Horsing Around - Tips and Tricks for Horse Photography

OK not wildlife but domesticated animals are interesting too .. so here are our top tips for horse photography:

Be careful! They are large, strong creatures that often take great delight in spooking at nothing. If you walk around the back of them, keep out of range. Wear strong boots - they love 'accidentally' stepping on your toes.

If the horse's ears aren't straight up and forward "like Batman's", forget it! 'Donkey Ear' pictures are not popular with equestrians. To get the horse's attention, get an assistant to stand out of frame in front of the horse and do something like this, very, very gently:
- shake jangly objects (like keys)
- sweep the ground with a broom
- play with something that rustles
- wave a carrot at them

Flash photography. It's for the confident, brave and/or stupid. Personally I never bother, but some people do (see end of article.) At big events, the horses are probably able to take it without spooking. ("They evolved to avoid wolves, wildcats and bears et al, none of which resembles a flashgun.")

For showjumping, I find myself using settings around f/5.6 at 1/300th or faster on my 70-200. Experiment to see (a) what aperture gives you enough DoF, and (b) how slow you can go with the shutter speed. Pictures that show a little motion around the feet are good to have!

If you're not doing event photography, but you have other commercial intentions, get model releases even if your pictures don't include any humans!

For inspiration, have a look at Horses by Yann Arthus Bertrand. He's the guy that does the open-air photographic exhibitions of his 'Earth from the Air' work, but he is also a master at portraits of all kinds. He uses a massive canvas backdrop and lights with two flashes, the results are quite stunning. (We also recommend his book Being a Photographer which sounds pretentious, but isn't.)

Great new BBC show - Hands on Nature

Watched the first episode yesterday and it's brilliant. I only found it by chance as for some reason best known to those in BBC marketing, it doesn't seem to have had any publicity at all. Criminal! Similarly, it's on at a funny time - 3pm weekdays. It deserves a better slot than that. Anyway, hosted by BBC wildlife expert and photographer Chris Packham, it takes us on a tour of UK wildlife hotspots - a photographer's dream.

As Chris himself says: "Nature needs to be experienced first hand. You have to be able to touch it, see it, smell it and exercise your curiosity. And that's what Hands On Nature is all about."

We agree. In fact that's why we got into wildlife photography in the first place. By the time you read this, the series may be half way through but there's an excellent website to back it up where you can find even more information.

Here's the link to the Beeb's Hands on Nature website: Hands On Nature.

Wildfile - Mammoth UK Wildlife Links

That's mammoth as in huge. Wildfile.co.uk is a quite stupendous collection of links relating to UK wildlife and environmental websites. 41 different categories! The wildlife photography section is excellent. The whole site is a goldmine.

Interesting comment regarding David Bellamy on their site, "Climate change denier David Bellamy must go."

Check out the whole lot.

Puffins on Skomer

Off the Pembrokeshire coast are two islands, Skomer and Skokholm. Both are part of the Pembrokeshire Coast National Park, and form part of one of the most important seabird breeding areas in Europe. Manx Shearwaters, Storm Petrels, Wheatears, Oystercatchers, Meadow Pipits, Skylarks, Guillemots, Razorbills, Peregrines and Ravens all breed on these islands.

And so do Puffins, and it is these that are highlighted in Amateur Photographer magazine this week. Marine biologist Matt Doggett has a selection of great puffin shots published in the portfolio section. They are well worth a look! The shot above won the student category in the British Ecological Society's competition this year.

Skomer is definitely on our list to visit! (Good web sites: Skomer & Skokholm)

Wildlife Photographer of the Year: Portfolio 15

Just received this year's Wildlife Photographer of the Year book (Portfolio 15.) Guess what - it is stunning! Joe & Ann McDonald - favourites of mine - have three pictures in it this year. Bence Máté's pictures - he has the cover - are wonderful too. You can buy it for £15 at Amazon at the moment:



(one day I will figure out how to get this link in the right place...)

WildArena Seminars

WildArena still have a couple of places left for their Autumn seminars. The dates are:

Nature in Focus - Saturday 26th November and Saturday 3rd December.

In The Company of Wolves - Saturday 10th December

I have used WildArena before, on their Leopard and Birds of Prey days, and they were excellent. More details at www.wildarena.com.

A very Oddie autumn

No doubt about it, autumn is here - in fact it arrived rather too soon if Bill Oddie's Autumnwatch survey is anything to go by. And judging by the ice on the car this morning winter's not too far away either.

Anyway, photography wise, there's loads to snap away at. And who better to show us the way than the bearded one himself?

Check out his Autumnwatch section here and find the best of UK autumn wildlife - video clips the lot: Oddie's Autumn.

We have a responsibility

Following on with another of National Geographic's masters, Thomas D. Mangelsen. He makes a really valid point that many of us may not have considered. "A lot of young photographers just getting into wildlife photography don't quite make the link that they have a responsibility to protect what's out there," Tom says.

