Birder's photo vs Bird photo? A Whinchat provides an example.

There has been a bit of debate recently about the preponderance of super-detailed rictal bristle bird photographs on the internet. It is to be expected, photographic gear gets ever better, with seemingly tiny cameras capable of taking simply wonderful shots. The fancy technology of just two or three years ago is now found in budget cameras and megapixels abound - a starter camera is now around 24mp and some of the amateur bodies are bumping up to 30mp+, approaching 7000 pixels horizontally. That is a lot of pixels, there is almost no excuse not to take outrageously detailed images.

But in the face of this detail that reduces birds to objects of photographic lust rather than as creatures as part of, or moving through a landscape, there is a quiet backlash. The birder's photo. Birders care not for rictal bristles. Rather they want to show the bird as they themselves experienced it. Where was it? What was it doing? Which bush was it in? This has some merit. 

Recently I have been birding Wanstead Flats a great deal. Short targeted visits rather than all day vigils, but often several times a day. Until this morning none of my forays included a camera. But that is OK as phones these days are pretty incredible. Mine is a Samsung and has a 16mp camera in it which I find almost unbelievable as up until two years my DSLR only had 16mp, and even the one I have today is only 18mp. Canon's latest offering, the EOS R5, has a staggering 45mp. It also costs an equally staggering £4200, so I think I'll pass. I'd only break it. Anwyay, it has been very refreshing to be out birding without a camera, particularly one as heavy and unwieldy as mine - a bridge camera it is not. In fact recently I would estimate that nine times out of ten I will just have had my bins. I must be getting old. So, as I say I have been out a lot and there have been birds everywhere. Tasty and inviting birds like Whinchats and Wheatears. Sometimes there have been several of each in the same bush - on Monday a Redstart, three Wheatear and a Whitethroat, or like yesterday, two Wheatear and two Whinchat. I nearly wished I had had my camera with me, but then I realised that actually it was fine as I could instead take a birder's shot with my phone. So here is the bush of dreams from yesterday.

A real sense of place I feel. Evocative, with Centre Road car park in the background and a couple of nice lamp posts. Mmmmmm-mmmmmmm. Yep, that is my kind of photo. It will help me remember the excursion, it will add an extra dimension to my birding in a way that other more vulgar types of photos cannot. To prove this I took my camera out this morning and pointed it at the first Whinchat I saw. Ugh. 

Luckily it is not great as the bird was quite distant and I was in a hurry, and following an unfortunate Windows 10 experience my most sophisticated image-processing software is currently MS Paint. But nonetheless there is still way too much feather detail and the fundamental problem is that you can still tell it is a Whinchat. There are also no cars in the background to provide any sense of scale or of place. And can you see any lamp posts? Exactly. Mind you it is nothing compared to this horror show which I took in Greece a few years ago. Jeeee-sus wept, remind me never go anywhere near Lake Kerkini again. No contest is there? Ebay it is then.

Florida IV - Day 3 - Part 1

Day 3 - Part 1

Bunche Beach. 5am and the conditions are perfect. Perfect tide, perfect light. As the sun comes up so the water recedes exposing the mudflats and sandbars. I have the place to myself, there is literally nobody here at all. The first bird I see is a Great Blue Heron, a sentinel against the mirror of the water. An Osprey is in a dead tree right on the beach. All is as I remember it. 

I'd been here before, to this exact spot and for this exact purpose - wader photography. The beach runs east west, and the sun comes up over the mangroves and lights the sand and the shallows in pure gold. If you time it right you literally don't know where to point the camera. Carry a spare battery if you need it, and extra memory cards. Don't hold back, this is what digital cameras are made for. And don't worry about getting wet, sandy and muddy either, or getting your camera gear a bit dirty. It can all be washed or brushed off. I used my Canon 1DX, the 500mm F4 IS mkII, sometimes the 1.4x mkIII converter, and then a gimbal head on a skimmer pod. I probably had the lens off the support as much as on, and I am still finding sand in the camera six months later!

Get on your belly and push!

Here you can see some of the exposed sandbars after a successful session

Below are a few of the non-wader images - a small minority! There are two more much much longer posts in the pipeline with Willet, Short-billed Dowitcher, Grey Plover, Marbled Godwit, Semipalmated Plover, Western Sandpiper, Least Sandpiper, Wilson's Plover and Piping Plover. Sorry.

