Sandbagged!

Sandbagged!
Photograph by Steve Barnett

Wednesday 29 February 2012

Comfort Ye...

Comfort ye my people!

It is a great source of comfort and reassurance when you can walk by the side of the Derbyshire Wye and watch Britain's only self sustaining population of wild rainbow trout doing exactly that - sustaining their population.
She's about 18 to 20 inches long and a moment before I pressed the shutter button she had a companion about half her size on her left side.  My presence was too much for the husband but the wife has invested too much work into that gravel to leave it just yet.

There are actually four redds in this picture but the ones in the background are hidden by the glare.  Same story on each redd, a big girl and some little boys.  Rainbow trout prefer toy boys it would seem!

The pictures are poor, just aides de memoir, but if you look carefully you can make out the clean, freshly turned gravel of the redds and there hovering over them are the just discernable shapes of the breeding wild rainbow trout.

Being one of the dog walkers this morning meant that only the shirt pocket camera was available, the venerable and battered Olympus ยต790 SW that has been the "fishing camera" for a few years now.  This year the fishing trips are going to mean lugging a bigger camera around.  The decision to write a book requires higher quality images than those for the internet, hence the decision to travel less lightly for 2012.

There will be another attempt later this week with the bigger camera and a polarizing filter...

Hmm...

Still struggling with the quality.  The glare means even with the polarizing filter I've had to push the contrast by 200%!  I'll keep trying but in the meantime...





Regular Rod

6 comments:

  1. Dear RR:

    Glad to hear that you are writing "the" book. A nice quarto hardcover, perhaps limited will grace my library.

    I was hoping that the steps of Cotton was a fingerpost!

    Best

    H

    ReplyDelete
  2. I'm looking forward to the pictures and a book. Please keep us posted on that.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Hi Rod, Pardon me for saying but do you know how to use a polarising filter?

    ReplyDelete
  4. Well I'm open to suggestions. So far I've simply rotated the filter until the best clarity has been achieved in the view finder, put the lens hood back on, framed the image and then pressed the shutter.

    Regular Rod

    ReplyDelete
  5. Yes thats the right way, you may or may not get a better image by varying the angle of the camera to the subject, eg height, up and down and left to right. very fiddily.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. What I could have done with is another redd with a tree over the top that I could hide in and look down directly. The angles open to me that day were not the best as I was almost shooting into the sun. Ah well, try again another time and place.

      ;)

      Regular Rod

      Delete