Author: DMcA

After an amazing sojourn in the central tea growing area, my excellent driver and guide Ranil took me down to the south-east coast and the Kalametiya bird sanctuary. This tranquil reserve has been protected since 1938 and is one of the oldest in the country. It consists of an extensive set of linked coastal lagoons and mangrove swamps and is home to around 150 species. We took an early morning board ride, and once again. I was able to get some quite nice shots of your feathered tweeters.



My final brush with Sri lankan wildlife came after a long drive plus train journey to Bentota by way of Galle. Apart from being the location of many beautiful buildings designed by the great Sri Lankan architect Geoffrey Bawa, Bentota features an extensive inland lagoon with a surprising array of lizards and crocs as well as abundant bird species. We only spent a few hours toottling about the lagoon, but several decent wildlife shots resulted.



This trip to Sri Lanka was a revelation in the richness and diversity of its wildlife, and has only served to whet my appetite to return and explore more of its famous wildlife reserves and national parks.





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On the next leg of our 2025 Sri Lanka visit, four of us with the excellent Ranil as driver and guide, travelled up the west coast of the island, from Colombo to Jaffna, stopping at two notable wildlife spots on the way.



The first of these was the Anavilundawa bird sanctuary. This 3,5000 acres wetland consists of a group of shallow cascading tanks, ranging from 12 to 50 ha in extent, built around 1140 AD by King Parakramabahu the Great. We only stayed a short while, but there was much to see, and the first 5 shots of the album are from there.



The next day was a safari trip through Wilpattu National Park, the largest and one of the oldest national parks in Sri Lanka. It extends over an area of 1,300 sq km, and is notable for its 100 plus “Willus” – natural, sand-rimmed water basins or depressions that fill with rainwater. It has a wide range of bird and animal species, but is most famous for its leopard population. Although guides assure visitors that the place is stiff with leopards, in fact there are probably no more than 150 in the 1350 acres reserve, or on average, one per 9 sq km.



However, as is usual in these parks, if a leopard is seen, the word gets out and all the jeeps converge a respectful distance away from the animal. We were lucky to catch a long-distance glimpse of our leopard, but thanks to the long range of my new zoom lens, I was able to get quite a nice shot of it, as well of the other surprisingly diverse bird and mammal population.





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In November 2025 I went with some old friends to Sri Lanka for a three week trip around the Island. I was last in Sri Lanka when I was three years old, so there was a 70 year gap between visits. I planned for the trip to be a mixture of sightseeing and photography. On the photography side, I wanted to cover wildlife, seascapes of the south coast, landscape shots of the tea plantations and highland country, and if possible some street and macro shots as well.



We started off with a few days in Colombo, where I did not expect to have any wildlife opportunities. Luckily however a very kind friend arranged a visit to Diyasaru Park, on the outskirts of the city. This wildlife reserve is part of Wetland Link International, a worldwide education group led by the Wildfowl & Wetlands Trust (WWT) originally founded by Sir Peter Scott. I was able to get some nice shots including of flying foxes, and along the way met a charming bird and photo enthusiast, who then took me on a guided tour of another, similar, wetland reserve at Beddagama park, not far away from Diyasaru.



After two fruitful mornings at these wetland reserves, it turned out that the canal in front of the old parliament building in Colombo, 10 minutes from our hotel, was also a nice location for seabirds, so the last set of shots are from there.



On a technical note – I purchased the beautiful Olympus 50-200 f2.8 lens specially for the trip. This is a lightweight lens that in theory can shoot images up to 800mm Full Frame equivalent (which is about the limit for birds in flight for me). I wanted to see how it would perform in challenging conditions, as if it all worked, this could be the smallest and lightest high-quality long-range zoom lens on any camera system, and a perfect choice for travel. The lens is optically near perfect at 400- 600mm, but there were question marks as to how well it would work (with a 2x teleconverter) at 800mm. Of these images, 9 were taken at around 800mm. See if you can guess which those are:- the lens info can be seen by clicking the “i” button.