Great Blue Heron

Osprey

Caspian Tern

Forster's Tern

Cabot's Tern

Top ten not bird images from 2019

Birds are not the be all and end all, and I continue to enjoy taking photographs of landscapes and other scenery wherever I end up. Landscape photographers are true artists. Unlike birds you do not just bowl up and try your luck, there appears to a tremendous amount of planning involved, as well as immense amounts of skill to blend all the elements together. It is all about the light, the first rays of the sun lighting up a landscape of rugged beauty. Getting into position can take hours, often in the dark, and as for knowing what to do when you get there.....I cannot hope to get anywhere near that level of proficiency. But I do go to some amazing places, and some of these are so photogenic that you can take something that looks great with just your telephone. 

Monument Valley in the American south-west. The USA is overflowing with unsurpassed landscapes like this. The weather was somewhat against Henry and I, and this shot was taken shortly after a snow storm had passed through and temperatures low enough to make us seriously and sanity-questioningly uncomfortable. The light that morning was very peculiar indeed, with the fresh snow combined with orange rocks creating a living sepia effect. We may not have come away with any coffee table stunners, but we will remember this trip for a very long time!

Photos cannot do Antelope Canyon justice, although there are legion attempts far better than this as any google search will show you. Henry and I visited in February and the place was rammed even with a blizzard going on. Most photos show grains of sand falling pleasingly across a sunbeam. I've chosen to go with flakes of snow.

I can't even really remember where this was other than to say it was somewhere between Las Vegas and Zion National Park just before sunset. What we didn't yet know was that the polar vortex would deliver some of the most violent weather either of us had ever seen, which turned the ochre landscapes of Arizona and Utah white. This photos was of one of the preludes to this band of weather, which gave an ethereal quality to the light as the sun went down.

 

Singapore's Gardens by the Bay, taken from the eastern side during the blue hour. The weather was once again playing tricks, but I successfully dodged the thunder storms that turned the sky black over to the north east. Singapore is a spectacular city, and I really want to go back.

I took this on a walking tour of the city with a colleague, not sure what I balanced the camera on as I didn't have a tripod, but it has come out rather nicely for all that.

This is phone photo, taken whilst driving along the road to Mauna Loa on Hawaii. Shortly after this I heard but could not see my first Omao, the Hawaiian Thrush. Just look at the landscape though, This is not a skilled image, but this transports me back to a red Camaro convertible in glorious weather in a magical place.

Black Sand on Punalu'u Beach, Hawaii. This is actually a colour photograph, I didn't have to tinker with it at all. Birding was my primary purpose of course, but a bit of tourism never goes amiss. Hawaii is a wonderful place, just a bit far away.

The Pacific Ocean, facing west from Hawaii. Over to the right is Maui, but straight out  from Hapuna Beach there is nothing for six thousand miles until you hit Hainan Island near Vietnam. Watching the sun set over the ocean is one of life's great pleasures, were that I lived somewhere where this could be a regular event but alas I am tied to London. 

The only photo from Wanstead in 2019, the incomparable Flats early in the morning. I rarely take my camera out there, so I suspect that this must have been on my phone. The more photos I see from phones the more I wonder why people bother carting massive cameras around the place. Soon I will be too old to carry an enormous camera anyway....

Boston's historic north end early in the morning - I couldn't sleep and got up before the city awoke to a lovely morning. I only had a day, but I ran around like a mad thing and had a thoroughly wonderful time.  On a more serious note, this trip was an absurd indulence and I in all good conscience I should not have gone on it. Fun as it was, it is not on the menu for 2020.

Top ten bird images from 2019

I didn't take as many photos this year as previous years, it appears that I am swinging back to being a birder. That said I have never been just a bird photographer, or at least that is not how I see myself. I am birder who takes photos, and I am equally happy doing that as I am just birding. Sometimes I concentrate on taking pictures, and sometimes I concentrate on seeing how many birds I can see. This year I have simply done more of the latter on my trips away, and less of the former. This makes it a lot easier to filter my output down to just ten, and in fact when I first started typing this post I worried that I might not get there at all!

Oriental Magpie-Robin from the Singapore Botanic Gardens in March. I did not take many good photos in Singapore, it was simply too hot and I was knackered. I fell back to yet another of my hobbies, and instead spent the weekend with my head buried in tropical plants, marveling at the extraordinary verdancy of the island. Of the decent photos I did take, I really like this pose. I was on a raised walkway above a pond, and this bird was with its mate seemingly investigating nesting holes in some dead stumps. I predicted it would land on the top of one of these which it almost immediately did. 

