A trip to the coast resulted in a photo opportunity to photograph a couple of Cormorants approaching quite close to the shoreline whilst fishing. They managed to catch a couple of large fish, one of which I didn't think could be swallowed, but after a couple of minutes and numerious attempts, it eventually went down.
I think, for those of us who are wildlife or landscape photographers, we each have our own reasons for being so. For me it’s an interest in wildlife which I’ve had since I was a kid, together with art, something I was always good at, joining up with photography, a subject I took up as an art student at college. Together, however they make up a third part. Living and working in a city I find the noise, crowds and even the day to day stupidity and selflessness of people more and more oppressive.
So, going out early in the morning, preferably somewhere remote and quiet, I find relaxing and if you can watch a Fox hunting or a sunrise over the sea, it just makes the moment just that little more special. Unfortunately it’s hard to avoid people when out and about. The first below three images were taken in a hide. Now I normally stay away from these places exactly because they tend to have a lot of people and worst off, photographers. On this occasion, I was by myself at first but was followed soon after by two photographers who spent most of time talking with intermittent rattling off at full frames per second, at anything that went by.
Then came in the worst kind of ‘wildlife photographer’. He was the type who was decked out head to toe in camouflage though clearly never walks more than a hundred or so metres from his car. He then proceeded to non stop talk about how much gear he had, how many camera’s he had brought over the years, but had to ask ‘how to make the picture on the back screen go bigger’. He later phoned a camera store, hands free so everyone could hear, asking about a Sigma tele lens and talking to the poor woman who answered as if she should have known him personally because he had visited the store before!
Whilst he was doing this and with the other two still talking, a Kingfisher, what they’d seem to be waiting for, landed in front of the hide (below image) for less than a couple of seconds and, possibly scared by the noise, was off. If everyone had remained quiet they would have heard the call of it before it arrived and maybe managed a picture or so. With the noise continuing and more people arriving, I left.
I try and avoid other so called, wildlife photographers. When you go to a hide or even go to online forums and you listen to what they say, they mostly seem to be the same. They are either gear heads, obsessed with their equipment, the mega pixels, the dynamic range (though often don’t understanding what any of that actually means) or they collect images of wildlife, like a type of modern day stamp collector – the rarer the animal, usually a bird, the better. Then they will put it up on a forum or Flickr in the hope of fame or adulation. Usually they know or care little for the subject or it’s wellbeing as long as they get the image. Thankfully, I see little of them out in the actual wilds as that would involve their requiring patience and some skills and knowledge of the subject and with often only a slim chance of success, I’m guessing this would be too much work for most of them.
Images like the below Wagtail was taken at a location I’ve learnt from experience I can find them, but they will normally be spooked by someone nearby, but if you just sit there quietly there’s a chance they will come to you as in this case, a pair of them did, but I was there for nearly an hour.
Landscape photography has it’s own set of problems. Sunrise is my preferred time but this regularly means lots of dog walkers. Many of places I go to have restrictions on dogs, such as the location of the two images shot below where, at the time, dogs were not to be using the location or meant to be on a lead. These were completely ignored. Not by one or two people but by everyone! So finding a quiet spot without dogs running round you, barking, sniffing your backpack and either the owner shouting at it at the top of their voice or just ignoring what their dog is doing, is nearly impossible. It also just really spoils a tranquil moment.
And then there’s the dumb questions you get asked. Your camera is set up on a tripod, it’s sunrise and your pointing the lens towards the sunrise and some bright spark askes what you’re taking a picture of!! Or ‘are you that photographer who took that picture in the paper’! And of course there is the ‘that’s a big lens, how close can you get with it’.
So, yes I am an anti social photographer. I like to get away from people and avoid them when I’m out. I like the peace and the quietness. Being out in the woods, waiting patiently for a deer to come by and managing to photograph it without it knowing you were there and achieving an image that might have an technical and artistic merit is a bonus, but if I don’t get anything, that’s ok because I still enjoyed the walk, the exercise and just being out in nature.
