Don’t give up! An amateur at the right place at the right time can get lucky and outdo the pros, sometimes!
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Firstly, i know little about photography but i’m having a lot of fun experimenting/learning.
I have a simple bridge camera (which does have it’s advantages).
The moon is quite easy to image, the camera needs to be at full zoom so the moon almost fills the image, this means the camera senses the bright surface and focuses on that, because of the amount of zoom the camera will operate at a high shutter speed (to try and avoid blur), a tripod is better but the one above was taken hand held. (as usual i took six and picked the best).
At the moth trapping in the week was a man with a fully manual (expensive) cannon camera, extra zoom lens and converter (brilliant, this will take amazing photo’s but time taken to set it up would mean missing many of my insects).
So i try to point and shoot just to get an image of the subject (which may be good), and then if time allows adjust zoom while taking images from different (small change) distances.
I have found that direction of light is very important so i try to think where is the sun when a photographic opportunity happens (again moving a little sideways and clicking again just might provide that better image).
Another thing i have found that gave a lot of disappointing images last year is depth of field (the amount depth wise of the image that is in focus) an image of an insect with wings in focus and out of focus legs just don’t look good. So i’m finding it better to (especially when in macro mode) to use a tiny bit of zoom (so the camera understands this is a close up) then take images from approx 4-10 inches distance (again take many, use few).
As @mikeellwood rightly says, don’t be but of by any of this, a compact camera in the right place at the right time can have stunning results.
Cheers J.P.
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Amazing that that moon shot was taken hand-held John. I had assumed you had somehow taken it via your telescope, and that a tripod would be involved. BTW, I hope my earlier comment didn’t look as though I was trying to say that I was a “pro” myself! - Perish the thought. I am the most hopeless of amateurs, but occasionally get lucky, and of course, today’s digital technology helps a lot.
Anyway, I sort of implicitly promised John some shots of Norway. Well, I took a lot of photos (too many, really), and it will take ages to sort the wheat from the chaff (a lot of chaff, to put it politely). I have to apologise that there is very little “wildlife”, which is not to say there is no wildlife in this part of Norway. A lot of it of course is beneath the sea, and apparently, the cold temperatures make it a very fruitful source of fish and seafood. But really, with the kind of trip we were on, there was not a great deal of opportunity for photographing whatever wildlife that would have been visible, so these are mostly general shots.
To save cluttering up the forum, I’ve put some photos in a cheap and cheerful image hosting site (not as sophisticated as one can find nowadays, but at least the interface is simple to deal with).
For now, I’ve just put up one gallery, which is some pictures taken at our last port of call, Kirkenes, which is near the Russian border. (I believe that part of Russia is not a million miles from Belarus @Seren, so perhaps you know it). Also, can anyone tell me what sort of dog that is? the man playing with it was our Norwegian guide, and I forgot to ask him. This was taken near the Russian border, and I think the dog was owned by the Russian who looked after the tourist shop there.
I might put up a few more galleries, perhaps one for each place we stopped. I’m not bothering to resize the photos for now, so these are full size (another reason not to clutter the forum with them).
Hopefully, this link will be enough:
http://postimg.org/Montmorency
Let me know if you can’t see anything. For now you should see one gallery called
Montmorency_Kirkenes_Norway_March13-2016
with 12 images
BTW, the wooden signpost you can see is outside the bomb shelter which was built in WW2, and the sign was erected by German soldiers. Kirkenes has an interesting and slightly troubled history, which I may talk about later (based on what our guide told us).
Edit: BTW, I am not responsible for the random pictures / links which seem to appear vertically below mine. Some are a bit tasteless I have just noticed. This is part of the site’s advertising, I guess and the way it pays its way. (I only have a free account).
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Looks a bit like an Alaskan malamute. My ex-student has one. They’re lovely, and very big:) But I’m not sure.
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Yep, it is possible hand held but of course leaning against something certainly helps, when taking images from home i often use a tripod and i have bought a small tripod with the idea of maybe doing some macro images on a worktop and see how much if any i can improve quality. as you say, digital technology helps a lot.
This morning was early away to join others for a bird walk, one species i have been trying to get a reasonable image of is the Goldcrest.
Dryw eurben - Goldcrest (i still need to improve).
Castanwydden y meirch - horse chestnut (sydd yn dechrau tyfu - which is starting to grow).
First ducklings i have seen.
Cheers J.P.
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I agree.
[quote=“craigf, post:1348, topic:971”]
I agree.[/quote]
I agree also. Also usually called a husky, I think.
Very nice photos @mikeellwood! We had a chair-sled similar the one in the one photo when I was a kid. I was pretty young so I don’t remember it very well, but I think it was more wood and less metal - maybe just the runners were metal. It was great fun when we had enough snow to use it!
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We have had a pair of duck visit our garden for spring for a few years now. No idea if it is the same pair but we like to think so.
Here is ‘Daphne’. Hwyaden wyllt - Mallard
Titw cynffon-hir - long tailed tit.
