Exploring the tree of life

There are words to describe the weather that graced Nottingham today; however, most of these are rude so I will stick to simply calling it "British". You get the gist.

Luckily, today I was never supposed to be outside. Last Wednesday, after a brief visit to Bempton Cliffs RSPB reserve, my fellow MSc students and I collected a whole host of animals from Filey Brigg; a rocky spit sticking out into the North Sea riddled with tidal pools. Today was time to photograph them in the studio.

On land, wildlife photographers are severely limited. Phyla are the largest divisions of the animal kingdom and, with one exception, all 36 animal phyla evolved in the sea. We terrestrial beings represent a highly specialised minority of the ten phyla that have made it out of the sea. Almost all of the animals we frequently photograph, from slugs to dragonflies, scorpions to albatross, and even ourselves, fall within just three phyla; the Molluscs, the Arthropods, and the Chordates.

How then can we hope to document and photograph a larger proportion of the evolutionary tree without going sub-aqua or pointing microscope-mounted cameras into our ponds? One of the very few ways is to go rock pooling.

During our short foray, we collected members of the Echinoderms and Cnidarians, as well as encountering many divisions of terrestrial phyla that do not occur on land.

Us landlubbers are very accustomed to most well-photographed terrestrial animal's patterns and forms, so as photographers we usually try to show these species interacting with their environment in new and interesting ways. This is not true of many marine groups, so in the studio I tried to simply highlight the shapes and forms of these species.

To do this I decided to photograph them on a white background; a style of photography very much in the vogue at the moment, especially with the recent launch of Niall Benvie and Clay Bolt's meet the neighbours project.

I hope you will agree that this technique exemplifies the shape, colour, and even transparency of the individuals. If you would like to know how to shoot against a white background then the best place to look definitely the meet the neighbours photographers guide.

Lastly, and just in case any of you are wondering about the ethics of collecting specimens for studio shots from the wild, I would not normally condone this practice. However, as we were with Nottingham University academic staff, and all collected specimens will become part of the well used and important university collection, this put me at ease somewhat.

When location is not enough

Wherever possible I have been discussing the Exposing The Wild captioning system with fellow photographers. Some have been skeptical and others enthusiastic.

One peer commented that she sees no benefit in the classification of wild and captive animals, stating that she would rather include the location the photograph was taken in the caption. This, she believes, gives people enough of an idea about the situation a photograph was taken in to make the Exposing The Wild captioning system irrelevant.

However, is this not assuming a huge knowledge base? There are a huge number of deer parks and animal parks in the UK. Is a viewer expected to have heard of all of these? Even mainstays of the wildlife photography community such as the British Wildlife Center are not well known throughout the general public.

Perhaps my colleague assumes viewers will be able to guess the nature of a location by its name. However, this also has its problems. Is it immediately obvious that the Cotswold Wildlife Center, for example, is effectively a zoo?

There are also situations where even knowing the nature of a location will not be enough to get a flavour of the of the animal's situation. A perfect example of this is WWT Slimbridge. Slimbridge is famous for having the largest collection of wildfowl in the UK. However, spread throughout these captive birds and visible from Slimbridge's hides are an equally large number of wild birds. Some of these are even the same species as the captive birds!

How is a viewer supposed to judge whether an image shows a wild Tufted Duck on the estuary or a collection bird with clipped wings? It is usually immediately obvious to the photographer, so is adding six little characters really too much to ask?

And now for something slightly different

Exposing The Wild is gaining momentum, I am working on an article, and my university deadlines are drawing ever nearer. Unfortunately, all of this means I am a little office bound.

This in no way means I have stopped taking photographs. Yesterday morning I managed to get out to Attenborough Nature Reserve, but for the most part I have just been photographing whatever I see on my way to and from the office on Nottingham University's campus. This means a lot of (unfortunately grey) squirrels!

Most of these photographs have taken the form of low angle shots with the department's 300mm F2.8 blurring the background beautifully. This results in a lot of technically good photos brought alive by the squirrel's quirky expressions, but they are all pretty much the same.

To keep things interesting I played around a little bit today to see if I could get anything other than these standard photos. Many photographic experiments have the same result as most scientific experiments; abject failure. Today's commute was no different but I produced one image I cannot make my mind up upon. It will certainly not be to many people's tastes, and might not even be to mine, but it shows the animal where it spends most of its time and at least it is different!

Chance encounters

Some days, for whatever reason, a day's wildlife photography will just not go to plan. Perhaps the weather will be against you, perhaps the subject will be a no-show, or perhaps worst of all, you will miss the shot.

This is all part and parcel of being a wildlife photographer, and something we just have to get used to. It is however something that can put a downer on your day if you are not careful.

