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.