Late Again

Jan21
2012 Leave a Comment Written by Stephen Street

Late again Steve!  Despite my best efforts and planning I can sometimes find myself off-location when nature puts on an outstanding performance.  And this was the case here, but this time it wasn’t really my faulty, well, maybe it was a little bit my fault.

I had set out with enough time to get where I wanted to be for daybreak (just).  Although it was a bitterly cold morning and I expected some ice, I got more than I bargained for.  I had to drive along a hilly one-car-wide road that was covered in patches of thick ice.  It was literally skating rink conditions and I was forced to drive extremely carefully and very, very slowly.

Dawn colours turned on when I expected them to; I just wasn’t in the right place.  Rather than miss out altogether I parked up as soon as I safely could, then slipped and slithered to this frozen patch of flooded moor, hoping that the ice would pick up overhead colours.  I managed to capture the effect I was after, but only by venturing out onto ice that shattered when I put my full weight on it and ultimately left me standing shin deep in ice-cold water.  It was the only way that I could get my camera low enough to give precedence to the foreground texture.  This picture certainly isn’t a jaw-dropper and I won’t be practising any award reception speeches on the strength of it, but it’s definitely better than nothing at all.

Perhaps I should have anticipated the road conditions and set off earlier (it’s always better to be on location twenty minutes too early than twenty seconds too late).  Perhaps I was too complacent about winter sunrise times and I should have made better use of the landscape photographers’ best friend – an alarm clock.  On reflection; I think that it was entirely my own fault that I was late (again).

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Harsh Light

Jan11
2012 Leave a Comment Written by Stephen Street

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.

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Woody

Jan01
2012 Leave a Comment Written by Stephen Street

I’d like to introduce you to an acquaintance of mine.  Reader, meet Woody; Woody this is my reader.  At first glance, dear reader, you may quite reasonably think that Woody is a common, garden visiting great-spotted woodpecker, but he isn’t.  In fact he is a Syrian woodpecker.  This species isn’t normally found in the UK, so you can confidently assume that he wasn’t photographed here.

This picture was taken within a small Hungarian town a couple of metres from a junction of two roads and less than five metres from a residents’ front door.  Undisturbed he went about his business, flying back and forth without hindrance of any kind.  While camera wielding visitors such as me would tend to make a fuss over this ‘amazing opportunity’, locals walked by completely unfazed, (well, unfazed by Woody, but amused by my keen interest in photographing him).  Woody wasn’t just tolerated; he was totally accepted to the point of almost being ignored.

The ease with which rural Hungarians live with their natural neighbours is one of the reasons that I enjoy visiting Hungary.  I’ve been there several times so far and would happily go again and again.  Here at home things seem so much different.  I can’t help thinking that a woodpecker attempting to nest in such a public and accessible place would be living on borrowed time.  It would probably be harassed to the point of nest abandonment in no time at all.  It’s testament to a treasure that a lot of Hungarians still have and that we in the UK have mostly lost – an intimate connection with nature.

Back in Hungary; not only was Woody and his mate able to nest without disturbance, they managed to successfully raise at least one very noisy, demanding and ravenous youngster.

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Coast Fever

Dec21
2011 Leave a Comment Written by Stephen Street

“I must go down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky” (from Sea Fever, a poem by John Masefield).  For me, it isn’t so much the sea as the coast.

At this time of the year, when my surrounding countryside is slinking into hibernation and is, to be frank, less than photogenic, the coast claims a higher priority on my list of places to go.  I keep a seasoned eye on tides and weather, watching and waiting for optimal conditions to arrive (for me that means a falling tide and broken cloud at sunrise).

On such a morning I found myself heading for Robin Hood’s Bay where, while slowly freezing to the point of not being able to feel my fingertips, I spent some time photographing…

The twilight glow…

 

Dawn colours…

dawn colours

 

Sunrise over a boiling sea…

 

And oystercatchers foraging on the tide line.

After an hour of patiently working my way in onto these birds and just as I was about to hit the sweet spot, they lifted off as one.  It was game over in an instant.  Disappointment reigned as I slowly uncoiled my frozen joints and stood up, picked up my tripod, turned around and almost bumped into a surfboard.  Its owner enthusiastically asked me, ‘Did you get any good pictures?’  ‘One or two thanks’, I said, ‘one or two’.  Satisfied at that, he turned around and quickly walked back up the beach to join his surfing buddies, leaving me all alone without a single bird to be seen.

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Star Gazing

Dec08
2011 Leave a Comment Written by Stephen Street

I’ve been doing a bit of ploughing.  Not till the earth kind but tilt the camera skywards kind, towards one of my favourite group of stars – the Plough, a.k.a. the Big Dipper, the Butcher’s Cleaver and what I used to call it, the Bent-handled Saucepan.

