Written by I love photographing wildlife in action and now that I’m cut loose from the constraints of +30p-a-shot film (like other photographers who have lived through the digital revolution), I tend to take a lot more pictures than I ever used to, but still show some measure of constraint. Wielding my camera as a machine gun and hoping to get a lucky hit is a concept that I’ve never really bought into, and I’ll only truly let rip when it’s necessary.
Bempton Cliffs RSPB reserve holds the largest gannet colony in mainland England and is an ace place to visit for bird watching. But as every bird photographer knows, what’s good for viewing isn’t necessarily good for photography. It’s been a few years since my last visit here, but nothing much has changed. On my arrival at the cliff top I was greeted by the usual whirling, screaming, smelly mass of gulls, kittiwakes, guillemots, puffins and (of course) gannets. It’s an awesome sight, but a nightmare to photograph – this is not the Farne Islands. Under these conditions, even conservative me will acknowledge the need to fire away without restraint.
Apart from dealing with the usual problems of fast moving, unpredictable targets I also had to deal with other visitors, lots of them. Some photographers would be tempted to charge straight in with their elbows locked in battle formation, forcing a way into the best position for photography. I decided to spend my first few minutes just watching what was going on instead. Twitchers came and went, ramblers came and went, as did a RSPB guided group and a few DSLR wielding photographers.
By the time that I’d eaten a sandwich and had a drink the crowd had vaporised and I had no problems getting into the position that I wanted. However, the instant that I’d set up my camera and tripod other photographers began appearing as if from nowhere, and tried to squeeze into exactly the same spot as myself (why does that happen?). In no time at all there were six of us in a line, squashed together more tightly than sardines in a tin.
At the end of my visit I walked away feeling satisfied, thinking of the photographs I’d taken. The truth is that I’d probably taken far too many. Slowly the sense of satisfaction faded to despondency, in harmony with a growing realisation that sorting the wheat from the chaff means that I’ll be spending another chunk of my life chained to a computer. I hate digital photography.
It didn’t used to be like this, not until the recently deceased Willard Boyle (genius and Nobel Prize winning inventor) developed the charged-coupled device (CCD) and gave birth to modern digital photography. Once a box of slides had returned from processing I’d drop them onto a light box, weed out the poorly composed or exposed ones at a glance and check the remainder with a loupe (keeping the best – binning the rest). I’d be done in a couple of minutes at most.
Not now though. Thanks to digital I now have total control over my pictures, no longer am I at the mercy of a processing technician’s whimsy. Thanks to digital I have to make choices. Thanks to digital I can now easily modify composition, exposure and colour balance to suit my own particular (peculiar?) vision. Thanks to digital I can make and send multiple copies at no additional cost, even reworking an original to suit a particular use if I want. Thanks to digital I can spend a lifetime working through each and every possible permutation for each and every image, if I want to.
Most significantly of all is that thanks to digital my creative horizons have expanded enormously, along with the opportunities to explore them, all I need to do is invest a little bit of my time. Not only that but I can now secure images that were beyond either my ability and/or the technical limits of my 35mm film equipment. That’s why I love digital photography – thank you Mr. Boyle
This occasional blog is a tasty serving of nature and wildlife photography, with a side dish of my experiences out in the field and lightly seasoned with any random thoughts that occur to me along the way.