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In April 2025 I visited Moravian Tuscany, a beautiful part of Czechia to the east of Brno, which itself is in the south-east of the country. This area exhibits a unique folded landscape, seen only in Moravia, the original Tuscany region of Italy, and in the Palouse in northwestern USA. Apart from being a very attractive wine-growing region, this area is famous for some classic landscape views, usually involving a small element of the folded landscape in dappled sunlight. There are three recommended times for visiting: April, when the landscape is largely green, May, when dramatic reds from poppies and crimson clover appear, and September, when the landscape is golden and brown. The April photos are shown in this album.



I arranged to go back again in May to capture more shots of this amazing landscape, but with a splash more colour. This time I went with a different Czech photographer: Emil Čelustka. Emil has probably done the most to popularize this area, and he has personally discovered numerous unique locations. He is an excellent guide and has over a hundred amazing spots he can take you to. We were very lucky with the weather on this trip, I got all the shots I was looking for, and had an amazing time. I highly recommend Emil as a guide and as a photography tutor. This album contains the best of the photos from my May visit.



Unlike my previous guide in this area, Emil is a full-frame shooter, so I brought along my Nikon Z7 full-frame camera, with a new 150-500mm Tamron lens and my trusty 24-200 Nikon medium telephoto. The camera performed well, although I would say with no better image quality than the much smaller and lighter Olympus OM-3 from the earlier trip. I normally include detailed geolocation data on every photograph, but have omitted it here, as the exact location for these shots is part of the local guide’s stock-in-trade, so I don’t want to give this away.





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Budapest has the most beautiful river front of any city I have seen. This is both because of the magnificence of the buildings, constructed when the Austro-Hungarian empire was at its peak, and the absence of intrusive modern buildings near the waterfront.



The daytime weather was almost cloudless for the whole weekend. This was not ideal for river scenes, but I took several shots of the iconic chain bridge that joins Buda to Pest, and the spectacular architecture on the Buda side. In the evening these amazing structures were lit with a golden glow which set against a jet black sky made quite magical images.



These photos were taken with my OM-3 camera, and the Panasonic 14-140mm (28-280 FFE) or the Olympus 9-18mm (18-36 FFE). I am increasingly impressed by these two lightweight travel lenses, and can see no quality impact of using them versus my larger pro glass. They enable the OM-3 to be an outstanding travel camera, as good for discreet street shots as long exposure river scenes.



Budapest should be the perfect European city. It has beautiful architecture, great jazz and classical music, and excellent art galleries. It’s not perfect for me though because despite trying quite hard, I only had one above-average meal the whole time I was there. Hungarian food makes few concessions to those who want a lighter style, and alternative cuisines from other countries are almost all poor imitations and mostly downmarket. This is the only thing that stops me going back.



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After my April landscape photo trip in Moravian Tuscany, I took the train across Czechia, Slovakia, and Hungary (three countries, no border control, no passport checks) to Budapest. I arrived on the Easter weekend, for my first visit to this beautiful city. These are street photos from the stay.



The weather was bright and sunny, and most of these shots were taken in the early morning, with the light low and strong. I took my new OM-3 camera for the entire trip. This is about the perfect travel camera for me; uncompromising performance for landscape and birds, but small, light and non-threatening for street.



My interest in street photography is in people and the story that can be told or the questions that might be raised by a single image. For the image to work, as Cartier-Bresson has said, the photographer needs to capture the “decisive moment”. My technique is therefore very similar to the one for birds in flight. This involves fast shutter speeds, high burst rates, and long focal lengths. From a sequence of shots of a scene, I chose the right expression or movement to capture the decisive moment, just as with birds in flight.



