I have enjoyed
pottering around on my small inflatable boat with its electric outboard.
Silently cruising up rivers and estuaries has been fun, but not
productive. So far it has only resulted in one successful session
photographically and that was with black guillemots in Port Patrick
Harbour.
The idea that
wildlife if often more approachable by boat is a common one, but I think
false. It is like cars, you can get close to wildlife using a car when
they are used to cars being there. A boat in a place where boats do not
normally go scares the birds. This was very noticeable with some
white-headed ducks in Spain. In my boat on a small pool that did not
normally have boats I got no where near them, but on the banks I could get
almost close enough for photographs, because they were used to people
walking around. In the end I needed a hide to get pictures in the early
morning before the people arrived.
I shall hang onto
the boat for a little longer, but it has not been a great investment yet.
LAPTOP
FAILURE June 2008
I have been very
unlucky with laptops. On too many trips they have just failed to power up.
It has happened with three different machines. Having a working computer
is important to me not just for editing the days pictures, but getting my
emails too.
I have more than
once gone running to the nearest repair shop and altered my travel plans
while waiting for the technician to do his
stuff.
Last week it
happened again to my latest Vista laptop while up in Scotland. It was
dead. No sign of life on the mains or battery supply. The first repair
shop I found said it was beyond repair.
Fortunately I tried
a second shop, although it was a long drive into Inverness. They knew
better. Apparently if a laptop shows no sign of life you have to remove
the power supply and battery, then hold down the On switch for 30 seconds.
Then refit the battery or mains and press the On switch again and it
powers up.
This is the
procedure to reset a laptop. Any laptop! How come I did not know that.
Worse how come none of the repair shops I have ever been to with this
fault tried such a simple remedy. It could be they wanted to charge me
money for dismantling it, but I am more trusting than that. Maybe it is
not that well known.
It could well save
me a lot of problems in the future now I know.
EOS 1D
MK3 May 2008
I now have the 1Ds
Mk3, but only for 3 days.
It is sad that in
the days of film you could buy a £100 second hand camera body, fit it to a
600mm f4 lens, shoot on Sensia 100 film and get exactly the same quality
as a £1000 camera body. Spending more money on a camera did not buy better
quality images.
That is no longer
true. The £4600 1Ds Mk3 results in files that totally outshine the 1D Mk3
or my previous 1Ds Mk2 bodies. Money now buys quality, which spoils my
previous beliefs in photography.
I am very pleased
with the few pictures I have taken so far. 800 iso could well become the
normal with this camera and at 1600 iso I do not see the need to run Neat
Image to reduce the noise.
However money does
not produce good pictures (just gives good image quality). You still have
to get up at 0400 hrs everyday and stay out until dark at this time of
year. Unless I could start to pay someone to do that for me!
EOS 1D
MK3 April 2008
Two months into
using the EOS 1d Mk3 and it has been consigned to be my reserve camera. I
like a lot of the features and especially the great reduction in dust on
the sensor, but the files just do not compare to my IDs Mk2 bodies. I keep
grabbing the 1Ds bodies from my bag every time now. It is hard to define
the difference. The 1Ds files just ooze quality.
I can't afford it
and don't want the large files, but I shall have to buy a 1Ds Mk3. If I
shoot everything very small in the frame and crop all the pictures perhaps
I can reduce the overall size of my Tif files. It will certainly speed up
my workflow by solving the dust issue.
EOS 1D
MK3 and Auto ISO March 2008
I have not heard
anybody speak about the ability of the EOS 1D MK3 to auto ISO. The manual
does not make much of a fuss about it and perhaps many do not realise it
can. Set custom function 1.8 to 2 and the ISO will automatically change to
give the correct exposure if it is impossible any other way.
I have always
photographed in AV mode so for flight photography I open up the
aperture wide and the fastest shutter speed possible is available.
However, especially with digital, the shutter speed may be far faster than
is actually needed to freeze the bird and valuable depth of field missed
because you could have closed down the aperture.
I was reluctant to
use TV mode, giving priority to the shutter speed, because once the
aperture opened up fully it had no where else to go and pictures would be
underexposed if the light dropped. This could not happen in AV mode as the
shutter speed would just go slower and slower.
Now I am
experimenting with shooting in TV mode. I set the shutter speed to what I
feel I need for each situation and the aperture changes first, followed by
the ISO increasing automatically if it needs to.
It is working okay,
but my brain is struggling to cope with the concept after so many years of
shooting AV.
DxO
Optics Pro 5 (Feb 2008)
My photography started off with
Olympus Om1 camera bodies, probably the most popular for wildlife workers
at the time and manual exposure. Not long after the Om2 was announced with
auto exposure. I was told not to bother with it. Auto exposure could never
work they said, you need to be “in control” of exposure and meter
manually.
I wanted auto exposure.
About the same time powerwinders
came into fashion or was it they became affordable. They screwed onto the
base of the camera and added bulk and weight. Photographers argued you did
not need one as it was possible to wind on manually almost as fast (2.5
frames per second) and it kept you “in control”. When you needed to be
quiet you could wind on slowly.
I wanted autowind.
When autofocus came into being
they said it could never work. Better to focus manually then you could
focus on the birds eye and be “in control”.
I wanted autofocus.
With Raw converters I keep hearing
this “in control” as the reason for using the more expensive sophisticated
software. I still use Breezebrowser which has hardly any settings to mess
with and is very simple. It is not quite automatic, but getting there.
However, I have been expecting an
auto raw converter for some time and just found one.
DxO Optics
Pro 5 Raw converter takes account of what lens and camera body
was used and adjusts levels for you automatically. I have been trying it
out and it certainly speeds things up. So far however the results are not
as good as Breezebrowser. The grain in the finished Tif files are not as
smooth. However it is early days and there are other settings I can try
adjusting that might improve the results.
It is an interesting concept and
like autoexposure, autowind and autofocus I think it will catch on. The
future will see auto raw conversion.
Travel
Photography (Jan 2008)
I find statistics fascinating, but
this is one I don’t keep so I am making the figures up to reflect what I
feel is about right. I photograph birds, mammals or other wildlife 99% of
the time. The remaining 1% could be classed as landscape or travel
photography. That 1% however, probably makes up about 5% of my picture
sales. I really should do more.
Search
Engines (Dec 2007)
Search engines are powerful
things. There was a time when if you typed “yellowhammer picture” into
Google my pictures would appear amongst the first 10 hits. Picture agency
sites never appeared, I assumed because their dynamic web pages (means
they are temporary web pages that appear in response to a request from
their own internal search engine) could not be indexed by Google.
Then Google lost my pictures as a
result of my changing folders around. It took over a year to get them back
in the results, but rarely do I get a high ranking now. On the other hand
picture agencies have solved the problem and they appear high in the
rankings.
