Matt Debouge Photography Blog
About my photography and other things I get upto.
Maine Coons in the garden again – Gotta love cat photos.
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August 2011 we had some nice sunny days, as I was working from home on some web design projects I had the chance to have lunch in the garden with our Maine Coon cats, Myrtle and Marmalade. Next doors cat Jerry popped over as well.
Below Bad Boy Jerry
Nothing is safe in the garden, Myrtle chases anything that moves. Thats a stone (in weight) cat flying around the garden.
Hope you enjoyed the cat photos.
Parrot Sitting – Ouch!
0In August 2011 I went over to my mums, she was looking after Nancy the African grey parrot.
Nancy is about 8 years old now, when her owner goes on holiday my mum and sister care for her.
She’s a naughty parrot and only takes orders from her owner. Me and my sister took her out of her cage for some exercise and thought it would be a great opportunity for a Nancy photo shoot.
Nancy had other ideas and as I got her out of the cage she gave me a little bite. Once I had stopped the bleeding we got some nice photos of Evil Nancy. She seemed happy that she had managed to bite me.
Evil Parrot
Nice Nancy
Cats in the garden
0I managed to grab some time in the garden away from the computer for a little while, it was a baking hot day.
The cats came out and joined me in the garden, they love posing for the camera.
Photos from Stratford Butterfly Farm visit
1Took my mum and sister out to Stratford Upon Avon for the day, we went straight to the Butterfly Farm to get some photos. My sister is getting into photography now.
Nice day out, sadly the iguanas didn’t come down to pose for photos. I grabbed a few butterfly photos tho.
I definitely recommend Stratford Butterfly Farm for a photo trip. Get in early tho as it gets quite busy.
Kit I used
Nikon SLR
50MM Sigma macro lens
SB 600 flash for some of the photos, natural light if possible.
A nice Glasswinged butterfly (Greta oto)
Commercial Photos – Solar Power
0Well after my holidays I came back to loads of work, web design projects and photography jobs, needless to say my blog suffered because of this.
I did fair few commercial photo jobs for a local Solar power company.
Few examples of the photos here
The client was very happy with the photos.
Summer holidays long gone
0Well its been a long time since our summer holiday in Cyprus back in June/ July 2011.
An eventful holiday, going from chilling at the pool to nearly being stranded on an island. *Note to readers don’t expect the people running the boat trips to count you back onto the boat. They just leave without you.
Had some great times at the villa, lovely food, great weather and saw some ok wildlife, highlight was a big black snake living near our villa.
Unfortunately we didn’t have chance / opportunity to take many photos worth posting. Still it was good to have a holiday with friends that probably won’t happen again.
Chilling by the pool
Londons East End Street Art
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Last weekend we visited a few friends in London, we had found out about a tour around the east end of London, I’m not big into tours being a photographer (I like to take my own time to look at things) but this was said to be an alternative tour so thought it was worth a try.
The tour started around 11:30 from Spitalfields Market with Gary our tour guide. Gary is an excellent guide, he knows his area very well, artistically, culturally, politically, it’s good to see people that still care about preserving the uniqueness of London. 2 hours went by very quickly, never dull, always something cool to look at, plus not too much walking around. I hadn’t planned on taking many photos but in the end I fired off about 100 shots of the street art around the area, below are a few examples.
by Viktor Kaifas
Huckers by Pablo Delgado
Triangle type thing by Narcelio Grud
ROA’s Crane
To see the full set of photos click Matt Debouge Street Art Photos
This is the tour we did http://alternativeldn.co.uk/
Skomer Visit – Crazy Puffins and other island inhabitants
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It’s taken us 2 years to get to Skomer! We booked time off work to go last month but the weather was too bad in the end; didn’t want to travel 5 hours for nothing.
We travelled down last Friday afternoon and stayed in a camp-site just 5mins away from the boat – all very last min plans.
After a nightmare night in a tent I was up at 7:30 getting ready to queue for the boat.
Queued for 45 mins only to be told the boat wasn’t going due to expected high winds later in the day. I was gutted! I asked about weather for Sunday and was told the forecast was the same 
We tried again on Sunday morning anyway and at 8:30 we were greeted with good news – the weather was fine and boats would be going. We managed to get over on the first boat of the day.
What we managed to see on the island in 4 hours:
GUILLEMOT
CURLEW
Many types of gull
RAZORBILL
PHEASANT
GANNET
COMMON BUZZARD
OYSTERCATCHER
ATLANTIC PUFFINS
1 x LITTLE OWL
1x WREN
Few CHOUGH
4 x GREY SEALS
2 x PORPOISES
Unidentified brown lizard
I managed to grab a photo of the Oystercatcher Family
Its a amazing how close you can get to the Puffins, I managed to get about 2ft from a puffin nest to get some excellent close up photos. You have to respect the Puffins space though and allow he/she pass by to go fishing for sand eels. I captured a short video so you can hear the funny noise puffins make.
Little Owl
After watching the Puffins for some time we ventured in land to try and see if we could get a glimpse of the owls on Skomer.
We only had to walk 5mins and I noticed this little owl on the wall.
Skomer Island is a wonderful place, we will definitely be going back again. What a lovely day, weather was amazing.
All Photos by Matt Debouge and Kirsty Forshaw
Juvenile Blue Tit – Tamron 70-300mm lens
0We have had a nest of Blue Tits near the garden this year. The parent visited our bird feeder a few times a day.
Last week the little ones fledged, seems like first stop was our garden to top-up on food.
The young birds got used to me in the garden quite quickly, I managed to get quite close without disturbing them.
I used my Tamron 70-300mm telephoto lens with my camera mounted on tripod for extra support.
Some photos below,
As you can see fat and healthy birds, maybe a little too fat 
To see the full set of photos click here
Eye one Display 2 Review
0My new Eye One Display 2 by www.xrite.com arrived last week. 
I have been using X-Rite calibration products since I first got a digital camera back in 2002. The calibration process is very easy to perform, the software guides you through the process from start to finish; 4 minutes approximately. The X-Rite software saves and sets the monitor profile for you and adds a reminder to calibrate the screen in another 6 weeks. It makes a huge difference working with a properly calibrated monitor ( I find it an essential piece of kit). I would recommend this product to people working with digital images. I would also recommend this product to anyone in the design industry as they should be using a properly calibrated monitor for the best on-screen results.
Feel free to contact me if you have any questions about this blog post or if you would like me to review another product.
Next week I’m reviewing the B+W 10 stop Neutral Density Filter – need to test it in the field first
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