My Blog. Because if no one but you views it, is it still a photograph?
I’m as bad as updating this blog as ever, despite having a backlog of photos I’d like to share, spanning years and years. One of the things that puts me off is coming up with interesting things to write alongside the images.
It’s just occurred to me, however, I just need a top five list! As such, here are some wildlife photos, in no particular order, from no particular time period, for your viewing pleasure. Please enjoy.
I say no particular order, but this leaping roe deer might actually be my favourite wildlife photo of late! Especially as I missed an opportunity for a ‘deer in flight’ shot (the term I’ve just coined) about an hour earlier, so was extra pleased to get this one.
This is from a few years back, one of the wild Welsh ponies, up on the Long Mynd amongst the Shropshire Hills. It was another spontaneous moment I feel lucky and relived to have captured! I’ve just had this printed actually, so I’m working out where to hang it currently.
Another fairly recent one, this time of a tiddly little muntjac deer (and it really was small - unfortunately there’s nothing to show the scale clearly here) that I was able to hide from as it made its way up the path towards me. It had just about noticed me here, around 15 feet away.
One from last summer. I’m always on the lookout for countryside foxes, without much success, so stumbling upon this one (quite literally when I fell in a bush a couple of minutes later and scared it off) was a very welcome surprise. I’ll probably do another post about this encounter at some point as I took several other shots and a video of this fox either trying to attack, or simply get round a massive goose and its friends. I’ve never heard such loud honking before!
And finally, this wild hare from last summer. This was such a brilliant moment, as out of nowhere it came right alongside me, only about 15 feet away, completely oblivious to my presence for a good 5 seconds, during which I fired off as many shots as possible. I love the colours too, with the sun setting really low in the sky giving everything a vibrant glow.
Excuse the slightly clickbait-y title, but this is a pretty excellent tip for anyone wanting to get more into wildlife photography:
Get a ghillie suit.
Seriously, if you haven’t already, you should. They’re amazing. You can pick up something like the above for around £25.00. It fits in your bag, it’s easy to put on over the top of your usual clothing, and it greatly reduces your chances of being spotted by wildlife, in turn greatly increasing your chances of seeing wildlife up close.
Case in point; this wild hare. I was walking up through a spot of woodland, when much to my surprise as I reached the corner of my path, I could see what I initially thought was a muntjac deer, given the sheer size of the thing. Soon I realised it was a huge hare.
Luckily I was wearing the jacket part of my ghillie suit, so quickly crouched down, pulled the hood up and started snapping away.
Then, in a moment of great excitement/panic, it became clear the hare was heading straight in my direction, so I quickly optimised my settings for the shot (expecting some pretty swift movements), and tracked it all the way.
Sure enough, it came casually sauntering up the path towards me, completely oblivious to my presence (- stillness really is your friend in these situations). It was only when it was within around 12 feet that the hare realised I was there. Had I been in the full gear and hidden within the bushes - instead of on the open path - I dare say it wouldn’t have realised, even then. At this point it darted off out of the woods immediately, probably trying to work out what on earth it had just seen.
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This ranks as one of my favourite wildlife experiences. It might sound corny, but it always feels like a real honour and privilege to be in the presence of truly wild animals like this.
I’ve had several experiences a bit like this over the years, largely thanks to the camouflage afforded by the ghillie suit, so again, I can’t recommend them enough to anyone wanting to get closer (quite literally) to nature.
The above were shot with the Nikon Z 400mm f4.5 at 1/1250, f4.5, ISO-25600. As such, I put them through DxO Pure Raw 4 for some subtle noise reduction (people really overdo it on these programs I find) before editing in Capture One.