This Olive-backed Sunbird was also in the Singapore Botanic Garden early one morning. I spent over an hour amongst these plantings as a small number of birds came and went, and even though they are lightning fast I managed to get a few shots, of which this is the most pleasing for being, at least in my mind, quite artistic because I've stayed back to try and get the whole flower in the frame.

This Cyprus Wheatear was taken on one of several productive early morning birding sessions on Cyprus over Easter. I was on a family holiday but snuck out every morning for a couple of hours as the sun rose before returning for breakfast and a day of sloth. Of course this wasn't a birding holiday at all, but ironically enough it was by far the most productive for bird photography of the whole year. I suppose this is because I was returning to a location that I have been to several times before and knew exactly what I wanted.

Spectacled Warbler. This is another image from Cyprus taken on Cape Greco in the lovely light about one hour after dawn. The cape was about ten minutes from our hotel and I visited nearly every morning. Spectacled Warblers are extremely common, and whilst normally quite skulky I found a bird that had claimed a bush with a perfect singing perch.

Ruppell's Warbler. Yet another from Cape Greco, and a bird I was seriously pleased to find. It was the only one I saw on the trip, mid-April is quite late for them. It was feeding in a series of low bushes, and would spend a nano-second perched on top of each before diving into it. I missed the bird each and every time on the first few bushes so raced ahead a few bushes and crossed my fingers that the same thing would happen again. It did!

Scissor-tailed Flycatcher, Texas. Pure luck this one, the bird was perched on a wire fence and I happened to press the shutter at the precise moment that it flew up. Lucky me. It's not the greatest photo ever, almost every element of it could be better, but it's a bit different and if you squint it looks ok. And look, it's a Scissor-tailed Flycatcher, so pretty much any photo of it would be a thing of beauty.

Bulgaria is carpeted in Black-headed Buntings, singing from what seems like every bush. I took very few decent photos in Bulgaria this year, the trip in 2018 was a lot better.  It was longer, and the weather was better, and I was just more in tune. Sometime it is like that, and I fail to click. Other times it seems to go well almost from the outset. I've said it before and no doubt I'll say it again, but there seems to be correlation between how much bird photography do and how well it goes. And also whether I improve or not. Right now I am on a plateau and beginning to slip backwards. At least I recognise that though! I do already have a trip booked to Bulgaria for 2020, so let's see how that goes.

Red-backed Shrike, Bulgaria. One of the most common and easily seen birds in the country thanks to a thriving insect population. I remembered them as being easier to take photos of that they in fact are, and opportunities were quite limited. Because I couldn't get especially close I aimed to get a whole plant in, a bit like the Sunbird from Singapore. This is a tactic I should try and employ more. It doesn't have the wow factor of every last feather detail, but it actually takes a bit more thought to achieve.

This is the only photo in this year's selection that was taken in a hide. I don't like hides! However it did provide excellent opportunities to photography song birds at very short range. On the morning I was there Tree Sparrows were amongst the very few species that came into feed and bathe, and I like this over the shoulder pose along with the nice perch, even though it just screams "hide".  

I am still going through the many wader photos that I took in Florida in November of this year. So far I like this one, a Piping Plover, at exactly eye level which meant that I got very muddy and also hurt my neck trying to peer through the view-finder at such a low angle. I like to think it was worth it, and at some point in the next few weeks I hope to go through all the photos I took and put together a few galleries.

Utah - Zion NP

No visit to Bryce Canyon would be complete without a stop-in at near neighbour Zion National Park. Despite near white-out conditions on the way down, Zion itself was passable, and so our number one viewpoint of Canyon Overlook was actually attainable. It was surprisingly busy given the weather outside of the park was making access a little tricky, but we got a parking space within a short while and walked the short distance up the trail – very easy despite the snow and ice, and took no more than about 20 minutes. What greeted us was immense.

We are fortunate enough that we have also seen Yosemite, and there is a spot there when arriving from the western entrance where you round a bend in the road and suddenly the whole of the valley is there in front of you. The overlook view reminded us of that, and not particularly in miniature either. The view is the classic tunnel type, with the walls of Zion Canyon rising 2000ft from the valley floor at the far end, and as with everything in America, is as grandiose as they come. We gazed out across the valley for a while, willing the clouds to part and allow at least some sunlight to warm up the ochre cliffs. Are these places in fact better with wild skies, or is a perfect blue sky the desired state? Maybe the answer is that to fully appreciate somewhere like this you need to experience it in all seasons and in all conditions, and the transitions between them. In that respect tourism can be quite one-dimensional, and the thousands of selfies and other photos taken daily are wholly unrepresentative of these places. Nonetheless this blog post demands at least something, so here’s a flavour of what we got on the day.