The result has been a sharp drop
off in direct picture sales from my site. For years the photographic bean
bags I sell usually appeared as the first hit in Google for most relevant
search terms. Five weeks ago my beanbags disappeared from Google and sales
have collapsed. Understanding what drives search engines is a full time
job, but it shows how important it is to get it right. I have just made
some changes, now I must await Googles pleasure.
Faster
and Bigger (Nov 2007)
It has been a while since I
upgraded my computer, but finally I have. A quad core processor with 4 Gb
of memory and 4 x 1 Tb hard drives. It certainly goes faster and that is
important to me. I spend too much time on the computer and the faster it
goes the quicker I can get done and out taking pictures again.
Hard drives are still a problem
though. They need to get bigger faster. I now have 750 Gb of master
pictures despite heavy editing. I then have two external disk drive copies
of this. To be able to keep all the pictures in one place I hope those 1
Tb drives reach 10 Tb quickly.
What will be the next big money making venture in wildlife photography? No
doubt tour leading is one. Not enough companies are offering suitable trips to
supply the vast numbers of photographers wanting to photograph wildlife.
But another service that is almost untouched would be to offer a web site
service like Alamy to individuals. I am
surprised someone is not already doing so. Instead of sharing the Alamy site
with others only your pictures would be present and it would offer downloading
and online sales. There are web packages that do the job, but none are as simple
to use as Alamy. Alamys strength is that none computer experts can load their
pictures onto it quickly and easily. It is simple and well presented.
Anyone can do it.
As soon as someone matches it they will make a fortune selling the package.
As I do not own a digital projector I have not had been able to play around
with one, but I have done several shows using other peoples, mainly at camera
clubs. With models offering the standard resolution of 1024 x 768, it is
recommended that the file be set to that size in pixels. What difference does it
make? Is it worth worrying about? Nobody ever convinced me either way.
I finally got the chance to find out. I took a picture and created three
different sizes of it starting at 1024 and going upwards. I then dissolved
these into one another, using the software Picturestoexe, as a continuous loop.
By staring hard at the projected image it was possible to see a difference. The
picture set to 1024 was sharper, but it was only just visible. Without the
immediate comparison I doubt anyone would notice. I have concluded it is best to
do so, but hardly vital.
I recently ran out of CD cases so decided to throw away some old disks
containing my first ever slide scans. These would be from the late 1990's I
guess and the files had long been copied across to hard drives so were safe.
However, I thought I might as well try and see if I could read them as a test.
It confirmed what I have long been saying about CD's and DVD's. They are not
suitable for long term storage. Some I could not read at all and others only
allowed a few pictures to be opened. Amongst these disks were Kodak Gold types
and they were no better.
Although I have now retired from the speaking circuit I still do occasional
presentations using digital images. I have been using
Picturestoexe software for this and been
very impressed with it. However I recently saw a far more advanced AV show,
which included zooms and pans of the images. It was very well done. So I have
now invested in Proshow Gold to have a go
myself. Although the software is fairly simple to use and intuitive I don't
think it will be easy to do. A good AV show is going to be a long learning
curve.
UPDATE. Just as I bought Proshow Gold, Picturestoexe updated its software to
version 5 and the upgrade is free to owners of the previous generation. I have
ended up using Picturestoexe. It still remains fairly simple to use and the
zooms, pans and general pictures are much smoother and sharper than Proshow. The
only weekness with the program is the help menus, which are not so much poor as
absent.
I have been looking into buying a boat for some time now and finally ended up
with a small semi-rigid dingy and outboard. It is a subject I know little about,
but feel there must be new pictures out there.
After several unsuccessful attempts to launch it I finally managed a short
run up and down a Welsh estuary. No cameras on board until I had more faith in
my abilities. I quickly decided I had made a mistake in buying this particular
boat.
It takes too long to launch. As much as an hour and the same to recover. I
need something much quicker, as it will normally be used in response to
something I have just seen. Then the outboard was far to noisy and I got
nowhere near the red-breasted merganser and young I was interested in. I
need a silent electric outboard and from what I have learnt they are very
advanced today. The latest will do up to 11 KM on internal batteries in the
shaft of the outboard.
If I can sell it for the same as I paid then it has not been too expansive a
lesson and I now know what I want. The mergansers would have been a great
picture.
I recently purchased a new product. It is a small remote control device that
fits easily into a pocket of my camera bag and adds no weight or bulk. It only
works over a short distance, but it is now always with me. In the past I have
often wished I had my radio remote control available, but it is too heavy to
carry routinely. This is always in my bag. Only £50 too.
I am constantly telling people
that they should be carrying two storage devices with them on trips as one
is too risky. Having just been on a trip with a total of 12 photographers
I can report two had problems with storage devices and one lost his (me,
can’t explain how). Each of us had another device to carry on with.
Without a backup the trip could have been very difficult. There are some
very cheap, light ones available and they are worth it.
Flying with warm winter clothing creates even more weight
and bulk problems in already overloaded baggage. This winter I have been to
several cold places and have been delighted with the performance of my snugpak
suit. Lightweight and compressing down into a very small package it has kept me
incredibly warm in very cold temperatures. The material is water resistant and
has performed well when lying down in dirty snowy conditions. You need the bib
and brace trousers as well as the jacket. Highly recommended. See
www.snugpak.com.
I meet a lot of photographers who want to make there living from wildlife
photography and I am usually fairly negative about their prospects. Here are the
10 most likely things I will advise to someone asking how to make a living
as a professional wildlife photographer.
1) Start off rich and be prepared to end up poor.
2) Avoid the hotspots for wildlife photography. If other photographers
are going there stay away.
3) Photograph common British wildlife, not exotic foreign stuff.
4) If you can write, do so. If you can't, learn how to.
5) Get into the lecturing circuit. It is the one area there is a shortage of
photographers, because few enjoy standing in front of an audience. If you can
learn to do it well you will be in big demand. You are only nervous for the
first 10 years then its a gets easier.
6) Diversify. The more legs you have on your stool the better when it comes
to supporting yourself financially. Writing, lecturing, tour leading, falconry
shoots are obvious routes to go, but try and find something new that nobody has
tried yet.
7) Photograph what is newsworthy. Something that is becoming under threat,
becoming a pest, expanding rapidly, almost extinct or a new breeding project
started. The magazines and newspaper will be full of it for years so make it a
photographic project.
8) There are lots of pictures about of wood mice and bank voles. Why? Because
they are easy. The are the first species to enter a trap, easy to keep alive and
pose well for the camera. Don't do the easy. Do the shrews and short tailed vole
instead. Much more difficult and far fewer pictures about. The picture libraries
will be interested if you can provide something most can't.