"We have the ability to make images that will teach people about endangered species and places needing protection, pictures that can even change minds, and we have a responsibility to do it. Sometimes I meet people who sort of skip that part. They want to take pictures because they think it's a cool thing to be a wildlife photographer. They don't quite understand they have the option to do more than just take pretty pictures."

You'll find the whole article here: Thomas D Mangelsen. (Another good guide - but not perfect - has been written by the Nature Group at the Royal Photographic Society, and can be found here.)

Michael Nichols

Excellent set of articles from a National Geographic photographer here - http://michaelnicknichols.com/article/.

All the articles are illustrated with Michael's excellent pictures (do not leave the site without checking out the tigers!) It really is an excellent resource.

Wildife Photographer of the Year 2005 Exhibition

From the Natural History Museum website, here are the details:

"The exhibition is in the Natural History Museum's Jerwood Gallery.

Find out how to get to the Museum.

Opening hours are

• Monday to Saturday 10.00 - 17.50
• Sunday 11.00 - 17.50
• Open on bank holidays.
• Closed 24-26 December.

Late night opening: From 28 October 2005 - 24 February 2006 the exhibition will be open on Fridays until 21.00. Find out more about Time Out After Hours."

Water Voles - hard to find - harder to photograph

Published by the Mammals Trust UK, The State of Britain's Mammals 2005 report covers the key themes of mammal conservation over the last year. Among this year's most notable findings is the description of the water vole as "seriously under threat". Alas I've not been lucky enough to see one in the wild, let alone photograph one. Not hard to see why when the report describes the water vole as "a contender for the UK's most rapidly declining mammal". A real shame.

You can download a free copy of the report here: The Report. And if you want some brilliant footage of wild British water voles, the fantastic Arkive is the place to go: Water Vole movies.

Find Wildlife with Wild Woods

Just found an excellent wildlife 'finder', provided by the Forestry Commission. With their web page, you can quickly find sites of interest close to your location. Give it a try - it's at the Wild Woods Homepage.

Epson P2000

As Vlad says in an earlier post, we really recommend Epson's P2000 Media Viewer/Storage device. I take mine everywhere and wouldn't be without it now. Just to have the re-assurance of being able to back up your CF cards in an instant, plus the ability to do a quick edit of what you've done in the field is brilliant. It also plays movies in .avi or .MP4 format. I've just discovered Handbrake (Mac only) which converts all your DVDs into said files in a whizz. So if the wildlife doesn't want to come out and play, I can sit back and watch The Office Series 1 which I've just converted.

In fact, if you don't want to take my word for it, one of the world's greatest wildlife photographers, Moose Peterson uses one. There can be no higher praise in my book. Check out his thoughts here: Moose's P2000 Review. You can find more from Epson themselves here: Epson P2000. Sometimes I think we're too kind advertising other people's products for free. Must see what we can do about review 'samples'. Did I mention I was thinking of trying out Canon's new 5D? : )

Howdy

Howdy

OK it's not from the UK .. but this is unbelievably great. Aleutian Fox - a photographer from Flickr - disappears for weeks at a time and always comes back with exceptional photos. This is one of his latest and greatest.

However, if you do fancy checking out the UK Otter scene, this is as good a place as any to get started UK Otters.

Paranoid Backup Strategy

It's worth being paranoid about your data. Michael on Luminous Landscape is even more paranoid than me - that's difficult - and has the mother of all backup strategies detailed here.

You might think it's going too far .. but what is your data worth?

Incidentally, we can recommend the Epson P2000 that Michael mentions - it's a great machine and has an excellent screen.

Pixmantec RawShooter Premium Thoughts

RawShooter Premium is on special offer for the rest of today, my experiences with it over the weekend have been good. I particularly like these features, most of which I think are new:

- nice cropping tool

- curves support

- card downloader which can work in the background - you can start viewing a slideshow part way through the copy and the new pictures copied over get tacked on the end of the slideshow (good for reviewing your stuff quickly)

- great hot pixel setting (zaps individual problem pixels painlessly)

I still need to look at these features, they sound promising:

- upsampling capability (doing it at the raw stage is a good idea!)

- view multiple images at same time (to find sharpest of a sequence etc)

I wish:

- ... I could find a way of doing basic white balance presets (cloudy, daylight etc) in a similar way to Adobe Camera Raw

All in all this program does most of what I need, I find some of the settings very harsh in their default mode, but that might just be a matter of taste. I personally do not sharpen unless I'm in the output stage, so I have found myself turning sharpness and detail extraction right down in RawShooter. That may be a matter of taste though...

In summary, I think this is an excellent program. I don't think I'll be chucking my copy of PhotoShop away - but I certainly won't be using Adobe Camera Raw as often.

