The pictures on this site have been taken from 2005 onwards, initially with an Olympus E1 and later with Canon cameras and lenses.  One or two have been taken by digiscoping - ie using a compact digital camera through a telescope.

These days I shoot exclusively in RAW format with Canon cameras.  This allows all the information captured by the camera to be viewed unaltered on a computer with no image processing done in the camera.  Whilst it generates much larger file sizes, it alos allows the most adjustment to be made with the least loss of quality.

For image downloading and cataloguing I use Adobe Lightroom 2.  This also allows a wide range of other adjustments to be made although after some initial optimising of exposure I tend to export the picture to Adobe Photoshop CS4 for further processing.  Noise is reduced using Noise Ninja or Neat Image.  Looking at the images of the best photographers these days it is clear that they are as expert in the 'digital darkroom' as they are in the field.

Many of the pictures on this site are little more than 'record shots'.  Sometimes you have to take what you can get with a shy or rare bird.  However, my aim is to get pictures which require as little cropping as possible and which are as good for printing as they are for web presentation.  Most pictures are of wild birds in the UK but I don't turn down the occasional chance at some captive raptors.  A few pictures have been taken abroad.