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Thursday 19 November 2009

Seal Silhouettes


There is a running joke amongst my course mates on Nottingham University's MSc in Biological Photography and Imaging, that I am perhaps a little too fond of silhouettes.

I do love shooting silhouettes, but why would you not?!? Almost all of the most striking wildlife photographs are simple compositions, have simple colour schemes, and reduce wildlife spectacles down to their core elements.


Typically, when shooting with the light, this involves using a wide aperture to blur foreground and background details, or recomposing until as little unwanted detail as possible is visible. This differs from landscape photography, where the aim is often to show all of the landscape, from foreground to background, in exquisite detail.


Of course, there are exceptions to both of these rules. If there were not, photography would not be an art (que debate)!

Silhouettes automatically reduce the complexity of an image down to the foreground (the silhouette) and background (whatever it is silhouetted against). The lack of texture automatically reduces the subject to its purest form, and the comparison with the background automatically shows the subject in perspective.

There are practical reasons, as well as artistic reasons, for shooting silhouettes. You do not need the subject itself to be lit. In fact it is often better if it isn't, and is as tonally different from the background as possible.


So what is my technique for shooting silhouettes? They are actually one of the simplest forms of wildlife photograph to take, involving three different steps:

1) Position yourself so your subject is against a bright background. This is often the hardest part of the task as the background is usually the sky, so you need to position yourself as low as possible in order to shoot up at the subject. Hills and ridges are useful for this, but I have often found myself in ditches and even golf course bunkers!

2) Meter on the background. This means it is possible to shoot silhouettes when other forms of photography simply are not possible. For example, just after sunset the sky is often still bright, but the land is not illuminated enough for telephoto photography. Shooting with the light is not possible but shooting into it is.

3) Focus on the edge of the subject. For other types of wildlife photography, it is usually best to focus on the eye of the subject. However, in silhouettes these will disappear into the blackness the silhouette. All that matters is that the edge of the subject is in focus.


As an example, I have decided to discuss this technique in the context of the seals at Donna Nook.

The technique described above still applies, but there are one or two minor ways it has to be altered to suit Donna Nook. Firstly, there are only two bright backgrounds available at Donna Nook; the sea and the sky. Shooting against the sky involves getting as low as possible to the sand, usually by lying down.


To silhouette seals against the sea, you may need to stand up. Normally, there is no way I would condone standing near seals. However, if the seals are in the sea, their own environment, they feel they can escape at any time so are much more relaxed. Often they inquisitively swim closer and closer to investigate people on the shoreline.



So where do you focus on a seal to get the best silhouettes? The edge of a seal is fuzzy, so focus on the edge of the seal is not 100% critical, although it is of course advisable to get it as sharp as possible. There are two parts of seals which simply have to be in focus; the whiskers and the teeth. Both of these have defined edges, so it will be immediately obvious if they are not in focus.

There is a little caveat to trying to get a seals teeth in focus. Usually if a seal close to you has its mouth open, this is a threat display and it is time to get the hell out of dodge for your sake and the seals. However, if the seals are fighting or warning each other whist ignoring you, then you are justified in snapping away.

With this in mind you should be ready to start shooting seal silhouettes, perhaps even grabbing some more challenging silhouettes than portraits!

Wednesday 11 November 2009

Fun at the Shore


This weekend Sam Waldron, Lee Webb, and I were lying down by the shore photographing Grey Seals frolicking in the surf zone. Much to our surprise, the area's small flock of Sanderlings seemed either oblivious to, or unconcerned by, our presence.

Sanderlings are small waders roughly the size of plump blackbirds that constantly patrol the shoreline looking for tidbits left by waves. This is amusing to watch as they engage in a never-ending cycle of chasing the tail of a retreating wave, only to be forced back by the next breaker.

I would recommend a telephoto lens of at least 300mm for photographing Sanderlings. Although they are very sociable birds, they are also rather small. I was only just able to get full frame images using a Nikon 80-400mm lens on a crop sensor camera.



Key to photographing almost any animal is to get down to its eyeline. In the case of Sanderlings, this involves lying down at the edge of the sea and being prepared to occasionally be swamped by rogue waves whilst protecting your camera gear at all costs.

