rhythm by the end. I ache a lot and have some strange bruises today thoughCaves are amazing environments, it is always weird to look out over a landscape, and imagine that underneath it are a rabbit warren of tunnels and passageways. They also give you a real sense of the scale of geological time-many of the passages are now dry, they were carved out when water levels were much higher. I used to take a camera on my caving trips-together with slave flashes, but didn't yesterday. As always, I wished I had! Caving is such an alien activity, that I think it is quite eye-catching and photogenic. Note to self-take a camera!

Inon Knob tests

My last post was about the cold water knobs for my Inon strobes that I got from Jonas Odell. I managed to get them wet in Capernwray on Friday with David Kneale and David Elliot. The sturgeon were most obliging-and Dave Elliot gets Strugeon Wrangler supremo points for actually de-tangling the sturgeons barbels! The viz was superb, although it was a gloomy day. I was using my Nikkor 105mm VR that I mentioned in my earlier post, together with a Fisheye focus light. The water clarity is so good that you can use the 105 as a short telephoto:
    
The backscatter is from the strobe position-I think they were a tad too close.Anyway, water temp was 4 degrees, and my right dry glove seems to be seeping, so my hands were pretty cold. In the past, I have really struggled to adjust my strobe's power output when cold due to the size of the knobs on the Inon strobes (see my previous posts), but with the extenders that I got from Jonas, even at the end of a 45 minute dive, was able to easily adjust them-result! Here are some more pictures from the dive:
  
Thanks to David and Dave-looking forward to the next one!