Harsh Light

It was always going to be an all day job.  When I say all day what I really mean is all day, from dawn to dusk.  Such is the way of hide photography sometimes.  So there we were, my wife and I, settled in for a nice long bird watching and photographing session.  Our hide was located in a remote spot and overlooked a small reed-fringed lagoon.  We would be alone all day, just us and (hopefully) some birds.

Bird activity kicked off just after sunrise.  Low golden light sliced across the lagoon from left to right and sympathetically lit whatever birds dropped by.  As it was a clear-sky day and forecasted to stay that way, I knew that I could also look forward to a similar effect from late afternoon on, but with the light direction reversed. It was immediately obvious to me that mid-morning to mid-afternoon was going to be the real challenge, when I would be photographing against desperately harsh light.

What could I do?

Actually, there were plenty of options when it came to passing away the dead hours, when light was horribly poor and birds were mostly inactive.  We could… have something to eat, sleep, send a text message or two, listen to a piece of music, sleep some more (it had been one in a series of very early starts), read a book or play ‘squash the mosquito’.  Between us we did all of these things.  I also sneaked in a few photographs.

I know I said that the light was awful and believe me it was, so I looked for a different opportunity.  Recognising that the usual conditions for taking a decent photograph weren’t available, I decided to try for something that would work in black and white, where colour is of no importance but where tone, texture and character of light are.  It was still difficult to get a picture that worked, but here is one of a cormorant that I liked enough to spare it from the digital equivalent of the executioner’s axe.