For all of these photos, I have provided a description about what I found interesting about the shot, and what you might look for in these and other street photos. Click the “i” button when looking at each photo, and you will get more insight into why I wanted to show you the photo. The “i” button also gives you information about the camera settings, and allows you to like or comment on the photo.



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Some photographs of small things from our March 2025 trip to Cape Town.



Most of these shots were of Autumn budding plants in our garden in Noordhoek. Many of them were taken in the morning, just after the irrigation had finished, so they are covered in little sparkling water droplets.



These are hand-held macro photographs, mostly taken at about a 2:1 ratio (full-frame equivalent) – which is to say that the image appears in the sensor at about double its actual size. Micro four thirds system cameras like my OM-1 are particularly suited for macro shots because they keep about twice as much of the image in focus as a full-frame camera. They are also very light and have excellent image stabilisation.



Despite that, macro images are not easy to take. The final images are composed of 5-20 separate frames, each of which has only a sliver of the plant in focus. By stacking all of these frames together, it is possible to get an image in focus almost from the front to the back. That’s the theory, but in practice keeping the camera stable for the sequence of shots is very hard.


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Sea photographs, from our March 2025 trip to Cape Town.



These are mostly long exposure shots of the southern Cape coastline. I have been taking seascape photos of this area for 15 years or more, and thought I had run out of locations. But this trip, my friend and neighbour Martin showed me several more, and inspired by this, I found other new views and locations I hadn’t shot before. Once again, this trip reminded me of the great beauty of the granite and sandstone geology of the Cape coastline.



Long exposure shots result in a lot of light entering the camera, and as a result, Neutral Density (ND) filters (a bit like sunglasses) are needed to get a normal exposure. Fortunately, my OM-1 camera has a unique computational photography feature called “live ND” that removes the need for most physical ND filters. This eliminates the risk of losing physical filters into the foaming briny (which I have done a great deal). All these LE shots were taken with live ND using a new and simplified workflow, which makes the normally complex LE process very fast and easy. I have written about this and the whole area of ND in a couple of recent posts on this site.



Another clever computational feature of the OM cameras is “live composite”. This enables the capture of moving lights across a scene, like star trails, car lights, or train movement. No other camera system has this, and it can be very effective. I have included three of these shots in the album, including one of the first morning train to Simons Town, which I am particularly pleased with.

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Beach people photographs, from our March 2025 trip to Cape Town.



The first set are from Fish Hoek beach in the southern Cape. This a favourite location for local families as it is on the Indian Ocean side of the peninsula, and the water is warm. It also has a great beachside cafe, and always an colourful array of people of every shade and age.



The second set was taken at Glencairn beach a bit farther down the peninsula. This is a popular surfing location, and close to my all-time favourite coastal breakfast cafe and restaurant. On this occasion there was a windsurfer absolutely flying up and down the coast. I had my birds in flight kit with me, and I thought that it might be interesting to use BIF techniques to capture the motion. It turned out quite well, and I think I caught her absolute joy and the drama of the scene.





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Some photographs of birds, mostly in flight, from our March 2025 trip to Cape Town.



The first set are of Cormorants. These birds are usually difficult to photograph in flight, as most of the time they just stand around and occasionally flap their wings. Even when they fly, it is low and fast and usually away from you. Plus they are very dark in colour – in fact I had thought they were black. . As a result of this, I have never got a Cormorant shot I liked. However, on this trip thanks to a great tip from my friend Martin, I visited the Inkata Island nature reserve and got more and better shots than I could imagine. Inkata is home to a colony of very active Cormorants. They were not only very busy, but also demonstrated their very dinosaur-like appearance, and great appetite for bits of twig. Not exactly cuddly, but very impressive.



The second set were taken at the Kom in Kommejtie and are of Sacred Ibis. The Sacred Ibis is my favorite bird, but I have taken very many shots of them in the past. Every so often though, they will oblige with a lovely flying position or a particularly magnificent demonstration of their surprisingly colourful wing feathers, so here are some of the best.

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