9) Whether you enjoy captive wildlife photography or not you need to do it as
in the long run it is cheaper than photographing in the wild. Just be honest
about what you have done.
10) Start off rich and be prepared to end up poor.
What I want for Christmas is a camera that will take an image
5 seconds before I press the button. Sounds far fetched. Well it already exists!
At least it does in the wildlife film making industry. I don't
know exactly how it works so this next bit is my speculation. Once turned on,
but not actually filming, the camera must record constantly to a 5 second loop
on hard disk or perhaps a flash card. After 5 seconds it starts to overwrite
itself.
When the cameraman presses the button to start filming and
recording to tape, perhaps as a bird takes off, the 5 second loop is added to
the beginning of the footage capturing the bird 5 seconds before it takes to the
air.
Sounds simple. Can't think why it has taken so long to
develop. When will it be applied to still cameras?
I began to suspect the sharpness of one of my EOS 1ds MK2
camera bodies. Nothing was sharp and I could even see this on the built in
screen viewer. I tested it by placing an A5 sized book at a slight angle to
the camera (35%). This meant the right hand side of the book was about 1/2" in
front of the left hand edge. I took three pictures, first focused on the right
hand column of text, then the middle and finally the left hand column.
I used the 600mm lens on a tripod at f4 so depth of field was
very limited. The result was very positive. Each time the focus was to the left
of where I focused. I.E. behind the point it should have focused on. I repeated
the test three times with the same result and tested my other 1ds MK2 body which
was fine.
Canon fixed the problem within a week, but the worry is how
did it happen. Can the focus shift over time or did it get a knock?
I found out a few days later when the same body fell off the
tripod. It was not a high fall and the ground was soft mud. A film camera would
have been fine, but my digital body was now focusing about 1 foot behind the
focus point. Back to Canon again. Every time a digital body gets a knock do we
have to test the focus?
One of the remarkable features of digital photography is how
sharp the pictures appear on a computer screen. Or at least they do at fast
shutter speeds. Drop down to less than 1/125th of a second however and the
opposite is true.
With film I would regularly shoot birds at speeds down to
1/15th and get them sharp. I can't achieve this with digital. In dull light I am
struggling to get sharp pictures unless I push up the ISO to unacceptable
levels.
One solution with fairly static subjects is to use the mirror
lock up. Not a feature I have used much before, but one I keep trying with some
success. After composing and focusing on the subject I use a cable release to
expose the picture. One press of the button locks up the mirror and after
pausing for 1 second I press it again to take the picture. Usually I look along
the top of the lens to see if the bird is posing correctly at the time of
exposure. I also turn the image stabiliser off.
It is working. I can see a difference, but it is not a perfect
solution with bird photography.
I would like to see an Auto-ISO mode on the next Canon
cameras. This would mean I set the shutter speed and aperture and the
camera sets the ISO to give the correct exposure. I understand this feature is
on the latest Nikon models and there are many situations it would be very
useful.
I see Canon have announced an anti dust system, which will
help reduce dust on the sensor, but not eliminate it completely. It is available
on the 400D.
There is a lot of money around in wildlife photography.
Photographers (most unlikely professional) seem to able to spend vast amounts on
trips and paid for wildlife photography, such as renting out hides. I have just
heard of a new development.
It is only a rumour. I have not spoke to the original source
of the story, but someone wanted to rent out a hide for golden eagles and then
pay for exclusive use of that hide all winter to prevent other photographers
renting it and getting the same picture.
Every now and then I get a reminder of inflation and how much
more everything costs. There is however, one item that remains constant. The
amount publishers pay for pictures. Looking through my spreadsheets of picture
sales I seem to get about the same per picture today as when I started.
That must reflect the numbers of people taking pictures and
competing for sales. It has never been easy making money at wildlife
photography and it is not getting easier. Roll on my pension.
Flying with camera equipment is getting easier and easier. More airlines
are removing restrictions on the weight of cabin luggage and only
insisting that bags should not be beyond a certain size. It is a long time
since I have had any hassle at all.
Now that I own a 500mm F4 lens as well as a 600mm I take the 500mm when
flying. This easily fits inside a Lowepro bag that is small enough for
cabin luggage and I can get almost all my other gear in it as well.
Impossible with the 600mm. My photo jacket pockets no longer have to be
stuffed with film so are available for lenses and camera bodies should I
need too. I try and keep them empty so that should anyone complain about
my photo bag I could quickly transfer stuff into my pockets.
On top of that most airlines also allow a laptop as hand luggage too.
Although my laptop is quite large (17”) I have bought a padded slip on
cover from PC World that seems to give very good protection without being
bulky.
On my last flight I felt more comfortable with the whole process of
getting my equipment on board than ever before. If only they could reduce
the queuing, keep to the schedule, give more seat space and get my hold
luggage to the same airport as me I would enjoy flying a lot more.
UPDATE Ooops.
I spoke too soon. A few days after I wrote this another terror
alert made flying with cameras more difficult than ever.
I have sold my campervan and gone back to a towing caravan.
Campervans are very popular with wildlife photographers and I have owned at
least 6 over the years, whereas this is my 3rd caravan. It is not a question of
which is best, they both have advantages and disadvantages. Caravans are best
when working in one area and campers best when touring around.
With my caravan I am far more prone to leaving it on one site
for weeks on end, whereas with a camper I would move on after just a few days
and rarely stay on official camp sites.
Today the big advantage of camp sites is they nearly all offer
electric hookups. A valuable commodity in the days of digital photography.
My caravan positively glows of a night. On one table I have my desktop with a
new flat panel monitor (to save space), at the other end is my laptop with a 3G
card so as I can get emails everywhere. Inbetween is another flat screen panel
receiving satellite TV. Along with other leds indicating charging batteries,
external disk drives, PDA's and mobile phone it all looks incredibly hightech.
With hot and cold running water, a large fridge and oven it is
the most comfortable way of travelling I have experienced. I have all my digital
images with me and am making picture submissions as I go.
It only leaves one question. Why do I still own a house?
It has been many years since I owned a right angled finder. In
fact it was in my Olympus days. It was one of those useful accessories that
never got used very much, so as I have swopped equipment over the years I have
never replaced it.
Finally I have. Sort of. I have gone for the Zigview-R viewer
which I have been looking at for ages and waiting for someone I know to buy one
and tell me what they are like. Nobody has, so at the end of the financial year
I reduced my tax bill with a speculative buy.
It's a very complicated beast for a right angled finder and I
have yet to wade through the instructions. However I have used it for its main
purpose of looking through the viewfinder from above so as to avoid getting on
the floor for low angled photography. It comes with various adaptors for
different cameras, which have to be screwed in place. When switched on an image
appears of the view through the viewfinder.
