My 40th Birthday Trip to Marrakesh, Morrocco - Friday 31st July

BA2666 from Gatwick North to Marrakech - traded some Avios points for an upgrade to club class - so made the most of the free champagne in the BA lounge to kick start the trip!

Mum had booked us into the gorgeous Riad dar El Aila spa Hotel in the northern quarter of the Medina. Nearest parking is "Sidi Ben Slimane" for taxis to drop you off then it's a short walk through dark, but not disturbing, alleyways to the Riad.

The ceiling in our room!!

We had a beautifully detailed, and huge, suite with 2 bedrooms, a lounge and bathroom all complete with ancient traditional carving and ironwork. Simply stunning. Unfortunately air-con was only properly installed in one of the bedrooms and the other had only a water-filled floor-fan which was struggling in a room with such high ceilings and no windows at all - so it was pretty much a human size "tagine" I was sleeping in! but a very traditionally Moroccan one and very clean and comfortable.

I had no idea what to expect of a Riad (means "garden") but they are truly awesome - from outside they look nothing more than a dingy door in the wall, but as soon as you get inside, they open up into spacious multi-tiered dwellings with spiral stone staircases and full height trees growing up from the courtyards taller than the buildings around them. A seriously peaceful atmosphere and stunning views from the rooftop restaurant and sun loungers.

After having eaten on the plane and it getting late, we decided not to bother eating again but ventured up onto the roof for a taste of the "Grey" Morroccan wine before bed – the stifling heat and crippling CTS pains in my arms meant sleep was difficult unfortunately - but we were glad to have arrived safe and found a welcoming group of people to be staying with.

The alleyway outside our Riad

Basic language picked up so far...
Thank you sounds like "sho-kran"
Goodbye sounds like "mar-salama" and Merhaba means "you're welcome" (whereas in Turkish it means hello).

Thursday 2nd July 2015

Heading down to the jetty, tired and slightly hungover but happy

The day started with some frantic packing, a bit of breakfast and quite a few coffees. I walked out one last time to see the Little Owls hoping they had moved along their wall closer to the path (and my waiting lens), but sadly they hadn't and were still happily perched watching me some distance out of reach.  Still no sign of the short-eared owls at all though. Other residents had seen them quartering a few times, but I had only had the briefest glimpse on day one.... a reason to return I guess.

Leaving the Island is pretty much like arriving except in reverse... the residents form a chain down the 87 steps to the jetty and all luggage is passed down before the boat carrying all the new arrivals moors up and we chain-gang their luggage back up the steps to the waiting tractor. Thankfully this time it wasn't raining and of course we had a swirling mass of birds to wonder at whilst working. Sadly for me I was not heading in the direction of home, but straight to Devon for a work meeting in the morning, so I spent the short boat trip, and the subsequent 4 hour drive, dreaming of the hotel menu and deciding which food I would order when I got there... you can imagine my disappointment to realise that the hotel I was staying in had no restaurant at all (or bar for that matter!). I was too shattered to go out so demolished the in-room biscuits and crashed. Next time I visit Skomer I will definitely be a little more prepared!

Leaving the island - David returned
again the following week for group 2

Puffin with Sand-eels in the rain - my favourite shot from the trip

Last Day on the Island

setting up to timelapse the mist rolling in

The weather started pretty awful - chilly, damp and misty so it seemed as good a time as any to try again with the in-camera timelapse (or interval shooting) so I climbed up onto the trig and set up to shoot the mist rolling in over "The Neck" of the island. The mist was rolling quite quickly and so I probably should have gone for a 2 second interval instead of 3. The wind and rain up on the trig also didn't bode well, but a well-placed pair of waterproofs and a solid tripod, extended as low as it would go, gave me a good starting point to get set up. Then came the checklist of things to remember to turn off... instant playback, auto focus, vibration reduction....and the things to switch.... from RAW to JPG, ISO down to 100 (to force some lag on the shutter speed and create a smoothing effect on the resultant footage) and shut off the viewfinder to avoid any light pollution (probably more applicable at night than during the day, but I figured it's a good habit to get into). I let it run for 20 minutes or so during which time the fog/mist filled the frame so the island completely disappeared before clearing again to reveal the land once more. It wasn't anything amazing, but a good subject to practise on.

The afternoon lesson was one of composition and controlling the background - a lesson Gail and I had attended more than once on previous tours with David, so since the weather had cleared, we spent the time chatting outside to two guys from Bawdsey Hall in Suffolk, not far from where Gail lives. They were clothed head to toe in camo gear and carrying the largest lenses I think I have ever seen... they were on the island for one night, hoping to shoot short-eared owls, but were having a bit of a disastrous trip. However, we did find out all about the B&B they run from Bawdsey Hall - sounds incredible and Gail and I have now booked a night's stay there next month to go check it out - wildlife camera feeds come direct to your bedroom and badgers feed just outside. All set up for photographers and fairly friendly Little Owls too apparently - very much looking forward to it already.

