Snow White

A last-minute contribution to the blog. Around the holidays, I have hardly been out with the camera, the weather not being particularly inviting for a stint with the camera. I went out one grey morning to photograph swans at their take off to the foraging grounds. When I arrived, still in darkness, they were already in the air, a bit early in my experience. I crawled to the water's edge to see what else I could photograph. Of course all the ducks were gone in a split-second. Only about a dozen sleeping Great Egrets (Ardea alba, Grote Zilverreiger) stayed at the scene. A few minutes later, they all awoke and one by one flew away to feed in the area individually.


I was fortunate a rather strong wind blew from behind me, forcing the egrets to take off in my direction. Because of the lack of light, I used a very long shutterspeed for a nice blur-effect in the wings. Out of the dozens of shots, only in this one did the egret keep its head relatively still, a requirement for the result to at least vaguely resemble an egret. No snow or ice, but still a nice high-key, snowy image to close the photographic year with.

I wish you all a very nice last day of 2011 and hope 2012 offers a lot of willing subjects and boatloads of wonderful light. See you next year.

Great Egret; Canon 1D Mark III w. 500/4L IS and 1.4x; 1/8s at F5.6 and ISO800; tripod.

Warm Welcome

In my previous post, I mentioned I was eagerly awaiting the arrival of one of my favourite wintering guests, the Hen Harrier (Circus cyaneus, Blauwe Kiekendief). I had not even finished writing the blogpost, or my telephone rang. The landowner excitedly informed me that 'he had returned' to the fields of joy (and voles). I had to wait until Saturday before I could go out and try to photograph it. And of course, the Harrier was last seen on Wednesday. Not good. So I decided to try some sunrise landscapes. I was out in the field when I got a call that 'he was patrolling the field'. I jumped in the car and drove over there, only to find empty fields of joy (but many voles).

As I had brought tea and lunch, I decided to sit and wait. Which I did for hours on end, until sunset. The Harrier returned twice, for about a minute each time. His first appearance was abruptly ended by a dog walking its owner, the second hunt was literally blasted by a hunter in the forest who timed his pigeon-fest as bad as possibly possible. I got one half-decent shot of the fleeing Harrier, which can be seen above. You gotta love it. Well, at least he's back. As soon as it gets colder, he will hunt the fields of joy (and voles) more regularly. If there are any voles left by then, as I witnessed a beautiful male Kestrel (Falco tinninculus, Torenvalk) catch four voles in the course of only a few hours. Unfortunately, he kept a safe distance of more than 100 meters from the car, so no photographs please. Funny thing about the shot above, is that I got a similar one almost a year ago. Probably the same Harrier, and even the same background tree, be it shot from the other side. Only the snow flurry is missing, which I should admit adds a lot to the mood and feel of the final image. Here's the 'old' shot for comparison.

Hen Harrier; Canon 1D Mark III w. 500/4L IS and 1.4x; 1/640s at F6.3 and ISO400; beanbag from vehicle

Feathery Friday

I recently realized that since our family holiday to South Africa, I had not photographed any fur or feather, instead focussing on landscapes, abstracts and macro photography. The telelens spent way too much time deep in the closet. But somehow, I suddenly felt like bird photography again and started to think about possible subjects. Around this time of the year, a friend's huge natural garden is regularly visited by one or more Hen Harriers, but not this year. The weather has been more like autumn than winter, keeping the usual suspects away. Hopefully, I'll see them soon, because their hunting antics are wonderful to watch and photograph. They hunt against the wind, and when that wind is a stiff one, they will very slowly hover over the fields, in the direction of the eagerly awaiting photographer. Well, I'll just wait for them to arrive and hope to photograph them in a snow flurry, like I did last year. Instead, I found a cheerful little flock of about 20 Common Redpolls (Carduelis flammea, Barmsijs) feasting on the seeds of Evening Primrose (Oenothera biënnis, Teunisbloem). They were very confiding, and after a short wait they got into shooting range without taking any notice of the lens-swinging human form in the vehicle. I was very happy to watch these beautiful nordic birds for a while, because I used to have two Redpolls for pets and had always liked their happy, highpitched calls.

Common Redpoll; Canon 5D Mark II w. 500/4L IS and 1.4x; 1/200s at F7.1 and ISO400; beanbag from vehicle.

Amazing Greys

I promised myself to not start a rant about the weather on an average Friday morning. Instead, please be referred to my latetst batch of blogpostst and just rewind/replay over and over again.
Last weekend, I did try some 'after-sunset' landscapes with very long shutterspeeds. I liked the first resultst, but not really worthy to be posted here. Most of the rest of the weekend was spent delving into the archives, looking for hidden gems. I keep doing that from time to time. My taste in photography changes over time, sometimes very radically, very rapidly. Makes me wonder what kind of photographs I dismissed back then.

Besides a different taste, I have also learnt over time to be able to see the potential in lighting conditions in a shot, see through the color image, and turn the image into an appealing B/W photograph. Something I refused to do years ago, but am starting to like more and more. Here's an example featuring a common Impala in the wide open landscape of South Luangwa in Zambia. The color image features bland mid-morning colors, caused by a combination of hazy weather and harsh sunlight. Somehow, I did not delete it back then, and now finally I saw the potential of it. Turning it into a greyscale image makes this blogpost come full-circle. Grey weather, greyscale image. Now looking forward to a beautiful, colorful Friday!

Impala ram; Canon 1D mark III w. 500/4L IS and 1.4x; 1/800s at F5.6 and ISO400; beanbag from vehicle