From the Field

December 2009 - getting closer

It may not immediately appear so, but the most recent shot at the top of this page is technically the best. The image is sharper, and it is not cropped anywhere near as much as the others. The subject is however sadly lost in the background, so the search goes on, for a closer shot in which the background complements the subject rather than hides it.

That is the requirement from a quality viewpoint, however these shots and the others I have taken so far, represent some fantastic memories for me of birds seen and days spent in the countryside with great friends. They may be of little worth to a picture editor or a stock agency, but they are priceless to me and there is always tomorrow.

Right from the outset, I wanted this site to give a fair idea of some of the frustrations endured along the path to getting really good wildlife photographs. An illustrated story of the realities to counter the never-ending stream of photographers who are only prepared to show what worked rather than what didn’t.

Two years ago, I saw my first ever short-eared owl. It was about half a mile away and I watched it through binoculars that barely enabled me to identify it as an owl at all. Last year I travelled with my friend Mark Green to see them at Great Easton, near Rutland water and although we had good views, we were frustrated as photographers by the habitat; a plantation of saplings that intruded into every shot.

Today in an effort to get close up shots of buzzard, my friend Laurence Watton and I spent 7 hrs laying in a ditch with our lenses trained on a dead woodpigeon and we never exposed a single frame, although we did see our subjects in the distance. Eventually, we gave up and despondently dragged our equipment back towards the cars, only to see a buzzard depart from within thirty yards of them. More excitingly still, a few steps later this short-eared owl got up from right next to my vehicle and flew back to where we had been hiding all day, before landing on these pallets.

While all these shots have been reduced considerably in size to fit on this webpage, they are perfectly viewable at full screen size and the remarkable quality of modern cameras means that there is still tremendous detail and clarity in even large crops like these.