Last Saturday, I attended a ‘Winter Moorland’ photography day organised by Steve Magennis. This workshop was held in Leicestershire at a location with some rocky outcrops, heather and bilberry. This was the perfect setting for the three birds of prey he brought along with him; a European eagle owl, a peregrine falcon and a golden eagle.
Workshops like this are an excellent way to practise your techniques and try out different things. It was a privilege to get so close to these stunning birds.
We started the workshop with the eagle owl. This was a stunning female with the most amazing orange eyes!
She was positioned in a variety of settings, giving us the opportunity to shoot her in different ways. It was good to have time to think about the set up of each shot. Here I wanted to have a low shot, with the heather blurred in front of her, giving the feel of a wild bird that has been stalked….
I was also able to get up quite close….. only then can you truly appreciate the beauty of this bird….
I then played a round with some of the images in post processing to create some more ‘arty’ images…
The next bird was a young female peregrine falcon. Again, she was a beautiful bird… I was fascinated by her plumage… I loved the way each feather was tipped in fawn… I loved photographing this bird!
I felt this bird lent itself to a black and white image, so I converted a few….
Finally, the amazing golden eagle was brought out. The light was beginning to fade a little, but we managed to get some great shots of her…
Finally, as the light sunk below the hillside, we had the chance to try some silhouette shots…
If you would like to see the rest of my shots, they have been uploaded onto my Flickr account and can be found here:
and if you are interested in doing a similar workshop, then visit Steve’s website at: