Sporting year comes to an end
Well, I am back in Canada after a somewhat protracted trip home due to an aircraft failure at Heathrow.This meant a night in a hotel in Chicago and not arriving back on Gabriola Island until 6.00 pm on Monday, having left for Heathrow Airport at 9.00am on Sunday. The joys of international travel! 2011 has [...]
More Olympic Test Events
The next of the Olympic Test Event series is now well underway. The past week has seen the boxing, fencing and table-tennis events running in London’s Excel Centre, their home next year when the Games start. The Table Tennis test was performed us part of the ITTF Table Tennis Tour and saw most of the [...]
Namibia Part 6
From Etosha we jumped into our SafariWise van and trundled south to Okonjima, a 20,000 hectare animal resevere and home of the AfriCat Foundation. Nestled among the Omboroko Mountains, Okonjima is a Herero word meaning “Place of the Baboons.” Strangely enough, while we saw and photographed many animals, we didn’t see a single baboon. Never-the-less, [...]
Namibia Part 5
Four posts done and I’ve yet to mention the incredible services of our primary guide, Neil MacLeod of SafariWise (based in Swakopmund). Neil is a great driver, has a thorough knowledge of Namibia and its wildlife, and has an amazing ability to spot wildlife and identify birds — even at a distance and at highway [...]
Namibia Part 4
From Swakopmund we drove about 400 km to a beautiful little place called Camp Kipwe, in the heart of Damaraland. The camp is located amongst a jumble of rocks jutting above a dry savannah. This is by far my favourite accommodation so far, elegantly designed and constructed to blend with its environment. Have I mentioned [...]
Namibia Part 3
Swakopmund is an amazing little German town of about 30,000 people. It’s perched right on the Atlantic coast and the desert dunes sweep down from the east right onto the edge of town. It’s a unique place because of the perpetual fog banks which form just off the coast and often blanket the town in [...]
Namibia Part 2
We’re now cruising to Namibia’s coastline, having spent two days in the Namib desert, most of it in the famous area know as Sossusvelei. The drive from Windhoek to Sossusvlei took us up to 2200 meters at Spreedshoogte Pass (I may have the spelling wrong and I can’t begin to pronounce it), before dropping down into [...]
Namibia
Greetings from Namibia! We’re three days into our 12 day tour and so far the experience has been fantastic! We landed in Windhoek (Namibia’s capital) Monday morning following a 10-hour overnight flight from Frankfurt, Germany and transferred quickly to a place about 30 km out of Windhoek called Dusternbrook Guest Farm. Dusternbrook Guest Farm, the [...]
Photo Scavenger Hunt Winner
Congratulations to everyone who participated in our 2011 Photo Scavenger Hunt! There were many amazing photographs submitted in every category and the most popular photograph of all was of an ant on a thumbnail. If I have the story right, the ant was removed from its wayward path across a restaurant table (presumably hoping to [...]
The test events continue – Archery
The last week has seen me at Lords Cricket Ground in St Johns Wood, London, home of the Marylebone Cricket Club (the MCC) and the founders of the rules of cricket. Back in the late 1980s I spent many a day photographing both county and international test match cricket from here. The MCC was founded [...]
Photo Scavenger Hunt – UPDATE
Over the past weekend Split-Seconds Photography held its first ever Photo Scavenger Hunt. Attendance at the event was fabulous, with 75 people attending on Saturday and 86 on Sunday! Both days produced great photographs and now participants will have the chance to vote for their favourites. If you were a participant at the event and [...]
Photo Scavenger Hunt
Split-Seconds Photography is pleased to announce it’s first ever Photo Scavenger Hunt! To be held Saturday Oct 1, 2011 and Sunday Oct 2, 2011, the photo scavenger hunt will encourage photographers of all levels to stretch their skills and learn new tricks to capture 10 great photographs in answer to 10 photo challenges. Prizes such [...]
Beach Volleyball and BMX – August 20
Although some might describe both of these sports as ‘extreme’ it would be for vastly different reasons! I guess that for some the mode of dress of the competitors in the Beach Volleyball might well be considered extreme. That’s not the only thing these sports have in common, they are both events that have all [...]
Badminton World Championships
This week the shuttlecocks are flying in Wembley Arena at the World Badminton Championships which is serving as an unofficial test event for next years Olympic event. This is not an easy event to photograph as the lighting is somewhat patchy and with black backgrounds almost impossible to get a good shot of any player [...]
Brazil Photo Tour – Special Reduced Price
For the last several years Peter has led our photo tours to Brazil. The Pantanal is one of his favourite places to visit, explore, and photograph. Happily for Isobel and I, Peter’s work with the 2012 London Olympics allows Isobel and I to take over the reins for this fall (Oct 24-Nov 4, 2012) and [...]
Sailing at Weymouth
This week it’s the turn of the sailors to run their Olympic Test Event at Weymouth in Dorset, on England’s South Coast. Discounting the odd football game taking place in Scotland and the North of England this is the most remote of all the Olympic Venues being some two and a half hours South of [...]
Two more test events completed
Last week saw two more test events running, the White Water canoeing from Lee Valley White Water Centre and the Mountain Biking from Hadleigh Farm in Essex. Once again both events were a roaring success with things shaping up nicely for next year’s Summer Games. Both events took place under blue sky and skyrocketing temperatures, [...]
Bear Season Coming Soon!
Hard to believe it’s August already. The first salmon should start returning to Vancouver Island rivers and creeks within a few weeks, which will quickly attract the attention of foraging black bears. Last year we ran about a dozen black bear photo field trips, starting in early September, and on every trip we saw at [...]
It all begins
The first two events in the lead up to the 2012 Olympics have already taken place. The equestrian event in historic Greenwich Park, was a great success, with really positive feedback from all the press. A couple of fences on the cross country course offer stunning views if the City, in the background and the [...]
Magical Pantanal.
I’ve just returned from 2 amazing weeks in the Pantanal of central Brasil and all I can think about is when I’ll be going back. Of all the places I’ve been nothing matches it’s variety and abundance of animal life. On this trip my friend and I decided to rent a car instead of having [...]
Returning to my roots
This will be my last blog post from Canada as next week I will be returning to London, England to begin work as Deputy Photo Manager for the 2012 Olympic Games. An exciting, if not somewhat daunting, proposition. It’s nearly 23 years ago that I last worked directly out of London, as a contract sports [...]
Birds birds birds!
I live on a glorious 35 acre property in Courtenay, B.C. I’ve spent the last 9 years attracting as many bird species as possible with abundant feeding stations and bird friendly habitat, including several ponds. Today I am enjoying an absolute feast for the eyes! (and camera). Including Black-headed Grosbeak, Evening Grosbeak, Swainson’s Thrush, Spotted [...]
“Kate And Pippin, An Unlikely Love Story” goes to print April 2012.
In June 2008 my Great Dane, Kate, adopted a tiny newborn fawn that had been wandering around motherless for 3 days on our property. We named the fawn Pippin and the two were inseparable. Kate cleaned her, tried to nurse her and slept with her. Of course being a photographer, I documented all this and [...]
West Coast Wildlife Photo Tour
posted by Mike Byrne For me, there is something almost intoxicating about photographing wildlife: crisp, clear, closeup images of nature being natural. I have shot thousands of images of eagles yet I still can’t resist pushing the shutter button when I get close to another one. The same is rapidly becoming true of sea otters. [...]