Blue Pixels Photography

Monday, 31 August 2015

Thetford Forest - although it could be any other forest floor to be honest......

Wednesday, 18 September 2013

REVIEW: Click-up Hide from Outdoor Photography Gear Ltd

Listen up - ok, I'll 'fess up - until fairly recently, my 'photo hide' was in fact a £20 kid's pop-up tent from The Range. If I ever had any credibility as a wildlife photographer, it just evaporated in that one sentence. In mitigation though, it was camo - so please don't run away with the thought that it was girlie pink with My Little Pony motifs all around. To be fair, it did the job. It was a tad cramped and it leaked like hell if it rained. Dead easy to erect, but a nightmare chinese puzzle of a thing to get back into its carrying case. You had to do some kind of 'figure of eight' twist manoeuvre to get it back into storage shape, much to the amusement of any onlookers. But, it fooled a good few birds and mammals into letting me photograph them close-up, so it was - in the loosest terms, a hide.

All this changed when I popped over to see the nice folk at Outdoor Photography Gear Ltd, near Warrington. I needed a couple of lenses and a tripod 'camo-ing up', and if you ask them nicely they'll actually do the measuring up and manufacture on the spot. That was the problem, you see - while the lady machinist got to work on my camo covers, I had a spare twenty minutes or so to look around their stock room. Fatal mistake. I instantly fell in love with their new 'Click-up Hide'. Easiest thing in the world to sell, to be honest (and I should know - I'm a salesman myself) because it is - da-dahh - photographer friendly.

I am a cynical, miserable old sod. If I can find fault with something I'll bleat on about it for weeks. But honestly, I can't find anything to moan about here. Coming in it's own carry bag, the first thing you notice is how lightweight it is. I could carry that anywhere. Once out of the bag, getting it set up is simplicity itself - pull one strap and one side clicks up. Pull the strap on the other side and - hey presto - the other side clicks into place. Hence 'Click-up' and not 'Pop-up'. Er, that's it. Nothing more complicated than that.

Coffee cup not included

Made of durable material, it has a sturdy metal frame to keep it rigid. You get a bag of tent pegs with it, and I would recommend you use these as it helps keep the sides from flapping around in the wind. Around the sides of the hide there are no less than 8 'windows' to take photos from - so while you are taking pictures of that Blue Tit on your feeder, you won't miss that grizzly bear lurking to one side.

Its right cosy inside.

You can just about get two photographers plus tripods in there at the same time, so you can 'buddy up' with someone else and not trip over one another. On your own, its lavishly spacious.

Look birdies - I'm a bush. Honest.

Check out Outdoor Photography Gear's website at http://www.outdoorphotographygear.co.uk/

Saturday, 24 August 2013

Wildlife photography and the art of getting closer

One of the maxims wildlife photographers like to throw around is "if your photos aren't good enough then you're probably not getting close enough". This nicely ties in with a question often posed by beginners to wildlife photography - "how do you get so close to capture all that clarity?" As far as equipment is concerned, the answer is simple but costly - go out and buy an up-spec DSLR and a lens of 300mm or longer. Whilst this last statement is certainly true, there is another major factor involved in getting great wildlife shots that is far kinder to your bank balance - get up closer!

Professional wildlife photographers get results because they put themselves in situations where they know they will encounter their chosen subjects. They will blend into the background by hiding fairly close to where they know they'll get great shots and they'll wait. And wait. And wait. Sometimes day after day, if that's what it takes.

For serious amateurs like me, I can't quite do that. Work life, family life, home life means that 'photo time' is limited to moments I can grab in between all the rest that's going on. So, with that in mind, how does the serious amateur, or beginner, grab some wildlife photo action without spending a week dressed as a bush up a hillside? Here's a suggestion to get you going......

The Photo Hide

In my experience, while there are plenty of hides and screens available at plenty of reserves up and down the country, most of them were not really situated with photographers in mind. Great for observing wildlife with digiscopes, but for the photographer the subject is often too far away for detail. There are, however, some dedicated photo hides that put you far closer to your subjects. Some are for hire and can be costly, but some are far more accessible. Take the photo hide at the RSPB reserve at Lochwinnoch in Scotland for example......

Don't forget - the less you have to crop during processing, the better the detail.

Here's what you see when you are sat in RSPB Lochwinnoch's photo hide - which in the nicest possible way isn't much. Looks can be deceiving though! The first thing you'll notice is how everything is up-close and personal. Central to the view is a bird feeder on a ground spike - a ground spike because we want to offer minimal 'landing surface' to visiting birds and get them to land nearby instead. To either side are what could best be described as 'props' - in this case a freshly harvested rowan branch with just a few leaves and berries left on and a long 'landing strip' of bare wood leaning toward the feeder. To the right of the feeder are a couple of chunky logs placed in the ground, again with some decoration leaning against it. Just off-shot to the left is a small pond - again, close to the hide.