I find the image difficult to see in full
daylight and there is no way you can tell if the subject is in focus. The screen
resolution is not sharp enough for that. It is possible to increase the
brightness of the screen and to zoom in, but both are slow to do and do not
totally solve the problem.
Inside a hide it is a different matter as the picture is
clearer in the subdued light. I was recently doing some black grouse and
intended lying down on the floor of the hide at some point. Never an easy
manoeuvre within the confines of a small canvas hide. Instead I rested the lens
on a bean bag on the floor of the hide, pushed its end out under the canvas and
looked at the image from normal sitting height on my stool. My eye was about 2'
away from the viewer.
It was still impossible to judge focus so I relied on the
camera to get it right, but it was very easy to follow the birds and a lot more
comfy than getting down on the floor. I have also used it on very muddy beaches
with great success.
I think for low angled flower photography the traditional
right angled finder would be much better for detailed checking of the focus, but
for birds and other wildlife the Zigview has its place. I am looking forward to
getting to grips with its other fancy features like motion detection, where it
takes a picture automatically when a subject comes into the frame.
I recently sat in someone else's canvas hide during the spell
of strong icy winds we have had. I was not looking forward to it. Hides blow
about in the wind making for a miserable experience and with the temperature
being so low I was going to suffer. Wooden hides are much better in windy
conditions.
However I was pleasantly surprised. His hide was very old, but
made of a very heavy tarpaulin canvas that did not blow about in the wind at
all. The material was so heavy and stiff it was like sitting in a wooden hide
and I was well protected from the weather. He had had ten made up
specially years ago by a tent manufacturer and this was the last one to survive.
I must try and find some suitable canvas and make one up for
myself. Not something I would want to walk far with, but when the car is close
enough it appears a heavy hide is worth its weight.
There is something strange going on. I am hearing of both Nikon
and Canon users complaining their cameras are not giving sharp pictures and
being told to send them in for calibration. Canon technicians can now apparently
match cameras and lenses. Send them a 500mm and a body and they will match the
two. Eos 20D bodies are particularly prone to being out I am told.
It leads to an obvious question. If they match the lens to one
body, what happens when another body is put on?
Why did I never hear of this with film bodies? Over the years I
know of several photographers who felt their 500mm lens was not quite in focus
and sent them back to Canon, but they would be told there was nothing wrong. I
never heard of lens to body calibration until very recently.
If anyone can throw any light on this I would be happy to hear
it. I have looked on a few forums without success.
One of my hopes for digital was that I would finally get to
master fill in flash. Straight flash I have no problem with. Cameras will get
that right automatically, but fill in is still a mystery. By being able to see
my results straight away I hoped to get to the bottom of it.
In a way I have, but only by proving to myself that there is no
fool proof method where it works every time. No wonder I have struggled on film
all these years.
I have settled on a best working practice. Firstly I set the
shutter speed to its maximum sync speed, which is 1/250th on my bodies. That
cuts out the ghosting or second image that is so often a problem with wildlife
at slower speeds. Then with the camera on manual exposure I adjust the aperture
until the ambient light is about 2-3 stops underexposed. This means I get a dark
background, but not too nocturnal. Then I leave the flash to light up the
subject. This is using a Canon EOS 1ds Mk2 and a Speedlite 580 flashgun. The
flash exposure is automatic with the camera on manual.
This gives me a good starting point, but the result is variable
so I have to look at the image and adjust from there. I usually find myself
wishing for a bigger viewing screen at this point. I am getting my best results
like this, but could do with greater consistency. In July I will be working in
the rain forest of Brazil again and will be doing almost all flash work. I would
not have attempted it on film.
Having developed my digital workflow to a satisfactory speed I
next needed to keep a track of which pictures I was sending where. I have a
computer database of my slides going back 25 years. Each slide has a unique
number and I can see where it has been and which picture library has what. I
need the same for digital files.
There are a number of programmes that do this. Digital image
asset managers seems to be the generic term and Extensis and IMatch are probably
the most well known products.
With the steep digital learning curve I have been through I was
not really in the mood to experiment and trial them all, but I think I got
lucky. I initially tried
ACDSee photo 8
and it seems to do everything I want. Perhaps it does not quite conform to my
requirement of being "intuitive", but I very much doubt the others do either.
With software this complex it probably always takes a while to get used to them.
After several months of use I seem to have mastered it and finding it a great
tool.
I can view all the picture I have taken day by day or month by
month. I can keep a track of which shots I have sent to each library and which
they have kept. I can view by species or by the library I have sent pictures to.
It seems to do most things, but so far I can't find a way of
displaying pictures that I have failed to send anywhere yet. That would be
useful to sort out my backlog. If they are not out there, they will not sell.
Getting through airports has become so much easier now I no
longer have to worry about carrying film through as hand luggage, but on my last
flight I hit a new problem. My sensor cleaning fluid was confiscated on the way
home. It's inflammable apparently and you can't take it on a flight either in
the hold or as hand luggage.
Although I get less dust problems on sensors since I stopped
using a blower brush I still need to clean them on a trip. I don't take my
Invisible Dust Brush as I have always assumed it was not possible to carry an
aerosol of compressed air and simply used swabs and cleaning fluid. I need to
look into a solution before the next flight.
Lecturing is a hard way to make a living, but it can be done. Get
it right and it is possible to survive from giving talks alone, without
the need to sell pictures to publications. To do it would involve getting
involved in adult education classes and day time talks, as well as evening
events. Add in a few day seminars on wildlife photography and the money would
roll in.
It also needs suitable stock to sell off the table after the
presentation, such as cards, bookmarks and mounted prints, etc.
However, it is hard and I would not want to do it. I have
compromised by selling pictures and doing the lecturing circuit for a limited
part of the year. For 12 years now I have travelled out to camera groups and
natural history societies. Each year it gets more difficult. Traffic is the
problem, forcing me to start out earlier and earlier. This year is terrible and
a midday start for an evening talk becoming normal. Whichever way you travel out
of Birmingham the motorways are blocked. It is getting impossible or at least
not worth the effort to get there.
I am going to have to reduce the numbers of talks I am doing and
the best way to do that is to raise my prices to discourage clubs from booking
me. What I need to do then is find a replacement for the income I am going to
lose at a time when picture libraries are more or less uniformly reporting lower
sales of published pictures. Still looking for the young, rich wife really.
Wildlife photography has changed so much in recent years. Not only is the
equipment we use so radically different, but the “paid for” or captive
wildlife photography is expanding rapidly. I was thinking about it at the
Rutland British Birdwatching Fair over the weekend. A large proportion of
the exhibiters are travel companies and more and more of them are offering
photography packages. Scandinavia has perhaps been at the forefront of it
and Eastern Europe is catching up.