To support my camera gear at this level I used a three-way tripod head attached to a frying pan. This not only provides support but allows the camera to be pushed almost effortlessly across the sand.

Photographing Sanderlings is quite challenging due to their frenetic movements. When they do stop moving, they usually do so for less than half a second so you have to be ready to take the shot immediately.

This involves placing a focus point on the head of the bird, continually focusing as they scamper about, and releasing the shutter immediately as the bird stops.

I used an aperture of F8 to give me a little bit of leeway in terms of focus, and an ISO of 400 to allow me to get shutter speeds between 1/320th and 1/640th capable of stopping Sanderling's movement... most of the time!


I photographed the Sanderlings roughly an hour before sunset so the light conditions were fairly challenging. The birds were lit by warm winter sunlight but the background was a deep shaded blue. To overcome these problems I used the technique of underexposing the shots by a stop or so described here.

An additional problem was the directionality of the lighting on the birds. As they ran towards the waves their face was shaded preventing their eyes from being lit by catchlights. I had to wait for the birds to face the sun, usually while retreating from oncoming waves, to get a nice catchlight.


Edit: I have just found two posts by Andrew Parkinson, one on photographing Sanderling at Donna Nook, and one on photographing seals in waves in relation to originality at frequently visited sites.

Tuesday 10 November 2009

The Pot of Gold at the End of the Rainbow

As promised in my last post, here is the first in a series of articles about the types of light I encountered at Donna Nook last weekend.

This article is about shooting well lit subjects in front of a background of a contrasting, usually blue, tone.

In photography we encounter three types of contrast. The first of these is where two or more subjects in an image contrast with each other. For example a steam train in front of a gleaming skyscraper-adorned cityscape would be a perfect example of contrasting subject types.

The second type of contrast is contrast between bright and dark areas of a subject. A perfect example of this is a silhouette where the tones of the foreground are so much darker than those of the background that no detail is preserved except the subject's outline.

The type of contrast important to this article is colour contrast. Warm colours such as reds and yellows contrast with cooler colours such as blues and purples, even if they are of the same luminosity.

A perfect example of this is when a subject is lit by the first warm light rays of the day against a blue sky background. Here is an example of this from Saturday morning.

The matrix metering systems in most cameras normally copes admirably with situations such as this. However, I prefer to underexpose all of my shots a little to prevent colour information being lost in the highlights and to produce a more vibrant image. This is particularly important when your aim is to showcase natural colour contrast.


In this case I used Aperture priority and underexposed by two thirds of a stop, resulting in an exposure of 1/250th of a second at F11 at ISO 400.

In some cases, colour contrast can be even more severe than in the case above. An example of this is when a storm cloud moves behind a brightly lit subject. This weekend at Donna Nook, not only did this occur but a triple rainbow formed behind the seal I was photographing.




I shot this photograph using my usual tactic of underexposing by two thirds of a stop. However, because the scene was significantly darker than the previous scene, this was not quite enough to accurately render the image.

Luckily, the highlights in this image were not clipped colour so I was able to decrease the exposure of this image by roughly half a stop without losing too much information. Despite the fact that this image turned out well, I have learned my lesson and will underexpose similar scenes more markedly in the future.

A Great Weekend at Donna Nook


I am afraid once again the promised Wollaton Park and Bradgate Park articles are going to have to wait. After a weekend with Sam Waldron and Lee Webb at Donna Nook my poor little mind is bursting with thoughts and tips just waiting to explode onto the page. As I am pretty tired after the weekends travel and photography I am just going to give you a sneak peak of what should be appearing in this (hopefully watched) space over the next few days.


I have visited Donna Nook three weekends over the last two years resulting in images like the two above. Although the seals have always behaved themselves, practicing perfect poses in front of my lens, the weather has ranged from "ten foot visibility fog" to "slightly overcast", never reaching the heady heights of "low-angle winter sunshine".

Not only was this the case this weekend, but the light somehow managed to be perfect in every direction in a way I never thought possible. Saturday was a full day of winter sunshine, and during Sunday morning I had a beautiful sunrise behind me, pink fluffy cumulus clouds to my left, spotless blue sky to my right, and a huge stormcloud flanked by a triple rainbow ahead of me.