Yes - that IS the same rowan twig!

You have probably guessed how it works by now - attracted by the contents of the feeder, birds will either (annoyingly!) go straight to the seeds - or - sit for a few seconds on the strategically placed branch. Its these 'branch sitters' we want because then the whole thing looks natural. Fine, you could photograph birds on the feeder, but that's not the result we are looking for. Take a look at the photograph above and see how the background is so out of focus it produces that (I hope) pleasing 'bokeh'. This is achieved because from RSPB Lochwinnoch's photo hide the background is so far away to the lens that it just fuses into a pleasing overall colour.

Crop away and still keep detail!

You'll no doubt be relieved to hear that you don't need a £10,000+ 'super telephoto' lens at this particular location. In fact, the subjects are so close to you that you couldn't really use something like that. I had a 300mm prime lens fitted when I visited and, to be honest, I think I would have found my 70-200mm tele zoom more use. At this particular location, you will still get great results with a lens of around 100mm focal length, in my opinion. In other words, modest and inexpensive kit will still bring home the bacon.

Grab the in-flight action close to the feeder

RSPB Lochwinnoch's photo hide is often visited by their local woodpeckers - always allowing for great pics if you can catch them remaining still long enough......

We all love a 'woodie'

Here is a short list - very short at the moment - of similar non-commercial photography-friendly hides. Feel free to advise me of others you know of and I'll add them to the list.......

RSPB Lockwinnoch, Scotland.
Cromwell Bottom NR, Elland, West Yorkshire - excellent screen, built by photographers.
Hatfield Moor NNR, South Yorkshire - great for close-up woodpecker shots.

Sunday, 28 July 2013

Chanonry Point : Who stays put longest, wins!

The light was fading fast - but hey.....

I learned, or had reinforced in my mind, a couple of classic wildlife photography rules when I visited Chanonry Point near Fortrose, near Inverness, last week - 'Be Patient' and 'Do your Homework Beforehand'.

Chanonry Point is a little spit of land jutting out to sea, just north of the little Scottish town of Fortrose, on the Black Isle and is well known as probably the best place in Britain to see dolphins close-up. Bottlenose dolphins in this case.

Now, there is not really any point in just turning up at Chanonry and expecting to see dolphins, just like that. Doesn't work that way, I'm afraid. You need to be there after low tide, and anything up to two hours after low tide. That's when the dolphins know that their salmon lunch will have least room to manoeuvre.

To allow myself to get my bearings, I got there about 6 pm - two hours before the low tide at 8 pm - and the beach already had a good few people there with cameras mounted on tripods, including a group on a photography course led by a 'pro'. They'd been on the beach since 2:30 earlier that afternoon and, up to the point when I asked them hadn't seen a thing. Not surprising - it wasn't low tide. Around 7 pm, they packed up and left - presumably without much to show for the time they spent out there, and certainly without the dolphin shots they wanted. Here's where the 'Do your Homework Beforehand' bit comes into play. It's no big secret that the period after low tide is dolphin playtime - there are a number of references to this on the internet by Chanonry Point 'regulars'. I felt quite sorry for the snappers on the photography course. They had presumably paid good money to be there and had to go back to their lodgings empty-handed. If the 'pro' leading the course had structured the day around Chanonry's low tide point, things would have been different I suppose.

So, there I was at 8:00 - 8:30 - 9:00 and still not a dolphin in sight. Then, halleluja, someone I was talking to pointed out a pod of dolphins in the distance, heading our way. By 9:30 they were just feet from us, chasing salmon around the swirling waters. My patience had paid off. Those 8 or so bottlenose dolphins gave a superb display - jumping out of the water and splashing around. A phenomenal dolphin display that was better than anything you'd ever pay for (if you were that way inclined) and a perfect photo opportunity. The light was fading fast, I'll admit, and my ISO settings were rising to their eventual high of 1600 - but the photos were there and I was well pleased with the results.

The point I am making is that, in wildlife photography, patience and planning really does pay off. Who won the big prize that evening? Certainly not the 'pro' and his group of paying clients. Nope - it was the kids, the pensioners, the dog walkers, the amateur snappers with DSLRs, the happy snappers with compacts, and the folks using their smartphone cameras - not to mention people who were just content to look and enjoy. Oh, and me of course!

Friday, 25 January 2013

C17 Globemaster of the Royal Air Force on it's way to Mali in support of French forces. RAF Waddington, Lincolnshire. Canon 60D and Canon EF 300mm f/4L IS USM at 1/1000sec at ISO100.