Utah - Bryce Canyon

To be fair it didn’t start well, but travel is rarely completely straightforward.

I pride myself in being extremely organised. This time I had booked the rental car for precisely one month ahead of when it was needed. Great. The local office in Las Vegas could do nothing, and after being offered a number of extremely unpalatable last minute alternatives I reluctantly switched on my phone and called the UK travel agent. It was sorted in under five minutes. Oh and by the way, could I upgrade to a 4x4? Apparently there is a little bit of snow forecast…

Henry is 15 and a nice boy. This was a half term treat, just the two of us, to the American south-west. With a photography GCSE just around the corner, what better than the buttes, hoodoos and canyons of Arizona and Utah, all in vibrant shades of orange. Or how about white?

Finally we were on our way. Henry had said nothing whilst his father tried to unpick what could have been a trip-ending administrative cock-up, but you could see the relief on his face. He might be a teenager, but the grunting insouciance has yet to fully take over. We headed north on the I-15 towards Utah – first stop Bryce Canyon, that incredible bowl of rock formations which are a photographer’s dream. We had talked on the flight, and indeed for many weeks beforehand, about the sunrise over Bryce and where we would stand, how we would shoot it. Part of the plan, now scuppered, had been to visit at sunset to assess the vantage points and get our timings right, but it was now clear we would not arrive before dark. Not to worry though, the mental imagery would see us through.

The next morning we awoke in the dark and peered out on a white landscape. Huge icicles dangled from the guttering, and the ground glistened. Gathering our gear we set off on the short drive to the canyon. The car temperature sensor reported minus 15 centigrade, what were we doing? I had known it would be cold, but this was unexpected to say the least. At least it wasn't snowing, the views would be magnificent. I had visited once before, over 30 years ago, with my own parents. That had been in August when the canyon was an orange dust bowl. This would at least be different. 

All dreams of an amazing sunrise evaporated about two miles out, we were driving into a blizzard. At the first of the viewpoints visibility was about five metres. I switched the heated seat back on and settled in to wait in the dark. We were here now, we might as well see what would develop. Ten minutes before the designated sunrise we went on a short recce to the lip of the canyon. A few hoodoos loomed out of the mist, but photography was a distant dream. It wasn't even possible to get a sense of the scale. 

Sunrise came and went with no discernible difference in light levels, but a quick check of the weather radar online predicted a short break in around an hour, so we decided to wait it out. It was cold, but not so bitter that we couldn't remain outdoors, and gradually we began to perceive more and more shapes. One benefit of the weather was that we were more or less alone, and it was a special moment when the snow flurries began to clear and the hints of impending grandeur were fully resolved as the horizon finally revealed itself. Natural beauty comes in many forms, but few landscapes capture the imagination in quite the same way as the sandstones of the American south-west. There might not have been any sun, but really the photographs became secondary to taking these views in. 

 

Joshua Tree encounter

On the way to Bryce Canyon from Las Vegas we were on the lookout for anything that might make for a decent photograph with the setting sun as a backdrop. On any photography expedition the first day is always a challenge. You forget important things as you refamiliarise yourself with your gear, but really it is inspiration and artist talent that is normally lacking. We had a few hours to get over that hump and hopefully start our first full day in the right frame of mind.

Driving through the semi-desert landscape I began to perceive familiar shapes. Shapes I had never seen but that were burned in my subconscious. Joshua Trees. I am a big fan of spiky plants - cycads, agaves, aloes and yuccas, and the Joshua Tree, named by Mormon settlers, is one of the latter. Yucca brevifolia to be precise. I had never seen one in habitat, indeed never even tried to grow one as I viewed it as pointless - they grow an inch per year in a narrow elevation band where California, Nevada, Utah and Arizona meet, and until they develop a trunk they look like quite a few other yuccas. Many people will have heard of Joshua Tree National Park east of L.A. in California, but actually the denser populations of trees are further north in the Mojave Preserve. I had not been expecting to find trees even further north than this, but here they undeniably were.