It
is now possible to rent hides in Europe for white tailed eagles, golden
eagles, imperial eagles, vultures, lammergeier, goshawks, lesser kestrels, red
throated and black throated divers, black grouse, capercaillie, cranes, red
squirrels, hen harriers, ospreys, bustards and brown bears to name just a
few.
North America has for a long time provided a whole range of captive
animals for photographers and is now renting hides too. Texas has a whole
chain of ranches where hides at feeders designed for photographers have
been set up. You can do a tour from one ranch to the next.
Wildlife photography has never been easier and hence the standards keep
rising. In the past I have avoided the “paid for” wildlife photography.
Firstly because I could not afford it and secondly because the most
enjoyable aspect of my photography is the field work. I love finding my
own sites and preparing them for photography. It never felt the same if
someone set it up for me.
Today I do find myself doing more “paid for” photography and for the
opposite reasons. I can now afford it and I guess I am slowing down a
little with age. The foot slogging across moors looking for suitable
photography is becoming harder.
Although I don’t use Windows Explorer to view my pictures often, there
have been occasions when I have wanted to look at thumbnails of RAW images
and been frustrated that they do not appear. TIF and JPG files can be
viewed as images, but not RAW files.
There were some none Microsoft downloads available that solved this and I
tried a couple, but they did not work properly. Recently however Microsoft
has released it’s own update.
It’s a small
improvement that helps speeds up the process of copying files, when you
just want to check what the actual picture is.
The Visible Dust system mentioned below worked well on dust, but
after a while some marks on the sensor became more stubborn and I was forced to
try the swabs and special cleaning fluid. I was a bit nervous of pressing onto
the sensor at first, but it seemed to do no harm. However it didn't clean it
very well either. The muck gets pushed around rather than removed.
Because the Canon EOS1ds Mk2 is a full chip camera there is no
border around the sensor. It fills the recessed area from edge to edge. I have
looked at the sensors on other cameras and they have a border edge around them.
When cleaning with a swab the muck would be pushed onto this border and out of
harms way. With the 1ds Mk2 the muck stays in the corners or edges.
I have tried it several times now, but it is far from perfect. I
end up with marks on the edges of the sensor everytime.
Interestingly my 2nd EOS1ds Mk2 body arrived today and brand new,
straight from the packet, I tested it by shooting at f16 against a plain sky. The
sensor was just as dirty as my first body. I give up. I guess I am expecting too
much. If Canon send them out new
like this then dust on the sensor is
something we are stuck with for the time being.
I hope they solve soon. As I am shooting with my lens wide open
most of the time this reduces the effect of the dust. At F16 it shows up far
worse, so I pity landscape photographers who will be shooting with the lens
closed down more often. Other than never removing the lens I am not sure how
they cope.
After a few months of
shooting digitally I have greatly improved on my workflow. If it were not
for the backlog of slides still being sorted I would be right upto date on
my files. I can edit and sort them very quickly now.
I have just speeded
the process up even further by using the
Visible Dust
Brush. There are no
UK distributors for this product as yet, so I bought it off the web and
had it shipped over from Canada. To look at, it seems like any ordinary
soft brush, but it is specially formulated not to harm sensors and to have
anti-static properties. First you spray it with ordinary compressed air,
sold for dedusting negatives etc, for 20 seconds. Then a quick wipe of the
sensor with the brush and all the dust is gone. I am very impressed so far
and it means I am no longer having to waste time dedusting my images with
the healing tool in Photoshop. They are spotless.
I have not yet tried
the other method, using swipes and cleaning fluid. I have bought them, but
it seems a lot more trouble and risk than using the Visible Dust system,
so I am keeping it in reserve for any stubborn marks. Visible Dust should
be cheaper too as the brush can be re-used. It is certainly quick and
whenever I have a single speck of dust showing on my images I shall not
hesitate to clean the sensor.
I am always very impressed when I hear stories of the after sales
service offered by Lowepro camera bags. More photographers use them than any
other and they are extremely well built. The warranty states that should a zip
break (or any other part), they will repair or replace the bag no matter how old
it is. I don't think many faults occur, but I have heard they do just that with
out any quibbling.
Recently I lost all the inner dividers for my Photo Trekker (not
saying how) and after one quick email to them asking if I could buy replacements
they arrived in the post free of charge.
Excellent company.
I have just got around to using my Epson P-2000 storage device.
No where in the advertising material and no where in the instruction book can I
find mention of the fact it does not allow zooming in on RAW images.
What a waste of space.
It does point this out in some of the reviews I have gone back
and re-read, but I missed it the first time. It should be headline news in any
review, not tucked away at the bottom. My opening sentence would be "Don't buy
this device, it will not allow zooming in on RAW images".
What are Epson thinking of? Never mind the high quality of the
screen and ease of use, if I can't zoom in on a picture to check for sharpness I
might as well not look at all.
A
New Years prediction is that we will all know someone who will lose all their digital
pictures in 2005. It’s got to happen. So many are shooting digitally
and we all have a big learning curve to go through on storage and backing
up. It is more difficult than it sounds.
I
have a computer background, but am finding it difficult to keep a track of
all my files and worry my data is insecure. I have a master copy of all my
pictures on an internal 300Gb disk and two external 300Gb USB drives that
mirror the master. I backup using a program called
Handy Backups 4.5. It only backs up a
file if it is new or has been changed since the last backup (incremental
backup). Over
Christmas however, I had to reinstall Windows XP and all my software. To
my horror when I next ran Handy Backups it started over writing all of my
files on the mirrored disks from the master. If one of the master files
was corrupt, it would overwrite the good copy. I stopped it, before it
had gone too far, but could not find out why it was happening. In the
restore it had lost a record of what it had previously backed up. Before I
could let it continue I had to run a routine that would open every picture
on the master disk to check they were okay. Then I ran Handy Backup to get
everything in sync again, letting it overwrite each file.
I
keep the Raw and 16 bit Tif cleaned file of each digital image so the
master disk is already half full and by the end of 2005 I expect I will
need another set of 3 disks.
If
a burglar ever broke into my house my slide filing cabinets would not hold
much interest to him, but the computer and all its peripherals would be a
prime target. The computer can be replaced, but not the files. This means
I need to buy another disk and store it at a friends house, updating it every few months or so. I already do that with
data on a DVD (such as spreadsheets, databases and word documents), but
need to do the same with pictures. If I don’t I could be the person who I
am predicting will lose a lifetimes collection of digital images.
I keep asking friends
about their digital workflow and getting blank looks. Few seem to
understand what I am talking about. This is surprising, as without the
cost of film, digital photographers are clicking away like never before
and it must be taking hours, days or even weeks to view and edit them
all.