Favourites from Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2005

I haven't bought the book yet - I don't think it's quite finished rolling off the presses - but these are my favourites so far from the Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2005 competition. The pictures link to their pages on the official site, which has the story behind each photograph.

Andy Rouse shows that unlike Charlie, Penguins DO Surf

Thorsten Milse produces a masterpiece proving rules are made to be broken

Sérgio Brant Rocha's picture does not look great at this size. But take my word for it, see it at A4 or bigger and you will be astonished. You can see the shape of each individual swift .. it's an astounding picture and shows just how much resolution there is on slide film.

Pixmantec RawShooter Premium Released

The new fully featured version of the popular RawShooter Essentials raw converter is on special offer until Monday - UK residents can have it for about £44.

Up until fairly recently I used PhotoShop CS2 for most raw conversion and Capture One sometimes for bulk conversion. Aboard Guideliner in August, David Leaver recommended RawShooter Essentials - a free program - and gave me a copy. Recently I've found myself using it more and more often, and RawShooter Premium may just have the extra features to make it my main raw converter.

Andy Rouse is involved with Pixmantec and he is pushing this software a lot - it looks like it's going to live up to the hype.

Get RawShooter Essentials (freeware) or RawShooter Premium (US$ 59 plus taxes, about 50 euros) from the Pixmantec website. Expect a review on here tomorrow!

Nikon Small World 2005

This is the image that won Nikon Small World 2005: awesome. See the gallery here.

Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2005: Results

The results are in for the BBC Wildlife Photographer of the Year Competition, 2005 - this is the winner. It's a peregrine chasing a huge flock of starlings, in Rome, Italy.

You can see all the winning, runner up and commended images from the competition here.

Science in Action

Nice to know that wildlife photographs can win in non-wildlife competitions.
This one was taken by Jim Greenfield. It's another kind of toothbrush - a tiny shrimp cleans the teeth of a bigger fish.

All the winners from 2005's Visions of Science.

Don't Write Off Digiscoping

Look back
Originally uploaded by sparkyfaisca.

I've heard plenty of people state that digiscoping results are often disappointing, and can't be compared to a good SLR/lens combination.

This guy on Flickr - sparkyfaisca - makes me question those statements. He takes the best digiscoped shots I've ever seen. They are quite phenomenal. The kit is listed on the photos but most of them seem to be taken with a Canon 350D attached to a spotting scope.

His photos on Flickr His web site

The Art of Sitting

I found an interesting article on Moose Peterson's site. He's always an advocate of showing the utmost consideration for wildlife. In his words, "meeting wildlife on their own terms most often rewards us with great photographs."

Something I've heard before from another great wildlife photographer, David Leaver, is "always leave before your subject has had enough of you!" David Leaver cruises the Hebrides for much of the year, and I'm sure the otters, basking sharks and minke whales can recognise the sound of his engine. He has a rapport with them - they know there is no need to fear his boat. You can apply the same principles to your local wildlife - it works!

The Art of Sitting by Moose Peterson

How to photograph 40 British species in a day!

The British Wildlife Centre in Surrey is a revelation. Over forty species of British mammals, birds and reptiles, all living in natural settings. As a wildlife photographer of any level, you'll appreciate just how difficult it can be to see these animals in the wild.

Here you can observe them up close, learn more about the challenges they face in the wild and through special photographic days, have your very own David Attenborough and the Mountain Gorilla moment as you get up close and personal.

We've tried it - can't recommend it highly enough.

The British Wildlife Centre ... give it a try

Why do some shots work and others don't? Enter The Edge.

Not U2's legendary guitarist, but a fascinating theory from renowned UK wildlife snapper, Niall Benvie. Much food for thought.

Niall Benvie's theory - The Edge

David Attenborough Wants Your Photos. Yes Yours!

"Over the past few decades a vast treasury of wildlife images has been steadily accumulating, yet no one has known its full extent - or its gaps - and no one has had a comprehensive way of gaining access to it. ARKive will put that right. It will become an invaluable tool for all concerned with the well-being of the natural world."

Sir David Attenborough
CH FRS

So, if you've dined out on Mother Nature, even made a few quid doing so, here's a chance for you to give a little back. And it's free. Happy days ...

The Arkive photo donation pages

Mike Lane's 'Where to Photograph Wildlife in Britain'

Pine Marten
Originally uploaded by vlad259.

Mike Lane's book 'Where to Photograph Wildlife in Britain' is an excellent resource for UK wildlife photographers. He has been compiling site guides since 1998 and the latest edition has 47 excellent sites, documented in detail.

Many different species are covered, including Pine Martens, Brown Hare, Grouse, Deer, Seals and Red Kites.

The book is available from Mike at his website www.nature-photography.co.uk.

[Picture: Pine Marten at Speyside Wildlife hide, Rothiemurchus Estate, Inverness-Shire]

Our Mission...

...to be a portal for all useful information relating to Wildlife and Nature Photography in the UK.