We pulled over as soon as a suitable way to get closer to the trees presented itself, and I fulfilled a long-held ambition. To cut to the chase they are extraordinary. The trunks are covered in the old leaf bases, and the green spheres of live growth are completely unyielding with pungent spines. Tree-huggers beware, these are a fabulous example of evolution at work, completely at ease in the landscape, ancient sentinels keeping watch. We stuck around until the sun set behind the clouds, enthralled.

Top ten not bird images from 2018

I am still finding that it is not always about birds. I take a camera almost everywhere I go, despite the weight and effort, and the fact that my phone actually does a pretty decent job for internet-only images. I like the variety, and the skills required are very different. Harder! I consider myself far better at taking photographs of birds, but that is not to say that there is no satisfaction to be had from a nice landscape photo, or a candid street shot. Again, these may not be the best ten photos I've taken this year, nor do I think they're as good as those I took i 2017, but they're the ones that tell the story of the year, and remind me what a lovely time I have had. I am very lucky, long may that continue.

I took this photo in Barbados in April, and the small dot right in the middle is my youngest daughter. It was a magical few days – like me she is a natural aficionado of the Caribbean, instantly attuning to the slow rhythm and relaxed vibe of this part of the world. I gain so much from travel, and I want my kids to understand that the world is an incredible place that extends far beyond their regular boundaries. As such I try and take each of them away for some one-on-one time in a stunning location as often as time and funds allow. We based our short holiday around the beach at Payne’s Bay, and Charlotte spent many happy hours playing with some local kids who were also enjoying the golden sand and warm water.

 Mrs L and I had a mere 24 hours in Tokyo, part of a complicated return journey from Malaysia. Despite the short stay we packed in an incredible amount. In pure landscape terms I think my favourite one is this one of Mount Fuji, taken from our room at the Park Hyatt hotel just before we went for a swim to recover from a frenetic day, an incredible Japanese meal, and then post-dinner drinks and jazz on the very top floor.

This next photo is also from Tokyo. I took a number of photos on the day, and subsequently decided that they worked a lot better in black and white. I have a number of favourites, but this one of the roofs and signs along one of the traditional shopping streets near the Sensoji Shrine is the one that to me brings back the memories of a great day out.

This year marked 20 years since I graduated from university. Makes me feel old. To celebrate and commiserate some of my best friends from back then spent a few days in the ski resort of Zermatt in Switzerland. It was high summer, and each day was spent hiking in totally magnificent scenery. I saw my first Lammergeier, a punch the air moment, but everything was dominated by *the* mountain. The Matterhorn. Epic in scale and grandeur. If ever you want to feel small, this is somewhere you could go.

In October I surprised my Mum on her 70^th birthday in Venice (it is not just my generation that travels in my extended family). Her reaction when I appeared was to burst into tears, but after that initial shock we had a lovely day walking around this most photogenic of cities. I finished the day on the bridge at Academica trying to take a photo of one of Venice’s most famous views. I had none of gear but a not much of an idea, but a bit of trial and error later and I managed this in the blue hour.

Taken from my hotel on Funchal, the capital of Madeira, I find the sky mesmerising. This Atlantic jewel of an island is a favourite destination for a bit of winter sun and a profusion of sub-tropical plants. You can see an Araucaria in this photo, a tree I simply adore for its structure and form, but it is the sky I keep coming back to.

 

This is the Ghubrah bowl in Oman, a vast plain fully encircled by the Al Hajar mountains. Remote viillages dot the edges and it is reached through a narrow canyon on the northern side. The intent was to take photographs of birds but it took so long getting there that  the day had almost run out when we arrived. We took a few hasty photos of the empty solitude of it and then retraced our steps back to the coast.

I travel a lot, but I also spend a lot of time out on Wanstead Flats. It is one of my favourite places in the world. There are many things wrong with how it is managed and how it is used, but at the end of the day it remains a special place. Although the land owner decimated a lot of breeding habitat, and then a large grass fire finished the job, it still has the capacity to enchant and to have it on my doorstep is a huge bonus.

I took this looking towards Mam Tor in the Peak District. I was on a raptor-shooting trip to the Peak district, sorry I meant a family walking holiday in the Peak District, and this is one of my children being awed by the landscape. 

A late addition to my selection this year, this was taken only a few days ago at Glencoe. The steep hill behind this cottage is the famous Buachaille Etive Mor, one of the standout munros in Scotland. I was there for a two day photographic adventure with my son, and whilst the weather was very much against us nearly all the time, we still had a fun time, including wading out into the rivers to try and get images of rapids with the mountain in the background. This cottage just along the road to the foot of the ski centre I think shows the moody nature of the glen.