My Number One Tip for Wildlife Photography

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.

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.

Deer, oh Deer

I managed to conjure up a small amount of energy this last week and ventured out to a tried and tested area I know near me where I always seem to spot some good wildlife.

This particular evening didn’t disappoint as I managed to sneak up on a family of wild roe deer, a lone hare, and a buzzard.

I’ll save the latter two encounters for future posts, but here are some of the wild roe deer I crept up to and hid behind a bush from.

All images were taken with the Nikon Z 400mm f4.5 lens, whilst wearing a camouflage ghillie. In post, for the first five images I’ve exaggerated the pinkish tone that was already naturally present in the scene.

Light and Flight

This week on a post-work walk around the lake, the sun hit a window in the restaurant at the foot of the lake, so that the reflection created brilliant ripples on the water where the gulls were circling back and forth, eating flies. I took a little while to try and line up some bird in flight shots just above the golden patterns on the water’s surface.

It was definitely a bit of a challenge to consistently track the subjects, but these ones came out pretty well I think.

Birds! Birds! Birds!

This month, I have been mostly photographing birds.

Followers of my Instagram page (@luke_bennett_photos) may be aware that one of my photographic missions this spring is to capture a nice photo of grebes doing their little mating dance ritual. I had some success with this recently; just in the last few minutes of daylight I witnessed a minor courtship display. It petered out very quickly and didn’t fully develop into anything much, but I captured what looked a little bit like a bird tango, with each grebe passing the side of the other, wings-a -flutter in charming choreography.

It wasn’t exactly what I had envisioned - I’d been thinking more along the lines of the classic face-to-face mirrored head and body movements - but it was still lovely to see. The mission continues…

On the same evening, in the last moments of sunlight I also had some fun playing with the ripples and reflections on the water and lining up whatever happened to be nearby. In this instance a solitary greylag goose.

When not walking around the lake near me, I’ve enjoyed watching the garden birds outside my window, taking advantage of the bird bath and feeder.

Birds (mainly herons!) in Flight

I’ve just been looking at some bird edits from the last 12 months or so and collated what I think are my most successful bird in flight images to date. As mentioned previously on this blog, it’s something I’ve been trying to do more of and improve on.

It seems, I have a bit of a leaning towards the heron, which forms most of the images below. When I think about it, it’s obvious why - They’re big, they fly low and close, they fly slowly, and they’re not at all uncommon. Luckily for me there are at least four that like to hang around the lake near me. Even better, they omit a loud, high-pitched squawk before taking flight, as if to let you know to get your camera ready!

Wildlife in Warwickshire

This week, I have been mostly photographing wildlife in Warwickshire.

The kestrel, fallow deer and grey squirrel were all found on one outing, at Charlecote Park; a place I love to visit semi regularly, precisely because of these kinds of photographic opportunities.

The fox was found elsewhere (location to remain secret). While walking through the undergrowth, I suddenly saw a hint of movement and colour and realised there was a fox to my right. It was walking very close by, but quickly through the adjacent field and well hidden by the fence and shrubbery.

The settings on my camera were not optimised for this particular shot, so it’s one of a burst taken at 1/100 of a second (far too slow), and the only one remotely sharp or correctly focused as a result. The foliage in the foreground immediately next to me and that surrounding the fox made this a challenging photo to take in the split second opportunity provided, but I feel lucky to have got one worth keeping at least.

Black and White Horse Photography

I’ve been continuing to learn and enjoy my new camera system over the last few weeks. Most recently I’ve been had fun viewing the horses during my evening walks locally.
I feel like I’ve caught a few interesting stances and expressions in the shots below. I processed the first one in black and white eventually as I felt it suited the mood of the portrait; the horse looking powerful and aggressive (for that split second in time at least). The edit ended up suiting the rest, too, so I made a series.