With stunning light hitting my retinas from all angles, I tried my best to document as much as this as I could through my sensor. I will share how I attempted to deal with the different light types in the next few posts. In the meantime here a few images so you can judge whether I failed or succeeded.




Although they are approachable, photogenic, and extremely cute, Donna Nook is not only about the seals. The area's most approachable wader is the Sanderling. Photographing these birds is quite a challenge as they never stop for a second, constantly feeding to keep their plump physique. An article on Sanderling photography can be found here.


Unfortunately, I am afraid I am going to have to add another less upbeat article. The Grey Seals at Donna Nook are wild animals and deserve the respect due of any wild animal. I will be adding an article on how best to approach the seals to cause minimum disturbance as it appears not all photographers are doing so.

I seem to have promised a lot of articles here, but before getting around to writing them I really must get some sleep.

Until I blog again!

Friday 6 November 2009

Camera Trap Ethics

I know I promised my next article would be a location report on Donna Nook, Bradgate Park, or Wollaton Park, but I got a little sidetracked by Andy Rouse's blog.

Andy has been asked to write a column in a photography magazine on whether camera traps are "cheating" following the results of this years BBC Wildlife Photographer of the Year Competition. The winners of the last two years competitions have been camera trap photographs.

On his blog Andy has asked for opinions on the debate and I thought I would share mine (I also emailed him)

I think the primary duty of the photographer is to inspire and inform members of the public by showing them images of animals and behaviours they would not normally see.

For photographers to be able to do this, the need to be trusted. This obviously impacts on practices such as HDR, excessive use of photoshop, and images of captive animals. I also think it would be extremely dishonest for a photographer to fail to disclose that an image was taken with a camera trap.

As for whether I think it is justified to award a photographer for a camera trap image, this is a more complex issue.

I think it depends upon the intentions the photographer had when setting up the trap. If the photographer set up the trap randomly and a Golden Eagle caught a Reindeer in full view of the camera then I do not think it would be right to give an award.

However, if the photographer placed the camera with the specific intention of capturing this image and used a large amount of field nouse to do so, then I think the award would be justified.

Field craft is as much of a part of wildlife photography as technical ability, and although this scenario would require more field craft than technical ability it still requires both so is in my opinion a true wildlife photograph.

Anyway, as this post has been a large block of text, I have included a seal picture from last year's trip to Donna Nook to wet your appetite for the pictures I will hopefully be getting this weekend.


Edit: Since this post a further unrelated controversy has erupted and been resolved surrounding the now disqualified winner of the 2009 WPOTY competition. To see my discussion of this matter click here and here.

Thursday 5 November 2009

Deer, Seals, and Eagles


As it has been over a week since my last post, I am going to make this one a little longer than usual to make up for it.

I am also going include a few promises for future blog posts, partially so you know what is coming and partially because I will have to do it once I have promised. An extra little motivation for me!

This has been a busy week. Firstly, the first deadline of the MSc course is coming up next week; a research poster. I have had a week of frantic photography and design work trying to get it up to scratch.

Thankfully, I have got myself a seriously cool subject matter to keep things interesting. The Golden Eagle! "Now, where does one find a Golden Eagle in urban Nottinghamshire" I hear you ask?

Luckily, one of our course supervisors, David Fox, is a published world expert in falconry and has a pair of these magnificent birds and was perfectly happy for me to accompany him on one of his daily flights and take a few photographs. David is not only a lovely chap but a photographer himself so was perfectly willing to tailor the bird's flight patterns to suit my needs.


The eagle himself was also brilliant. I have never before photographed animals with such perfect poise. David likens them to big cats; constantly alert and scanning the environment. I agree to this to some extent but I have to admit the wild lions I have encountered spent 90% of their simply sitting or sleeping in a housecat-in-front-of-the-fire-like slouch!

An amazing experience though it was, I have also managed to fit other things into my week. Chiefly among this has been designing a new format for reports on wildlife locations I have recently visited. I am currently working on articles on Wollaton Hall in Nottingham and Bradgate Park in Leicestershire.


Last but not least, I am heading off to Donna Nook this weekend with Sam Waldron and Lee Webb. I hope to post some new seal photos and a site report on here pronto. Over and out!