I first got into nature photography because I wanted to show people how I see the natural world, and to try to inspire in people some of the passion I feel for the delicate, intricate, interdependent, ruthless, and yet beautiful products of evolution all around us. I have always seen nature in this way, and love being surrounded by it and exploring it.

If I have had a bad day's photography I simply remind myself that even during a bad day of photography I get to see infinitely more of the things I love than I do in a good day in the office. Getting the shot is secondary.

A perfect example of this is yesterday morning. I headed off to Attenborough Nature Center in time for sunrise, mistiming it slightly and arriving almost half an hour early. With time on my hands I was lucky enough to spot two kingfishers zipping by in a blur or blue and orange and my first swallow of the spring, all in the beautiful pre-sunrise light of dawn.

Shortly after sunrise I was sat poised on a fishing platform next to the reserve's Heronry, waiting for a long-legged gangly adult to fly by. This was the plan at least, but as often happens, the plan failed. However, after about five minutes a large dark shape emerged from underneath the platform a meter from my feet, running perhaps five meters down the bank before disappearing underwater. An otter!

All of this happened within about a second, no time for even the 300mm F2.8 lens I was carrying to focus and expose a sharp photograph on the dark shadowy bank. But, to be honest, I simply did not care.

I left Attenborough with no original or unusual images*, but with a massive smile on my face. Sometimes we can get the shot and bring smiles to the faces of others, sometimes we cannot. That is the joy and challenge of wildlife photography.

*only the Swan image in this blog post is from yesterday's visit, the others were taken in 2009.

The Exposing The Wild Captioning System

If I have said it once, I have said it a thousand times; images are powerful. However, there is one sure-fire way of sucking the power out of an image leaving little more than shapes and colours. That is to question its integrity.

Integrity is the wildlife photography buzzword of the day. It is questioned as much as claimed, but there is no real way of measuring it. A photographer's reputation is the sum of their honesty, their ethical practice, their photograph's integrity, and any perceived breaches of these. A photograph's integrity is based upon the not only on the photographer's reputation, but also the circumstances in which it was taken, how much it has been processed, and whether this is declared.

Currently, there is no standard way for photographers to declare how photographs were taken. Many photographers commendably state that image were "taken under controlled conditions", but what exactly are controlled conditions? I am sure everyone agrees that a falconry bird flown over a photographer's head certainly constitutes controlled conditions, but how about Stags in deer parks, or baited animals? Both are certainly controlled to some extent but it is debatable whether this is enough to constitute controlled conditions.

Other photographers add the world "captive" or a capitol C to their images as they think appropriate. This is just as commendable but just as ambiguous as adding "taken under controlled conditions". Is an Elephant left to behave as wild in an enclosure the size of an English county captive or wild? I can see both sides of the coin. Unlike the mice it undoubtedly lives with, the Elephant's huge natural territory means its movements are still constrained by humans, but this makes it no easier to photograph.

Similar ambiguities exist in the world of Digital Manipulation. Some maintain digital manipulation includes all "photoshopping", others state that global exposure and colour edits do not count whereas local edits do, while others believe that a subject or background has to be moved, removed, or added to count.

Ambiguities such as these can lead to the integrity of photographers and their photographs being unfairly questioned over simple misunderstandings. It is impossible for photographers to write detailed captions for all of their photographs containing all relevant information, yet they can easily be caught out when they do not.

Because of these worries, I have devised a quick and easy coding system for Exposing The Wild with the aid of Samuel Waldron that uses a code to summarise all relevant information. The system does not aim to judge, it simply categorises images to minimize their potential to mislead viewers unintentionally.

Post Processing

Images are split into one of four categories depending upon how much they have been edited:

PP0 - photographs that have undergone no post processing.
PP1 - photographs that have been subjected to global edits*.
PP2 - photographs that have been subjected to local edits**.
PP3 - photographs where subjects or backgrounds have been added moved or removed.

*Any edits that affect the entirety of the image, e.g. colour balance, curves, or contrast.
**Any edits affecting only part of an image, e.g. graduated filters, dodging and burning.

Captive Animals

Captive animals (including captured wild animals) are split into three categories:

CA1 - Captive animals that behave as wild in large enclosures.
CA2 - Captive animals whose behaviour is partially controlled.
CA3 - Captive animals whose behaviour is completely controlled*.

*e.g. trained animal models, falconry birds, and studio animals.

Wild Animals

Wild animals are also split into three categories:

WA1 - Wild animals whose behaviour is not affected by humans.
WA2 - Wild animals baited or attracted by humans.
WA3 - Wild animals habituated to the presence of humans.