For me it is the
opposite. I take fewer pictures digitally as I do not need the vast amount
of copies I used to shoot with slide film. Now I only need one good
picture and can stop. That is saving me a lot of time in the first place.
It could take days in a hide to get several rolls of film of a bird. Now I
get one good one, view it, decide if it's okay and pack up.
Even so after a trip
abroad it takes a while to deal with them all. I start off by copying the
RAW files to one folder. Then I use
BreezeBrowser
to view them in its High Quality mode. BreezeBrowser is the fastest software I
have tried for viewing thumbnails. It presents them almost instantly. Why
is Windows Explorer so slow to do this?
BreezeBrowser also
display a large image which is big enough to be able to do a first edit.
Anything that is obviously poor can be deleted. Then I use the Batch
Rename feature to change the file names to “Little grebe 10” etc. This
groups pictures of the same species together in alphabetic order.
Then I do Control Q to
take Breezebrowser out of High Quality mode. After that it is very quick
to zoom each picture to 100% to check sharpness. Once down to the minimum
amount of pictures I convert them all to TIF files automatically. The few
that need
reconverting manually I do in Photoshop CS.
The pictures then get
filed on the master picture disk (300Gb) in folders divided into
alphabetical order. There are two copies of this disk on external Maxtor
300Gb USB drives and I use
Handy Backup to
ensure the copies are up to date automatically. It’s a wonderful bit of
software and very cheap.
I finally got around to buying a digital camera, but
not the one I wanted. I was trying for ages to get a second hand Canon EOS
1DS off Ebay, but many were very suspicious looking so I would not bid. My
rule of thumb is to ask the seller if I can collect the camera in person
and pay cash should I win the auction. If they say no to that, forget it. When I did bid prices just
seemed to go sky high, almost as much as you can buy them new.
So I gave that up and settled on the newer EOS 1D Mk2
from Jessops. It will do me until the EOS 1DS MK2 comes out. It was
announced 3 weeks after I got the 1D Mk2, but it could be a long time before
we see it in the shops.
I managed to read the instruction book before flying
out to Brazil and took it with me, along with my laptop. I am forcing
myself to shoot film first and then digital. I still need the slides, too many publishers and agencies
still prefer film. Having a digital
camera
will save me having to scan everything, which I am fed up
with doing, but it has bought a new chore.
When working in a hot country like Brazil the heat saps
your energy and the long restful evenings in hotel rooms can
be a bit boring, but were appreciated. I used to get plenty of rest and
could go to bed early ready for a dawn rise.
Not any more. I spent entire evenings working on the
laptop, sorting and editing pictures. If I didn’t do it then, it had to be
done at home, but it makes for a long and tiring day.
Once I am familiar with it all, perhaps I will speed up, but I can see
foreign trips will never being the same again.
I have recently been on the selectors panel for a
major international exhibition and although the number of slides entered was up,
the standard was way down. The only reason that comes to mind is so many people
are shooting digital and don't have the slides to enter.
Some of the poorer images, with odd colours, may
have been failed attempts to convert digital files to slide. If so they don't
have the punch of original tranies yet.
If you want to do well in the slide section of
the exhibition world of club photography this is the time to do it. There is
less competition.
I love technology. I’m addicted to it and
waste hours fiddling and configuring devices that I believe will
eventually save me time. The next car I buy will need a bigger dashboard
if I add any more kit. There is already the speed camera/radar unit that
allows me to drive faster between speed traps. Next to that is the hands
free mobile phone so that I can make calls that would otherwise have to
wait until I get home. The latest gizmo is a GPS system that takes me home
by the fastest route. It displays a map and has instructions in a sexy
female voice that I've nicknamed Heather. She's the first women in my life
who knows her left from her right! Marvellous.
The GPS is also a personal organiser that
fits in my pocket and in an instance gives me access to my diary, address
book etc. In theory it has WiFi capability too so I can access my emails
on the move, but this technology has beaten me so far.
Likewise home is fully equipped with WiFi
so when I get it working I can walk around the house with my laptop
wirelessly accessing my broadband connection. Other people want a TV in
their kitchen, I want my laptop!
Broadband is a joy to use, not so much
because of the speed, but because it is permanently connected. The web
becomes a part of your computer and an essential research tool for
wildlife photography.
Someone mentioned to me recently that they
had seen a TV program showing very tame roe deer living in the middle of a
city. Using www.google.com I searched
for “roe deer city park” and found it on the first page of results. The
web page was rather large so I had to use the FIND option to locate what I
was after. Now I had the name of the park and by typing that into Google
was able to find out where it was. Two days later I was photographing the
tamest roe deer in the UK.
I have done the same with “mistle thrush
traffic light Manchester” to find the location of a pair nesting in a stop
light I had heard about. If you want to know about photographing white
tailed sea eagles type it in and the tour companies that will set this up
for you in Finland and Norway will appear. How I ever got anything done
before all this technology I can’t remember.
The
good news is that only the first million bites itch and after that you
start to become immune. I know this because when I get bitten (I know it’s
not really a bite, but we all know what I mean) on my face or arms I
hardly react at all these days, but when they get inside my shirt and
attack my belly the swelling lasts for days, itches terribly and turns red
over a huge area. My arms might be used to it, but not the parts normally
covered up.
However even on my arms I am not keen on being attacked. Insect repelling
creams certainly work and I carry some on me whenever I am in a mosquito
infected area. Trouble is the cream on your fingers can effect the plastic
covering on camera bodies and other equipment. On my last trip I used
Repel Sportsmen Formula which did no damage to my gear at all and most
certainly discouraged the insects.
When
the going gets really tough I resort to my
Bugwear jacket. A special coat with a
hood on it that has scimming built in to cover the face. It can be zipped
up so the head is completely protected, but I rarely have to bother and by
leaving it open it can be quickly pushed out the way when you need to get
an eye to the camera or binoculars. The jacket is best worn with a
baseball cap with a large peak as this pushes the scrimming outwards and
keeps it taught. which allows better vision through it as you walk along.
The
material is thin, but they can’t bite though it and the sleeves are extra
long so you can pull your hands up inside them. Mosquitoes in Northern
Scandinavia or Canada are larger and more aggressive and can bite though
the thickest of ordinary trousers so I end up wearing my Gore-Tex
waterproof trousers too. Only problem then is how to keep cool when the
weather warms up and you really want to be just in shorts. Maybe I should
just go for another million bites all over and be done with it.
Further to the piece below (Mar 2004), I did make the
Picture buyers fair and it was much as I predicted except things had advanced
further, quicker than I thought. Two of the nature picture libraries present
said they were on the verge of not accepting slides from
photographers any more. Only digital
images wanted now.
