Well I have read about it in the press but today was the first time that I have been asked to stop taking photos and move on.

On the way into Bradford today I was walking towards Forster Square station when I heard Kestrels calling. Of course I had my binoculars with me, as you do, and used them to find the Kestrels on the building that I think is called Broadgate House. The building is on Manor Row and backs onto the railway line. It is much higher than the station.

The best vantage point was on the end of the platform between two of the lines. It wasn’t until I got home that I noticed that my first few shots had got both the male and female. He is looking straight at me. I had only noticed the female on the end of the hoist.

I then noticed the male on the window ledge, obviously after it left the hoist.

He then flew off to the roof of the neighbouring building where he landed and then almost immediately took off to swoop on his mate.

Where they spent a few seconds mating and calling.

So, by being reasonably quick I had got my photos. Just after that though I was asked by a very pleasant chap with a litter picker to stop taking photos and move on. Some person inside the station building had asked him to ask me to move on. Apparently I need permission to be allowed to take photos on the station. Does that mean that people should not take photos of people they are seeing off at the station unless they have permission?

I was told that the management at the Interchange were the ones to ask for permission. After spending a couple of hours taking photos in Citypark (doing what I have since been told is abusing the right to privacy of those out in public) I went to see the station supervisor at the Interchange to ask for permission to take photos on Forster Square station. Apparently he knew someone had been taking photos at the station and I got the impression that he was the one that had said I should be asked to leave.

Unfortunately he said he was unable to give permission, not because permission was not to be granted, but because I needed to ask someone in York. I have her name, phone number and email address so I will be contacting her for the official response.

I was told that I was not allowed to take photos on the station because of where I was. This had me baffled until it was explained that the people responsible for the bombings in London had “come from round here”. He admitted that I was therefore a potential terrorist. But obviously I was more likely to be a potential terrorist because I was acting strangley with a tripod and 500mm telephoto lens pointing up in the sky in full view of drivers, conductors, passengers and members of the public walking through from Forster Square retail park to Bradford.

I was then asked if I knew how to fix printers because the other person in the office was having trouble. Perhaps he thought I had some experience of handling toner cartridges?

Did you know that during a Prince Charles visit by train that many of the surrounding buildings have police in them – so I had better not take photos of buildings?

I tried to find out what basis the refusal had in law and was told that it was on the Northern Rail website and that it was related to security and also preventing the infringement of the right to privacy of people out in public. It would be a lot more logical if the reason was that I was too close to the platform edge and that using a camera makes me more likely to cause an obstruction to passengers. (Edit: I have since read pages from rail companies where they encourage enthusiasts who are extra eyes and ears but lay down rules about photography based on safety – don’t cause obstruction, keep tripods away from platform edge, don’t photograph what might be their security systems e.g. CCTV equipment and no flash. All very sensible.)

During the afternoon I took lots of photos of people out in public and would have been more than happy to delete any if people had asked. The only requests I had were for taking posed photos. This then led to an exchange of email addresses because my camera does not have bluetooth, Wi-Fi or 3G.

In Citypark I met someone I used to work with when I worked at Croft Gear Works No 1 in Thornbury. This would have been before I moved to Croft Gear Works No 2 at Dudley Hill so it would have been in the late 1970s or very early 1980s – that’s too long ago to be able to do the sums.

He told me that he had taken photos at Forster Square station at least twice. Once he was asked to stop taking photos. There were no trains and no passengers but it was still “not allowed”. Someone being near him meant he was unable to continue because he needed to be quiet and still, however he had the photos he needed. Being quiet and still meant that the rats in the pipes under the platform started to venture out to get the scraps of food on the track. Any movement and they disapperaed. The member of staff did not seem interested in what he was taking photos of.

On another occasion he turned up early to get a good vantage point for taking photos of Prince Charles on one of his visits. This time he was told it was ok to take photos as long as he made sure he didn’t get in the way of Price Charles or his entourage.

I have now had a look at the Northern Rail website and searched for “photography”. The only result that is returned is for a photography competition they are running.

Edit: A few informative links
Urban75 on Photographers Rights including at rail and tube stations
A page with a PDF download re: Photographers Rights

I don’t know if it would have been any different if I went into the station building beforehand and let them know what I wanted to do. I might then have missed my opportunity.

If I do want to take photos, other than just point and click, on a station again I will call into the building first and hopefully have a conversation where we are both happy.

Edit 2: April 18. It is now a few weeks later and I have yet to have a response from the people at York. I thought the email I sent was straightforward enough but still no answer. I do know that it arrived successfully because I had an Out of Office response.

Note that each photo is a link to the flickr stream, except the remote release which is a link to Amazon.

On Sunday morning I saw a Great Spotted Woodpecker from our bedroom window. Of course, by the time I got downstaires it had gone. I had things to be doing so I set my camera up in the conservatory with the big lens on a tripod and the wireless remote release.

My wireless remote is very similar to this one.

I put two legs of the tripod on the window ledge and one leg on the arm of the sofa. I then zoomed in and focused on an appropriate part of the feeder, switched it to manual focus, and set the interval timer on the remote release. I set it to take one shot every minute for 120 shots and then went to make a coffee. After the coffee I got on with the various things I needed to do.

The camera was happily firing away every minute. Whenever I looked out of the window there was nothing on the feeder so I had no idea if I would finish up with anything worth keeping.

Later on I took everything down and then headed off for a walk along the river and through Denso Marston Nature Reserve. I met several people and one of their first questions was “Have you seen it?” After finding out that they meant the Black Bellied Dipper I tried not to look smug (honest) when I said “Yes. I have seen it. I took some photos of it in October last year.” I then directed them further down the river where I could just pick out the dipper on the other side. I know the photo is a bit (a lot?) dark but lightening it makes a lot of noise on it. Clicking on the image will take you to my flickr photostream.