The group at The Wick

After the daily dose of Puffin portraits at The Wick, I wandered back for a second stint in the hide with Kurt. Sadly, on the way out I noticed a Manx Shearwater's head poking up through the boardwalk.... there are a lot of bird carcasses littered all over the island so it wasn't unusual to see dead birds on the ground, but on closer inspection, I realised this one was still alive and had got its head stuck in between the walkway planks - not much we could do except report it to the researchers and let them go and inspect it. I was surprised the Gulls had not already found it and put it out of its misery.

Spent our last night up on “The Trig” (Triangulation Pillar) watching the almost-full moon rising and drinking the remains of everyone’s red wine then up chatting til the early hours... smart move Hedger .... only one morning left to get the shots you want!

Tuesday 30th June 2015

Catherine swimming with Puffins

One of the ladies on the trip, Catherine, was training for a charity triathlon in aid of Parkinsons disease and she had been regularly running around the island in the mornings to maintain her fitness levels. Monday morning she decided was the perfect morning to follow up her 45 minute run with a 30 minute swim (mad woman) so I headed out at 7am to capture the event for her.... sure enough I found her at the beach near the jetty around 730am stripping down to her costume ready for the second stage of her training - when she got in she gave no indication how cold the water was and bravely headed off round the island in a cloud of Puffins until she was again out of sight. I hung around for a while shooting the wealth of wild flowers clinging to the rocks and the masses of tangled Honeysuckle cascading down the cliffs. It really is a beautiful coastline.

Catherine on the return swim

After Monday's lesson on birds in flight I was lucky enough to have a family of five Oyster Catchers posing for me to practice on during my walk back to the block for breakfast. I tried again after breakfast on Puffins flying in over the jetty, but balancing the ISO with a fast enough shutter speed to freeze the birds rapid flapping I found tricky - particularly with the adverse weather conditions causing constant changes in light levels. ISO AUTO is of course an option, but this feature will select the lowest ISO to match the lens reciprocal - it does assume hand-holding but it really doesn't care about shutter speed - so I came out of AUTO and re-programmed the conveniently-placed video record button to be an ISO control which made life a little easier.
A few tips and tricks from David also helped.... pre-focusing on something the right distance away to minimise the distance the lens has to move when the bird enters the zone, massively improved my ratio of in-focus to blurry - as did limiting the focusing range of the lens, switching to D9 focusing area mode and waiting that fraction of a section longer before engaging the auto-focus in the first place. AF-C is awesome on the D4, but it's a tricky task for any camera and anything you can do to help will hugely reduce the frustration levels.

I left the evening Wick session early to head back and attempt a sunset time lapse (had the sun ever appeared) but on the way back I stopped off at the hide only to discover Kurt already in there snapping away at backlit gulls in flight - the reflection off the water was harsh and made life difficult for the camera, but it was an exciting and slightly frantic 10 minutes after the tedium of The Wick.
Spent the evening time-lapsing the sky and watching the almost full moon rise over the Trig, sipping red wine - such an eerie yet peaceful place. Solitary and yet surrounded. The island was definitely growing on me.

Dusk at The Wick

Monday 29th June 2015 - First in-camera timelapse

First full day on the island started early with breakfast and a walk out to see what was about - then as soon as the day trippers started to arrive, we retreated back into the common room for our first theory session ... Time lapse. There was a lot more to it than I had anticipated and my notes were rapidly filling the single sheet of A4 I had managed to steal (planning failure number 4).
The video here is my very first attempt outside the common room during the lesson. I love the random materialisation of clouds in the middle of the shot, but recognise that having plants in the shot on a windy day really makes a poor and very jerky timelapse.
Thankfully we had some free time available after lunch so we all set off with our new found knowledge and I attempted to time-lapse the waves crashing around beneath me from my lovely spot at the Garland Stone. It turned out complete rubbish and David was right - he predicted it would be rubbish, but said the best way to learn is indeed to try it on all sorts of subjects... clouds racing across the sky, shadows moving over the ground as the sun journeys etc., - just not waves crashing against the rocks as it turns out.
However I do love the process because it goes something a bit like this....

Step 1 : Set up camera on a tripod, fixed nice and low to the ground, so it is stable in the gusty winds.
Step 2 : Dial in all required settings for the environment and finished lapse that you want (admittedly this takes a bit of calculating and good memory/notes)
Step 3 : Take a test shot and if all good... set the interval-shooting going
Step 4 : Sit back and enjoy the view (preferably with a nice glass of something fruity) for anything from 20 to 50 minutes. Lovely.
A surprising addition to the "my kind of photography" list, but quite addictive and makes a welcome change from crawling around in the mud sneaking up on skittish mammals. I've just got to get the subject and settings right before the results are anything to be proud of.
Weather was lovely all day - fresh and windy, but the wind made it very cold in the evening at the Wick - so cold in fact that my fingers went numb and set themselves onto the camera in a fixed frozen grip - very painful. Packing list now contains winter gloves should I ever feel like returning to the Island.
The evening at The Wick was mainly about capturing hundreds more shots like this one.... things can only get better (I believe that was a song by D-Ream?) I didn't stay up for the Manxies, but chose to try and get to sleep ahead of the other snorers in our dorm in readiness for another early start.