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The Siberian Husky is a similar dog but smaller and they don’t hold their tail over their backs.
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Our more adventurous daughter was also in Norway in January, but even further north, on the Island of Svalbard. Among other things, she went sled-riding pulled by huskies, and completely fell in love with them…surprising, as she’s been afraid of dogs all her life,. but now wants to get one. It wouldn’t be a husky though (sadly).
They are nice dogs. Are they too large or some other reason you can’t get one?
Amarylis (pl. -au): Amaryllis
With Gwanwyn (Spring) coming up, I thought I’d post some blodau (flowers). Amarylis often bloom around Easter here in Florida. I have them in gwyn, coch, & pinc.
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She doesn’t live with us. She lives in a tiny flat in London at the moment, but even if she got a small house or larger flat outside London (which she is hoping to do), a large dog would be out of the question really, and even a small one would pose some problems.
Meanwhile, I’ve been trying this alternative image site for my Norway pictures. One of the few times we came face to face with wildlife …
http://public.fotki.com/Montmorency/norway-king-crabs-o/
(the “brave lady” is my wife).
Some of us were worried that it might be cruel to the crabs. The fisherman said they can live up to 48 hours (I think) out of water. They would be put back into iced water when being transported to their final destination, probably somewhere in the far east (for a high price).
And more of Kirkenes
http://public.fotki.com/Montmorency/norway-march07-14-2016/
(Prize for correct guess as to what is hanging up).
*(That hosting site does not have dubious adverts (I hope), but unfortunately downsizes the images, so even if you click on them, you can’t see any more detail. Best you can do is right click, copy image address and open in new tab. You then get somewhat bigger image which will go bigger again if you click on it, but it’s not full size, as uploaded).
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Some colourful (lliwgar) jackets.
Oh and some fish, maybe Cod.
Cheers J.P.
Saw it just fine!! Love the quality of the light!! Is y ci a Siberian husky?
edit: realise I am about 2 days late!! I am happy to accept Malamut, it was my 2nd guess!!
Hanging up: drying fish, fish heads, etc…
It was the fish I meant, and I think they would have been cod. It’s not clear why these fairly sad looking specimens were there. This was outside the small tourist shop. However, in other parts of the country, we were told about, and saw at some points, huge masses of cod hanging out to dry in the air. They refer to these as “stokfisk”, and the only explanation I got for the name was that they dry as stiff as a piece of wood or a stick - “stok”. That process doesn’t use salt, but they also have another process that leads to “klippfisk” - “cliff-fish”, as they were originally hung out over the faces of cliffs, and that process does use salt. Most of it is exported these days, but the Norwegians do use some of it as a snack in the form of thinly sliced crisps or chips. We sampled some of these…they were…interesting. Very good with beer, apparently, but as someone observed, these may be good with beer…but then beer is also very good without stokfish “crisps”!
@henddraig: You were certainly in the right ball park re the dog, and had more idea about it than I did before I asked here!
Edit: I have just realised that that photo album may disappear, as I only seem to have the trial version of a premium membership, and I’m not planning to pay for premium. I was trying to avoid the more obvious sites like flickr, or google photos or Facebook. If they go, they go, and in the meantime I’ll have a think about a more permanent home.
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Isn’t this the equivalent of meat hung up to dry and turning into jerky? You need a dry climate, which is why we can’t really do in in soggy Britain!!! 
p.s. I won’t give up trying to take pics… but I’ll never be good at it… just lucky sometimes!!
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Pretty much I think. Then there is pemmican which is a dried mixture of meat and fat. I think that is usually slowly dried in an oven or special drier. Made correctly, it can be very nutritious, so I have read. Not to be confused with the “wonderful bird is the Pelican.His beak can hold more than his belly can”. 
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Hwn oedd y Cyhydnos gwanwyn heddiw. - it was the spring equinox today.
Briallu - Primrose.
Dau ydfran gyda nyth - two rooks with nest.
coeden ywen mewn mynwent eglwys - Yew tree in a churchyard.
Coeden ywen gwrywaidd - Male yew tree, (male flowers below branches)
Coeden ywen benywaidd - Female yew tree (a few soft cones, side and end view).
So far we have (yew trees are mostly dioecious, male and female trees are separate), Then i look closely at the tree in the top image.
And find female and male flowers (cones) on the same tree.
Further reading leads me to (occasionally individuals can be variably monoecious (male and female), or change sex over time.
Nature always has a new surprise up it’s sleeve, i had come across this with insects but didn’t know it occurred in trees.
Cheers J.P.
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I may have been really, really lucky this morning.
Gwenynbryf / Pryf cacwn - Bee fly.
It looks like this has just emerged from the pupal case (upper right in the image) and is sitting still for ideal photo opportunity while having inflated it’s wings, waiting for them to dry.
Now i will hope to get a good image of one hovering over a flower, collecting nectar with that long proboscis. (click on image for full size).
More to come later.
Cheers J.P.
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