After spending a while along the river without a great deal of bird activity I decided to start heading back. However, after watching a Kingfisher fly up river I stopped to take some photos of the river itself. I thought the reflection of the sky in the river looked nice. I took this photo using a Hoya 58mm Circular Polarizing Filter that helps add some contrast to the clouds and changes the reflection on the water.

Anyway, to cut the story short, I finally got to see the photos taken by the camera in the morning. There were a few blurred photos of a female blackbird on the feeder. As I was going through them – next – delete – next – delete – I almost deleted the one shown below, which would have been a shame because it made it all worthwhile.

When I started off with my Canon 1000D Digital SLR back at Christmas 2009 I bought a small bag that carried the camera, spare battery and lens brush. The following Christmas I got the Canon EF-S 55-250mm lens which still fitted in the bag comfortably.

In 2011 I bought the Sigma 150-500mm lens. For a while I carried this around in the box-like case it came with but this meant that I did not have a way of protecting/carrying it when it was on the camera. I therefore bought a big shoulder bag but I found that this was uncomfortable on long walks even though it had straps to carry it on my back.

I therefore spent a while looking at alternatives and finally bought a Lowepro Flipside 400 AW backpack. I have been very pleased with this but it was a while before I realised that one of the reasons for the waist strap was to allow you to take the straps off your shoulder and swing the bag round to the front, open it and swap lenses etc. without having to take the bag off and put it down somewhere.

I now use it to carry everything other than my second tripod.

The only downside I can think of is that the tripod fits to the front of the bag and the top strap tends to pull it against the bag and squash things up a bit. If the strap is not tight, or if I use only the middle strap then the tripod leans back and spoils the balance when walking. It might be better if the tripod was fitted to the side of the bag so that the weight is closer to your back.

So, either inside this, Lowepro Flipside 400 AW Backpack

or strapped to it, I fit all this -

Camera

replaced with a Canon EOS 7D in 2012

Canon 50mm 1.8 lens

Canon 18-55mm lens

with Hoya 58mm UV Filter fitted to protect the lens.

Canon 55-250mm lens

with Hoya 58mm UV Filter fitted to protect the lens.
and Canon ET-60 Lens Hood
Sigma 150-500mm

This filter is not normally fitted due to increased chance of “banding” on out-of-focus lines. Perhaps this is as a result of going for a cheap one. I may post about this sometime. I have noticed it on many wildlife photos on flickr and it is certainly not limited to this lens. The lens hood is deep enough to protect the lens from accidental touching. Maybe I will get the Sigma 86mm filter sometime.

Polaroid Auto Focus Macro Extension Tubes

Giottos Tripod
fitted with Giottos Ball Head

Gorillapod
with Ball Head
Spudz Lens Cloth

Extreme Pro 8GB SD Card (read this post about the card)

SD card reader

Lens brush

Air Blower

LCD Display Wireless Remote
(mine is not on Amazon now but this looks like an update to it)

Hoya 58mm Circular Polarizing Filter

Spare battery

Spare battery for the remote release transmitter – bog standard AAA batteries.
Spare battery for the remote release receiver

Olympus voice recorder
- to record sighting and shooting notes. I have yet to use it for that purpose. This is a link to a similar one.

Nikon binoculars

Insect Repellent
- essential when out in the evening along river banks.
Self sealing thick plastic food bag to keep the insect repellant in – I don’t want that leaking over any of the contents of the bag or even leaking on to the bag itself.
A litre bottle of water in a side pocket
Tripod seat This is something I only occasionally take with me.
Collins Bird Guide

I have occasioanlly squeezed my ASUS netbook in there too with a length of network cable and a pair of USB to CAT5 adapters that allow me to connect my camera to the netbook via USB but with the wire between them being readily available network cable. I have yet to use this in anger but it does work.

We probably all remember learning about the water cycle at school. How water would evaporate, how it would be then form clouds, rain down on us on the hills and flow down rivers to the sea.

We have all seen clouds, rain, rivers and sea but it is only recently that I have watched clouds forming in any volume. I have seen a blue sky suddenly get whispy clouds that get bigger and bigger until clouds fill the whole sky. But the other weekend I was up on Baildon Moor near Glovershaw when I saw clouds being formed in, for me, a different way. It fits with what I learnt at school but had simply not noticed.

I had gone out (reasonably early for a weekend, hence the sunlight on the wind turbines) and was watching Lapwing, Golden Plover and Starlings The wind was freezing cold so I kept sheltering behind a stone wall. There was quite a lot of cloud cover but occasionally a bright sun shone through a gap for a few seconds. Looking West I could see the edge of the clouds and thought that with the strong wind I would soon have clear sky above with bright sunshine. I crouched down behind the wall again and watched a Curlew fly back and forth a couple of times across parts of the golf course. A horse and rider made quite a good silhouette on the skyline. I was looking forward to feeling the sun on me in a few minutes.

Looking over the wall again I got some more photos of the birds. I could see the grey and white cloud bank being pushed over my head very quickly by the wind. In the distance I could see lovely blue sky. But still, at about 45 degrees, there was the edge of the clouds, still there, unmoving. With the speed that the clouds were moving I should have been in bright sunshine.

I looked at the edge of the clouds through my binoculars and could see them moving fast towards the East but the edge was not moving. It was as if some invisible pipe was leaking along its length and spraying out the clouds.

As I said, we all know about how clouds are formed, but this is the first time I have actually stopped and watched it happening in such volume and with such a noticeable stationary edge. These clouds were being formed already wind-swept and rushing across the sky.