Birds of Namibia 3/3

The last time we ended up close to Orupembe watching the beautiful Swallow-tailed Bee-eaters on the way back from the Angolan borders. The other day we continued south and spent the night in the Purros campsite – yes, the same Purros that we had passed through some 10 days earlier on the way towards Skeleton Coast park. As I already mentioned before, the campsites were the best places to watch birds – not only they accumulate birds from the neighbourhood, the birds are also quite tame being used to people presence...

Winter goes on

This year alike the last year the cold rules the winter in Bergen, Norway. In spite of a common thought of Europeans from south, this part of Norway usually experience only a few days of snow and cold spells during winter time, the last winters seem to be rather exceptional in this respect. Just to confirm this, the snow was falling again over last two days although we already expected spring to come…

Tip – lens hoods Do-It-Yourself

Last week I came across an interesting website www.lenshoods.co.uk where you can download for free the schemes of almost any type of lens hood. So far I was lucky not to lose any of the hoods of my lenses but I’m aware that the original lens hoods can be damn expensive – for example the spare hood for the super-telephoto lens canon EF 500mm F 4.0 IS can be bought on Internet for some 600 USD! The above-mentioned web page contains 1:1 scale drawings of a number of hoods for lens of Canon, Nikon, Sigma, Tamron, Tokina, Pentax and Olympus brands. You can simply download the drawings, print them in real size on the paper, cut out and fold to be ready-to-use. Of course, any better material – firmer and waterproof, can replace the paper that the hood is made of. Besides th fact you don’t need to pay a lot of many for the original lens hood you can also spare the space in your bag and carry the lens unfolded. Some people may feel as a drawback that the hood must be attached to the lens with the use of elastic band and alternatively by a sticky tape but to me this seems to be good compromise for its price. The web page also contains a script that creates the drawing of a lens hood according to your demands. The documents with hood drawings for crop-factor-made lenses can be found on the website www.lenshoods.net

Portfolio - Landscape

Next on the list of the "Best of" photographs from my gallery are the pictures of landscape - although Im mostly concentrating on birds, there are surprisingly high number of landscape shots in my database. The best pictres from the landscape category can be seen HERE.

The complete list of best pictures according to the themes are found in the portfolio under the menu item “PORTFOLIO”.

How to deal with overexposed photos

This is an article that has been opublished in the new section of Juzaphoto server called JuzaPhoto Magazine. Juzas web is well known to many protographers as a great source of useful tutorials as well as a meeting point of people hwo gather in the discussion forum. In the new section of the forum called JuzaPhoto Magazine there is a new article on photography published every week. The articles are supplied by the forum users and it is worth checking regularly if you want to see the tricks the other photographers use...

Birds of Namibia 2/3

Last time I ended the first episode of the series about birds of Namibia in Hoarusib valley near Purros with a bunch of birds gathering around the river. The same day we left the fresh valley and turned into the hot arid planes towards the Skeleton Coast Park...

BBC series Life of Birds

The documentary series produced by BBC are unique and probably well known to all of you. If you happened to miss the series called „Life of Birds“ go and buy it, it is worth watching! This series from 1998 contains 10 episodes, each about 1 hour of footage. Do you want to see Owls hunting prey hidden under the snow? Do you want to see a bird who can imitate sounds of chainsaw and falling trees? Do you know what is the function of the „tube“ for  Tubenosed? Have you ever seen the „storage room“ of certain american Woodpecker, hunting strategy of Black Heron or the mating dances of arctic Buff-breasted Sandpiper? These and much more you can watch on 3 DVDs from the collection of the charismatic narrator David Attenborough. Currently there is great deal on BBC shop where you can get the whole „Life Collection“ of David Attenborough (including Life of Birds) for only 57 Pounds – the whole collection contains altogether 8 series on 24 DVDs with the total of about 60 hours of the best-ever footage from nature.

Here is the link to the official BBC shop with the collection

Ps: If you only want the Life of Birds series, it will cost you incredible 9 Pounds!

Birds of Namibia 1/3

As always when visiting brand new places, I was curious what birds will appear in front of my camera during the trip to Nambiia. I had certain ideas and strange dreams before we left to south but the reality was, as usually, completely different from what I had expected. Knowing that Africa is the hot spot for every wildlife photographer but having in mind that our geological field trip was scheduled to miss all famous parks of Namibia I was getting into the plane with reasonable pessimism at the end of September 2010...

PF 2011: Let us not be blind

There is so much of beauty and miracles in the world but most of that we pass by everyday without a notice. Our whole life is made up of tiny, seemingly unimportant details and stories. Some of us desire to be successful, some want to be rich or quest for the meaning of life. In the frenzy of modern life we lose the ability to perceive what really is important, genuine and beautiful.

I’m not a good story-teller so I’m attaching to this „muse“ a story told by somebody else – maybe you have heard that story already – it is all about how blind we are to see extraordinary things in our lives, about the naivety we lose, about how we would like to be but we are not…

Magdalena, the best Christmas gift...

I do mostly bird photography but it is great pleasure for me now to focus on this little mammal called Magdalena :-)

Our daughter Magdaléna was born 19.12.2010.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to all!

Jiri, Eliška and Magdalena

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Birds of Norway - Portfolio

Another from the best chosen pictures are Birds of Norway. Altogether I took pictures of 61 species of birds from Norway up-to-date. The best you can see in Portfolio - find the direct link HERE. The complete list of best pictures according to the themes are found in the portfolio under the menu item “PORTFOLIO”. ..

Night shots from Namibia

The night-sky photography in Namibia was the main reason I took my tripod along with me. The amazing visibility of southern night skyscape with no light pollution was very tempting. And watching the stars on the desert was really a spectacle...

Wildlife photography – the beauty of the moment

I was thinking about the title of this article and ended up with this rather vague and neutral term “beauty of the moment”. Already for some time I wonder what some photographers mean by saying “this is the nature how I see it” or “I want to photograph that scene differently then others”. These statements seems a bit selfish to me, especially when it comes to the bird photography, but maybe I am still too much a beginner to construct such a strong opinions…

Birds of Florida - Portfolio

With the increasing number of pictures on this website I feel that visitors can find themselves a bit lost between all the photos. To make browsing the images easier I have followed the other photographers and created Portfolio with the aim to present only the best pictures from each category. The first item in portfolio is Birds of Florida...

Sossusvlei - Deadly beautiful desert

There are places in the world so magic and beautiful that one just cannot really conceive; places where you must simply sit down and watch all the beauty around that nature has created. That is exactly what I would do in Namibian Sossusvlei desert last October if we had more than just one morning for visit of this wonder from another world…