2010 has started off very well for me in terms of photography. I was invited to Qatar to receive an award in the 2009 Al-Thani award for photography. The invitation gave no clues regarding which picture had won an award or any further details about the award. The awards ceremony took place in Doha, Qatar on Wednesday 13th January 2010 where my image of a cheetah attacking a gazelle received an award. The image below came first in the International Awards, Animal Kingdom section. In total 53,746 images were in the exhibition from 6,113 entrants in 93 countries so you can imagine my surprise to find out that my photograph was selected as a winning image.  The link Al Thani Award for Photography shows the other award winning images.

Here is a more relaxed image from this years trip to Kenya. Last year I concentrated on images of Shakira with her cubs. Due to the presence of the BBC covering her movements for the Big Cats TV program it was relatively easy to locate Shakira. This year the BBC were not so obviously present so finding Cheethas with cubs took a great deal of time. Having found them, almost always in the shade of a tree, I had to wait again for the family to move to record their movements.

It seems that the Cheetah about to kill the Gazelle in my last post has raised emotions, in some quarters, concerning pictures showing the harsher side of nature. This post should help readdress the balance and show that sometimes animals can escape almost certain death situations. The Wildebeast crossing the river escaped the jaws of the crocodile and made it to the “relative” safety of the river bank on the far side of the river.

Here are my first images from last months trip to Kenya. It was nice to see Shakira ( BBC Big Cats fame 2008 ) and her almost fully grown cubs again.  The cubs are likely to be chased off by Shakira sometime over the coming months so Kenya 2010 will be a different experience. I was very fortunate to witness a Cheetah kill at short range. It was a breathtaking experience to watch and to record at least some of the action in camera. This year I also spent some time photographing the local villagers and some of the birdlife in the Masai Mara region.

Here is another image of one of my favourite birds. It doesn’t seem to matter what other subject I come across when I am at the Farne Islands, I always come home with more Puffin images than any other.

Here are a coupe from last months visit to the Farne islands. Last year I concentrated on wide angle images  of the Terns so this year I took the “safer” option of using a longer lens.  These birds  will and do attack your head and ears if you get too close to them.

I have decided to post some more images of Shakira and her family taken in Kenya back in October 2008. There are two reasons for the post. Firstly I was contacted by someone trying to find out what had happened to Shakira since her fame in autumn last year and secondly because I have decided to go back to Kenya later in the year to enjoy the masses of Wildlife on offer in the Masai Mara region. Hopefully I will catch up with Shakira again, fingers crossed. Here are three more images from last years experience with Shakira and her family.

The annual trip to the Farne Islands occured this week. This year I travelled with two local photographic friends Rich and Steve and the day started pretty grim indeed. We were sat at breakfast together watching the rain batter the roads and pavements outside. We must have looked pretty miserable to the other guests in the hotel. However, as this first post shows, that day turned out quite differenty in the weather department and we were treated to much higher shutter speeds than we had imagined at breakfast.

I don’t normally enter photographic competitions that get advertised on the web and in the papers. However, last week, a friend of mine suggested that I enter some competitions as he felt that my pictures stood a chance of being accepted. I entered this image of Galloping Horses taken in the Camargues region of France earlier this year. To my surprise it won this weeks Big Picture competition. The picture featured on the Daily Telegraph homepage initially and then it was printed on the back page of the Travel section  in the Saturday Telegraph on 20th June 2009. My claim to fame for a day.

The first of this years Greater Spotted Woodpeckers have arrived in the garden. There are two juveniles this year and it seems that they are never too far apart. They are however, not so happy to share the same branch on a tree, one arriving often chases the other one away. This one seems to be “cutting its teeth” on the dead wood of the branch.