The relevant codes are simply added to the end of captions to furnish the viewer with as much information as possible. For example, an image of a wild Blue Tit attracted to a Oxfordshire bird feeder where the exposure, colour balance, and contrast had been globally edited would be captioned as:

"Blue Tit, Oxfordshire, WA2, PP1."

Even if all photographers immediately adopted the Exposing The Wild captioning system and all images were correctly labelled, I am sure there would still be just enough ambiguity left to spark the occasional controversy. However, this will not put me off from promoting the system and adopting it on all of my own images. I am simply not prepared to do nothing.

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Edit: My Exposing The Wild colleague Samuel Waldron has also discussed this topic but has looked at it in a slightly different way. His enlightening discussion can be found here.

Just a memory

This weekend I watched as the last snow on the hills around Preston in the Scottish Borders melted away. Somewhat appropriately, I have just edited the last of my images from a day trip Lee Webb and I took to the Elan Valley in the height of winter.

From Rhyader we took the mountain road to Aberystwyth, fully expecting the road to be unpassable. Sure enough we soon had to stop before a large snowdrift. We decided to have a little walk (long walks are quite difficult in 6 foot snow drifts) around the area and found it to be a wonderland of drifting snow and ice-encrusted blades of grass.

A few minute into our walk I turned to see a large yellow snow plow heading up the road past our car. Perfect! We headed back to the vehicle and followed the plough up the road, taking photographs and helping other motorists as we went. Quite a fun day out!

When photographing in snow I find the hardest thing is to concentrate on finding photogenic angles of beautiful scenes. It is very easy to think "this will look great because of the snow" without checking if it does, often resulting in scenes remarkable only because of their whiteness. I tend to focus on contours and shadows in the snow, hopefully bringing definition into white scenes. I love the deep blue shadows cast on snow and ice and how these contrast with those parts lit by winter sunshine.

I also like to pick out elements that hint at the smothered landscape below. In this case the abundant ice-covered grass blades fitted the bill perfectly, and when backlit looked like jewels.

My favourite photograph of the day is the bottom photograph. This not only shows jewel-like grass,low winter sunshine, and deep blue shadows, but is brought to life by snow drifting through the image. I personally think that anything that adds movement to otherwise static landscapes brings them to life.

Scotland. Just.

For a while now I have been longing to get a proper photographic project under my belt. It is all very well and good jaunting down to Donna Nook or even poking a lens into a garden you know intimately whenever you can, but documenting an area intimately is another thing entirely.

This is what my collegue Samuel Waldron and I will be doing with a small area of the Scottish Borders on the River Whiteadder (pronounced whit-adder) from May to Mid July. We will be doing so under the banner of "Exposing The Wild", a new cooperative venture which will soon be firing on all cylinders. You shall, of course, be the first to know when it is!

From Thursday to Sunday Sam and I were at the site assessing its potential and preparing for the summer shoot. We busied ourselves so much with that that we did not get much photography done, the exception being moonless and cloudless Thursday night when we had a play with star-trails.

The top image is a 20 minute exposure showing the movement of the stars around the pole star. This shot was taken with the lights of Preston in the foreground. With these in the image I was unable to get an exposure longer than 20 minutes without the sky lighting up enough to render the majority of the stars invisible.

This second shot was taken in the opposite direction so light pollution had a much lesser effect. The star trails in this photograph are much longer because the image was taken at right angles to the north star and also because the exposure was 30 minutes long.

Preparation for the summer included searching the woodland for animal signs (such as the badger tracks above - thank you to the members of Wild About Britain for confirmation of this identification) and hide building. We first coppiced an area of willow to provide building materials and an open area for bird hides, before building a simple live woven willow structure with a pine roof. We will add the bird feeders to the area in the spring.

My final shot shows us enjoying "disposing of" the excess willow.

A glimmer of light

Today, finally, a few rays of light reached the ground in Nottingham. After weeks of the forecast snow turning to unappetising rain and even less appealing sleet interspersed with cold grey skies it was great to get to play with direct sunlight in all its guises once again.

Firstly, I played around with backlighting Herons on Nottingham University's lake (it was too early in the day to get direct light on them). Unfortunately, the light was a little too high to get the effect I was after in this shot but I think I have captured the moment to a certain degree.

For my next few shots I played around with the University's perhaps a little too overly friendly squirrel population. Someone had left a few nuts around and the squirrels were only too happy to pose for me.

This is probably my favourite shot of the afternoon; I personally think the mottled foreground and dark green background combined with the catchlight in the squirrels eye bring it alive.

Lastly I headed back to the Heronry to try and get the inhabitants with a little bit of the now turned light in their faces. This was my favourite shot, quite nice but not quite up to last weeks efforts. Hopefully the light will be this helpful next time I am further afield!