| I’ve been busy trying to improve on the look of my blog as I’ve been unhappy with the image size restrictions this particular template has, preferring to have larger viewed images than it allows. No luck so far, so I may have to scrap this current look and start again. Just to keep things ticking over in the mean time, I’ve got these images, though they don’t look very impressive so small, particularly the first Kite image and two Cormorant images which, despite the latter being an otherwise ‘boring, plain’ looking bird, with its feather detail actually looks quite impressive on the full size image. I will be uploading these images to my website so they can be viewed in their full glory. I didn’t realise when photographing the first Kite image, just how intently it was looking straight at me! I have to admit, I do have a soft spot for birds of prey, but I particularly like just watching the local Red Kites. There’s something special about just seeing them gliding effortlessly overhead occasionally making that piercing high pitched cry. Although at this time of year they will be dispersing around the region from their wintering roosting, I hope to get out soon and get some more images of them. I’m surprised that nobody in the North East has come up with the same kind of idea as Gigrin Farm in Wales and have a feeding station set up. If anybody knows why, I would be curious to find out. |
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Arriving at sunrise on a cold and almost windless morning, there was quite a bit of birdlife on the calm lake though most at a distance making photography difficult, only the Moorhens were drifting backwards and forwards within range of my lens. On one such occasion, one of them crossed a completely clear, pristine part of water making a photo opportunity too good to miss. The resulting image is the one below. Originally I had envisioned a smaller image of the bird surrounded by the clear expanse of water broken up only by a long ripple behind it, but around it were reflections and various debris, so I had to settle for this tighter image. |
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| In the middle of the lake is an old dead tree which has become a favourite perch for gulls and in particularly, Cormorants. I suspect it was the latter who’s droppings are corrosive, killed the tree originally. Despite being unpopular due to their substantial appetites and being blamed for depleting fish stocks, the Cormorants make quite good photogenic images and if you’re lucky and patient enough you might catch one trying to follow a large fish. Most of the activity for the few hours I observed them however, revolved around yawning, pruning, sunning themselves, taking off and landing. |
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| Apart from the Cormorants there was the occasional fly past by Mallards and a brief bit of excitement by Black Headed Gulls as one of them would find something in the water and take off followed by other in chase. I’ve noticed them doing this on a number of occasions and notice it’s not food they’re chasing after so is it instinctive or just entertainment? |
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| I finished off by wondering around the lake and a track that leads away, over the nearby motorway and to a small quiet pond. Every time I go to Big Waters I go to the footbridge that crosses the A1 Motorway as I’ve seen Kestrels hunt along its verges and have a picture in my head of a hovering Kestrel with the compressed image of road traffic in the background. Maybe someday. |
| For anyone who’s ever tried photographing Roe Deer they will know it can be difficult, not only because they are usually shy and nervous, but because they spend most of the daylight hours in the woods, cloaked by trees, underbrush and other vegetation. As if the poor light giving slow exposures wasn’t bad enough then, when you do see and train your lens on them there’s a branch or a tree in the way of a decent shot. Sometimes this can add to the atmosphere of the image but usually it will just ruin it. Today was a good example. I arrived quite early – around 7.00 am – and almost immediately spotted a single female Roe moving away whilst feeding. I positioned myself and trained my lens at a relatively empty spot in which I thought she would walk into. This time it worked. Once she was in the right spot, I fired a shutter to get her attention and stop, then took two more shots whilst she viewed me with curiosity. She slowly moved on and I wasn’t able to get another clear shot. |
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| I came across a further four deer sightings, each time obscured by the woods and each time a pointed my lens at an opening I hoped they would cross they would change direction. The three images below are of one of these deer who, had they moved a few metres closer my way, I would have got a good clear shot, as it turned out, the third one is the best I managed from the sequence. |
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| By midday it was getting reasonably warm, which means much of the wildlife is taking it easy. Out on the nearby lake was little activity apart from a few pruning and feeding Coots, the diet which included some insects which strayed too close. It would have been great if I had managed to get shot of the Coots with its mouth open but had my camera set to a low sequence of 5 frames per second and so missed it. |
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| Out in the middle of the lake I noticed some splashing and through my lens could see that a Cormorant had caught what looked like a Perch and was struggling to devour it. The shots were taken with a 500mm lens plus converter but even so it was still some way off and I’ve only included some of the frames, but they give an idea of the on-going struggle. No prizes for guessing who won! |
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 Pick of the bunch |
| My last image was an attempt at macro photography. Something I’ve never really tried but want too, through it’s a whole new way of thinking and learning. Maybe as it gets warmer and there are some more insects about, I might give it a more serious go. |
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It’s been a while since I’ve visited Big Waters. Located just north of Newcastle, it’s area of wildlife that, like many in this area, resulted from the mining industry – in this case due to a mining subsidence resulting in flooding in the 1920s and turned into a nature reserve in the early 1970s. So, I thought I would pay a visit, partly because at this time of year there would be more migrant birds on the lake but also it’s one of the best places to see Otters in this area.
