From the Field

December 2009 - playing at home

The type and number of wild birds now attending feeding stations is increasing and birds like marsh tits, long-tailed tits, siskins and redpolls, which were really quite unusual in the average garden fifteen or twenty years ago, are becoming fairly frequent visitors. In return for our generosity, this is a golden opportunity to get some close up shots in situations where we really can control our perches and backgrounds.

Before I even took up nature photography, I started a feeding station in my garden, which I have run all the year round ever since. It has paid dividends and I always have a ready supply of interesting subjects.

The difficulty now is shots that I could once only dream of are no longer good enough, either to impress the viewer or to maintain my interest from a photographic perspective.

Perches that I once found to be really interesting are obviously false. The problem is that while branches such as this lichen-covered  blackthorn are frequently and naturally used by the birds that I have photographed on them, the fact that they are not in amongst lots of others is a dead giveaway that this is not a bush or a hedge. Although the pictures are fine by my standards, I am now looking for something more from my images.

There can be few photographic disciplines as testing as wildlife photography. Bringing up an image on the computer screen that looked like a perfectly good one on the back of the camera only to see that the subject has bird muck on its feathers is a bit frustrating to say the least.

Similarly a pleasing shot with a bright patch in the background that draws the eye from the subject can be a let-down. Both these ‘faults’ can be fixed at the processing stage with a little skill and technology, but that raises the question of whether we should or not.

The blue tit and the robin were taken on the same perch. In the former I have painted out, in photoshop, the bright patch that you can see in the latter . It has enhanced the image in my opinion and for my own collection that isn’t a problem, but when selling it, technically it is a digitally enhanced image and should perhaps be declared as such. Only the owner of the shot can make the call as to whether or not to do it.

Garden birds are the perfect subjects to practise on. They are easy to get close to with care, and they give lots of chances. They can however be very tricky to nail as they move quickly and frequently. They don’t stand motionless for hours like a heron and in less than perfect light I find that probably three quarters of my shots are soft enough to reject immediately. They even breathe quickly and that alone can ruin an otherwise perfectly good shot once you get much below 1/30 of a second. I have lost count of the number of shots I have got in such situations where the birds eye is pin sharp but the chest feathers are blurred.

These last two images were far more what I had in mind, but just to demonstrate the difficulties, are only what I would call nearly shots. Something I seem to specialise in at the moment. The blue tit is soft at 100% and the great tit is confused with the background. Other than those two faults, I like the composition of both and the backgrounds are far more interesting than the usual stick, with or without lichen, and there is just enough colour and detail behind to show that these are not unrealistic set-ups

The obvious and easy answer in this case is to move the perch so that it isn’t a problem next time, but that is not always possible. The technology is there, and that means some will use it and if you are out there in the market place, you will have to compete with that. In much the same way that you might be trying to sell your wild fox image against some that were shot within a wire enclosure. Not all editors care as long as the image illustrates what they want, so these are not issues that will go away either. At some stage I guess we all have to develop our own ethos and try to stick to it. It doesn’t necessarily mean that all the rest are wrong though.

Today mark Green and I made our first visit to a feeding station he had set up in the grounds of his workplace. It was very much a test session and over the course of this winter we will refine our set-ups and techniques until we get the shots that we want. This short article looks at some of the issues that arose during the day.

Now that the leaves are off the trees and the weather is getting hard, it is time to do our bit for nature conservation by making sure that our smaller birds have a ready supply of food.

A woodpecker visited three times today without us getting a shot; wrens, tree creepers and goldcrests have all been within reach of the hide this week, so there is lots to go at and while we are waiting for the more challenging subjects to co-operate, we will hopefully be topping up our collections of long-tailed tit and bullfinch shots as well as trying to get those more interesting images of the commoner species.