They were aware they may miss out on certain markets, such as the
calendar companies who may well want to do their own drum
scanning for some time, but if that is not a major buyer for them it is not a great loss.
I have still not bought a digital camera, but this is more to do
with not being at home long enough between trips than anything else. It's time
to do so.
In May 2003 I attended the Picture Buyers
Fair in London where nearly all the major (and many minor) picture
libraries exhibit and meet their customers from the publishing world. It
is not really designed for stock photographers like me, but does present a
wonderful opportunity to meet library staff and ask questions. I can speak
to them all in one day.
My conclusion at the time was there was a
growing willingness to accept images from digital cameras, but still with reluctance. This was progress from the year before
when it was an outright not interested!
The negative argument was that it is slow
to edit digital files compared to slides and that many publishers (60% was
the average estimate) still demand transparencies, so if they only have a
scan they may well lose 60% of sales.
If I make the fair in 2004 I am expecting a
huge change of opinion with far more enthusiasm for digital submissions. I
am sure minds will be adopting to the idea that it does not have to be
slow to edit the images. It is just a matter of a better workflow and
faster hardware.
As any picture they choose to keep does not
have to be scanned it is a great time saver. If the library sales are
going the same way as my own direct sales then almost no one is asking for
slides today. Almost everything they send out will be digital. Personally
I am fed up of scanning everything.
By the 2005 fair I would guess we will hit
the point where picture libraries turn round and say “actually we don’t
want your slides anymore, they are so slow to edit and our customers never
ask for them as even drum scans can’t match the quality of digital cameras”.
So I feel I am now at the point where I
have to go digital. I will either buy a EOS1ds or the new EOS1d MK2. The
difference between 8Mb versus 11Mb does not concern me too much and I am
attracted by the faster frames per second and longer bursts of the MK2.
Frustratingly whatever I buy will be out of date within months as they
increase the files size in new models.
I've been trying out my super warm, super
expensive wellies during these cold winter days. Unbelievably I forked out over
£100 on a pair of what look like ordinary wellies. That's half my annual
clothing budget gone in one purchase, but boy are they good.
I have tried other insulated, winterised
foorwear, but they tend to be so thick and junky I trip up in them all the
time. These are Le Chameau wellies available from
www.thewellyshop.com and they fit
and feel like ordinary wellies. They are made from Neoprene, used in wetsuits,
and the insulation is superb. So far I have not suffered any frozen toes and can
walk around in them freely. At £100 plus I am a bit nervous of putting a nail
through them or ripping them on a barbed wire fence so am only using them when
it is really cold, but I highly recommend a pair, especially if like me you
spend a lot of time sitting in hides.
While in New Mexico over
Xmas, where it was -14c I
bought a matching pair of Neoprene gloves too. They have slots in the end of the
index finger and thumb so I can, hopefully, operate the camera without taking them
off. I bought them on the last day of the trip so I didn't get to try them out.
What I need now is a really cold spell to put them to the test.
Wonder if someone does a Neoprene hide? That
would sell!
I love travelling as much as photography
and after visiting more than 41 countries I am a bit of a veteran. Here
are my travellers tips.
1) The
Lonely Planet web site is usually a good
place to start planning and checking the basics for any country, such as
visa requirements (note Philip Newman).
2) If committed to the
trip order the Lonely Planet guidebook from
Amazon
or the NHBS
web site (Amazon usually gets it to you
quicker). At the same time order any “where to watch birds site guides”
and a bird identification guidebook if needed. To supplement this download
and print birdwatchers trip reports from websites such as
Birdtours.
These are always useful for finding sites to visit, although you need to
read between the lines to decide if they will be any good
photographically.
3) Car hire is usually
easy. Simply type in “car hire + country” into the search engine
Google
for a list of local companies with cheaper rates and better web sites than
the larger, better known car hire companies. Hertz, Avis and the rest have
some of the worst web sites going and must be losing a lot of business. It
is important that the car has unlimited mileage as photographers do
excessive mileage in search of pictures. It is not available in all
countries unless you book the car for several weeks (when they will make
an exception). Crash damage waiver (CDW) insurance is also a must. A major
problem is the rear passenger window, which needs to wind down fully if
there are two of you and one will be photographing from the back. It
only winds down partly on many cars these days. Check it out on the model
you are renting.
4) Booking flights on the
web is getting easier at last. My current favourite site is
Travel
jungle, which has not let me down yet. I
am very fond of the
Easyjet web site
too. It is one of the best.
5) Getting equipment and film
through airports is a nightmare. My solution is to carry a small bag that
just holds my 600mm f4 lens. Down the narrow end of the lens I squeeze
two camera bodies, one on each side. There is no padding or protection and
the bag is so small it has never been checked or weighed. Larger camera
bags draw attention and from time to time get refused entrance as cabin
luggage and have to go in the hold. In a photographers waistcoat with
several large pockets go the 1.4x and 2x extenders. All my other camera
equipment goes in the hold. I feel the 600mm, two camera bodies and
extenders are my most important bit of kit. Everything else I can cope
without if my luggage goes astray for a day or two. The rest of the pocket
space is filled with film. Then I put on another coat, again with many
pockets and load more film into these along with the passport, flight
tickets, car hire papers and a reading book. I’m ready to fly.
6) Up to 300 rolls can be
carried like this. Film should not go in the hold luggage as the x-ray
machines used there are more powerful than those used on hand luggage. I
have never had any problems with x-rays on hand luggage. Incidentally as
my own ongoing personal test I always put one roll in the suitcase in the
hold and have never had a problem with that either.
7) I rarely take travellers
cheques these days, but will have several hundred pounds sterling (or even
US Dollars for some countries) stashed away in a money belt and other
secure places for emergencies. Take several credit cards and a bank cards
and store them in different places about your person, so if one is lost
others are still available. Have the PIN numbers for each and get money
out of cash machines, which are available worldwide these days. At the
destination airport it is usually simpler to get local currency from a
cash machine. Not every card will work in every machine, and there is no
logic to it, but by having several cards from different banks usually one
will work. Keep enough local currency on you to get out of trouble should
it occur.
8) One of the biggest
nightmares you can face abroad is losing your passport. Its safety and
whereabouts are vital. Normally it will be in a plastic bag inside my
money belt, but in some countries you have to show it frequently so that
is not practical and it must be carried in a pocket. Wherever it is I
check it frequently. My money belt also contains travel insurance papers,
flight tickets home, one of my credit cards and emergency contact details
for the car hire should it get stolen. I regard these papers as essential
and too risky to leave unattended in the vehicle. I want them strapped to
my body at all times.