Star photography isn’t something that I’d normally do but the Plough was shinning bright and my camera was handy, so I thought that I’d give it a go.  I’ve read endless comments on how light pollution destroys night photography, but I actually like the effect it gave to my particular attempts.  A little bit of colour doesn’t seem too bad and it allowed me use trees in silhouette as a compositional element as well.

Turning around and gazing into an eternally-deep, black sky I was over-awed at the starscape above me, as I often am on crystal clear nights.  Not having access to the Hubble Space Telescope I couldn’t go in close for details, so I contented myself with taking the wide view.  But I found that trying to make a picture of it was a real challenge.  I’d describe it as being akin to photographing an enormously wide vista of jaw-dropping beauty, only to be jaw-droppingly disappointed by the result.  It’s hard to squeeze the sense of scale and depth into two limited dimensions without losing something; a landscape comes out looking flat, my awesome starscape merely looks like a piece of black card full of pin holes.

Clearly there is more to photographing stars than meets the eye.  I’m already convinced that in order to do justice to the majesty of the heavens a good star photograph needs to be composed and executed with the same attention to detail as a good landscape photograph.  With that in mind I waited for another clear night and went back to ploughing.

With nights getting ever-longer, I think that I’ll continue to explore this avenue of photography to see what I can do whenever an occasional clear night comes along.  It’s all good fun.  You never stop learning in this game do you?

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Misty Mornings Are Back

Nov27
2011 Leave a Comment Written by Stephen Street

Locally (and I have to say locally, because I have no doubt that things will be different where you are), autumn colours are fading fast now, with the majority of trees reduced to bare skeletons.  Oak and beech seem to be the exceptions, both of which still have good leaf coverage.  Oak leaves have been dropping in one’s and two’s for a while and those that remain are now mostly dull brown.  In contrast, beech leaves can still manage some show of colour, but probably not for much longer. I think it’s all been a bit of a long drawn out process this year, due to the relatively mild weather we have had (I’m told that it’s been the warmest October on record).  Thankfully however, temperatures have suddenly dropped and going outside now needs an extra layer of clothing to be worn.

I say thankfully because one thing that I’ve missed is mist.  It’s been too mild for far too long.  But now that I’ve had the chance to be out at sunrise on a misty morning, a sense of normality is returning.  However, there is a fine line between mist with all of its ethereal effects and dense all-smothering fog.  One fills me with endless inspiration, the other doesn’t.

My favourite time for misty morning photography is just when the sun is rising out of a mist bank.  I’m easily seduced by the way that mist-filtered sunlight can take on vivid warm hues for a few moments, until the sun breaks fully clear.  But it doesn’t usually last for long.  In a matter of seconds bold colours can fade to white. 

My favourite position for misty morning photography is to be almost level with the top of the mist.  This maximises the effect.  Sometimes I’ll chase that position, frantically rushing back and forth until I hit the sweet spot.  I know when I’ve found it, because it seems as if I’m looking at the world through a Velvia filter.  All that remains to be done is to quickly find something interesting to put in the foreground, such as an oak tree perhaps.

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Mellow Afternoon

Nov17
2011 Leave a Comment Written by Stephen Street

After a seemingly never-ending string of dull days the sun finally squeezed through a crack in the clouds.  It was all that I needed.  Grabbing my camera bag with one hand, holding my tripod in the other and with my car keys clenched firmly between my teeth, I dashed out to try and make something of the hazy remains of the day.  After several false stops I settled on this view of the Cleveland Hills, and played around with lenses and compositions, while autumn put on a light show that reminded me why I love this season so much.

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Autumn Rains

Nov11
2011 Leave a Comment Written by Stephen Street

‘Did you get wet?’ asked my beloved.

It was a fair question; after all I’d been out for hours on a dull damp morning.  But it’s November, this is the UK, it’s autumn and the last two months of the year are typically our wettest.  If I don’t go outside because it’s raining in November, I may never get out.

I was of course heading out in search of local colour.  A lot of trees in my area seem to be shedding their leaves just as they turn a delicious shade of yellow.  What this means is that I need to keep my wits about me and seek out places where golden trees are clumped together, obviously I am thinking of woodlands.

Dull days have never been a problem for me when it comes to photographing trees.  Yes, it does mean that slower shutter speeds are needed, but I have a sturdy tripod and experience has taught me where to go to be sheltered from unwanted winds.  Damp days aren’t a problem either.  Rain has the wonderful effect of bringing out a depth of colour that we photographers dream about.  A touch of polarising filter to reduce rain induced glare and bam!  I’m in photo heaven.  And I just love the way that rain gently reduces distant features into a soft anonymous mush.

I visited a small wood that in years gone by was probably part of a hunting ground for local gentry or possibly the King himself (and as such a common ‘oik’ like me could have been hanged just for being there).  I expected to spend a couple of minutes checking it out, I left an hour later when what had been gentle but steady rain finally cranked itself up a gear or two.  As it was now raining too heavily to risk changing lenses and as I had foolishly set out without a waterproof outer layer it seemed a prudent time for me to head for home.

Did I get wet?  You bet.  I was soaked to through to my skin, but I’d had a great time.

 

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A Handsome Killer

Oct31
2011 Leave a Comment Written by Stephen Street

‘The Butcher Bird’ brings to my mind a scene of blood stained feathers, a flesh shearing beak, heart piercing talons and for some strange reason a pair of manic looking eyes.  Instead I was confronted with a small and beautiful bird stylishly dressed in rusty red, off-white and pale blue.

In days gone by red-backed shrikes regularly bred in Britain, but not now.  Now they are rapidly sliding down a slippery slope towards UK extinction, so I was very pleased to have an opportunity to photograph one, even if I had to travel half-way across Europe to do so.

You may think that I should have moved a bit closer, but that just wasn’t going to happen.  Well, it may of happened if I was prepared to put in lots of time acclimatising this shrike to my presence, time that I didn’t have (this was an opportunity that revealed itself while I was on the way to somewhere else).  Ultimately, how close I get isn’t up to me anyway, it’s always the subject that decides.

Sometimes when this happens the best thing to do is to take a photograph of a bird in its setting, making use of whatever elements there are around it to construct an interesting composition.  This may seem as if I am trying to make the best of a bad job, but I’m not.  I prefer this style of picture.  For me they are much more interesting than an often sterile offering of a full-frame picture of a bird against a completely bland background with no sense of place.  But that’s just me.

Why ‘Butcher Bird’?  Because from their usual perches of posts or overhead wires they will pounce on a range of small prey items, which once caught will be impaled on thorns to form a larder, in much the same way that a butcher will hang up carcasses in a cool room.

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The Line

Oct20
2011 Leave a Comment Written by Stephen Street

Most pheasants seem to leave this plane of existence with either a thump or a bang.

Pheasants are birds of very little brain with very large suicidal tendencies and will frequently step or fly out in front of cars with no warning.  Particularly when they are preoccupied with strutting their stuff and proving to all around that they are the largest/strongest/prettiest of the lot.  All too often when this happens they are converted into road kill with a feather-muffled thump.

They are also relatively slow and steady fliers, making them a popular target for game shooters.  With an average level of shooting skill and a loaded shotgun a quick bang-bang turns them into dead meat.  Because of this high popularity rating in the game bird league hundreds of thousands of pheasants are released onto shooting estates every year.  More birds = more shoots = more money.  It’s a simple equation.

Farndale is a delightful little dale in the North York Moors National Park that runs alongside the beautifully named River Dove.  It is famed for its springtime displays of wild daffodils which have earned it a Local Nature Reserve status, and its other wild flowers and plants justify its Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSI) designation.  As you may have gathered, it’s an exceptional place.

I’ve just been reading of someone who had overloaded this dale with pheasants.  Way overloaded, to the point of degrading the SSI (it’s not difficult to imagine how this could happen as a foraging pheasant pecking at seeds on the ground is akin to someone using an excavator to pick up an acorn).  I don’t imagine that he started off with that intent, but began by simply chipping away at the legal boundary, a little bit here, a little bit there until (almost without realising it) the line has not only been crossed but was so far behind him that there was no going back.  Such behaviour seems to be usually driven by either obsession, passion or (as was judged to be the case here) greed – and it seems to me that where money is involved the greatest excesses tend to follow.

It would be easy, after reading of a case like this, to boo and hiss at the nasty man before cheering as he is carted off to the gallows to be hung.  But I can still empathise with him even if I can’t condone his actions.  As passionate, and maybe even obsessive, nature photographers we are constantly confronted with our own boundaries; boundaries such as accessibility, protection, subject well-being etc. and the temptation is always there to chip away and risk crossing the line.  And some do.  I don’t know about you, but I think that it is when we are faced with an ‘inconvenient’ boundary that our true character shows through.

From time to time I pass through Farndale and lately I haven’t noticed anything particularly unusual about the number of pheasants in the area.  However, over the last couple of years I have repeatedly driven alongside towering stone walls that have been topped with dozens upon dozens of another game bird, red-legged partridges.  They are smaller and less reluctant to take to the wing than pheasants, so they aren’t as favoured in the shooting stakes.  But in the absence of anything else I imagine that they will definitely do.  Is that the faint sound of chipping that I can hear in the distance?

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