9) When picking up the car hire
there are certain things I like to know other than the obvious before I
drive off.
a) How to switch on the headlights and windscreen wipers. The last thing
you want is to be driving along a motorway and suddenly find yourself in a
heavy downpour and not know how to do this. It’s a mistake I made once.
b). How to get reverse. It is often the last gear you need to use and when
you do it's not always that easy. It varies so much from car to car. Some
you need to push down, others pull up, etc so I make it the first gear I
engage before driving away.
c) How
to open the petrol filler and what they call that grade of petrel locally.
Just recently in the Czech Republic it took me, the garage assistant and a
passer-by 20 minutes to undo the filler cap. It was controlled by the
central locking key, by remote control. A first for me.
d) How to lower
the spare wheel if it is underneath the vehicle rather than in the boot.
Not always that obvious. It happened to me in Zimbabwe at dusk out in the
bush. In the 10 minutes it took to figure it out it was no longer dusk,
but very dark.
10) Once out on the road in my
car hire I head for the first supermarket I see. My shopping list will be
mineral water (lots of), plain biscuits, bananas and rice for my beanbag.
On bananas and biscuits I can survive a missed meal if I fail to find
somewhere to eat and can get an early start without breakfast. The car
will always have these emergency rations.
Driving down from Scotland last week
it was very noticeable how many buzzards there were sitting on the side of the
motorway. They are so common now all over the country. I have successfully
baited them down in Wales on several occasions, but they can be very difficult.
Close to Tregaron in Mid-Wales has always been the spot to do it, they seem more
inclined to come into bait there.
However I have always wanted to do
them in the Midlands and succeeded last week. I chose a spot where they
frequently hang in the air over the ridge of a wooded hill and put the hide up
against a low farmland hedge. This is important as the hide blends in against it
and is not as obvious as it would be stuck out in the open. I only put the hide
up on the day I photographed and got in about 1300 hours.
I defrosted a rabbit from the deep
freeze in my microwave and pegged it out at the right distance for my 600mm
lens. Pegging is important else the buzzard will simply pick the rabbit up and
fly away.
Within an hour a buzzard landed in
the hedge 100 metres away and sat watching and assessing the situation. 10
minutes later it flew in and landed to the right of the rabbit. Usually it is
important not to take a picture until it has walked up to the bait and started
to feed, then you know it is reasonably relaxed and preoccupied, but where he
landed looked so attractive I could not resist. Moving the lens a millimetre at
a time I swung it across to him. No problem. Then I just took one picture and
waited. It was very windy, which helped cover the noise of the camera. After 10
seconds I took another picture and so on until the end of the roll. He appeared
to react to the shutter noise, but because I went slowly stayed.
Eventually he walked over to the
rabbit and stood looking at it nervously. I stopped taking pictures and waited,
but I don't think it was me making it nervous. The buzzard seemed to keep
ducking and I guessed a crow was mobbing it from the air. Before it fed the crow
successfully drove it off and it landed back in the hedge again. Still I got
enough pictures to satisfy me and will wait a few days for the first shoots of
the farmers crops to come through in the field. I think it will look even nicer
with fresh, green vegetation around it.
All told it was an easy days
photography and contrasts sharply with the days, turning into weeks that I sat
in hides in Wales, getting in under the cover of darkness and staying until
nightfall. All seems such a waste of effort now.
I have
been spending at lot of time recently watching high tide wader roosts.
It’s a time consuming process made more awkward by the fact I live in
Birmingham! There are so many variables that must be right for
photography. I need good numbers of birds in a spot that I can put up a
hide without upsetting people (getting harder to find), which eliminates
nature reserves for a start. The sun needs to be coming from the right
direction and I need an escape route in case I misjudge the tide and get
water logged. It needs to be within a mile of the car as I don’t want to
walk much further with a hide, stool, tripod and a rucksack full of
cameras.
Then there
is the time of day and the height of the tide. The varying tides make it
very difficult unless you live on site and have local knowledge. I study
the tide timetables, but what I really need is a set of posts in the
ground showing me where it will come to each day.
One roost
in south Wales I have watched 3 times, and thought I had it weighed up. It
had all the ingredients I needed except the morning high tide was taking
place at 0400 to 0500 hours, in the dark. I left it alone for a few days
and returned yesterday morning for a 0900 hour high tide. I still got it
wrong though as the tide was a particularly high one and the birds were
already on the sand banks where my hide would be at 0630, just as it was
getting light. The weather forecasters also got it wrong as the promised
early morning brightness had turned into rain.
The
weather does not look promising for the next few days either and after
that it will be a month before the tide is high enough in the mornings to
push the birds in. Time and petrol money all wasted so far, but I shall
persist as it is a fantastic spectacle to watch thousands of
oystercatchers and curlew crowded into one small spot.
I like
photographs that look like paintings and I like paintings that are so
realistic they look like photographs. A sort of half way house. Arty
photographs tend to get labelled as creative and sell well as prints. They
will probably also do well in competitions and exhibitions, but they
rarely sell well to publications.
My most
well known picture is a bee-eater sitting on the branch of a tobacco tree
whose yellow flowers are in bloom. People always say it looks like a
painting. They also believe that they have seen it published everywhere,
but it actually sells very infrequently. When it is published it has been
in well circulated magazines, so may be more visible, but it is not a big
seller.
The
pictures that sell repeatedly and therefore generate the most money are
much more mundane, often straight portraits. It is not actually the
picture quality that makes for repeated best sellers, but the
newsworthiness of the subject.
Look at my
best sellers list below and you will see water voles at the top. Few
mammals have had as much coverage in recent years as this fast declining,
cute vole.
The cirl
bunting was very rare a few years ago, but its numbers have increased. As
the numbers came up my sales have gone down. It is not so newsworthy
anymore.
Red kite
and their re-introduction also meant picture sales for many years.
Skylarks have dived in numbers and written about frequently, which creates
a need for pictures to accompany the articles. The corncrake I am less
certain about from a news point of view, but it is a charismatic species
and never going to be ignored. Chough sales have recently surged, because
of breeding success in Cornwall.
I still
need to take the arty looking pictures as print sales are another part of
my income that can’t be ignored, but it is a very different market.
Ever
since I started captioning my slides using computer generated labels I
have included the word “captive” for any subject taken in controlled
conditions. It goes in the location field of my database, which has been a
disadvantage as it would be more informative to me to
give the geographical location. There is
not room for both and unfortunately there is no standard abbreviation for
“captive” that everyone would recognise. However
I have stuck to it as it seemed the right thing to do.
Has it
been of use to anyone? No I don’t think it has. Whenever these slides have
been published there has never been any mention in the credits of the word
“captive”, so who is benefiting? Not the reader of the book or magazine
obviously.
