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!

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!

Tree Rats and the White Stuff

I know I have slightly missed the boat on this one, but seeing as every newspaper, tv channel, and casual conversation last week was jam packed with facts figures and images about this winter's record breaking "big freeze" I thought I should publish at least one article mentioning it. I will however try and make it a little more thoughtful than a generic article with the format "ooh! snow! *insert happy childish or cynical adult comments*"

The benefits of a local patch can never be overstated enough. Every wildlife photographer dreams of the big trips to Yellowstone, the Okavango Delta, or the snow monkeys of Japan. Even days out in places such as Wales seem more appealing than another trip to a well known place. In reality dedicated photographers grab most of their "keepers" near their homes in patches they know well.

During my undergraduate degree in Oxford my local patch because Port Meadow; the largest open meadow in England bisected, and sometimes flooded, by the Thames.

During the winter the flood plains were a mecca for wildfowl including hundreds of geese and one year around 200 golden plover (sorry for adding yet another silhouette to my blog!)

At my home in Worcester, my bird-feeder-filled garden is my local patch. One group of visitors to the garden, much to my parents annoyance, is our local grey squirrel population. In the past I have had grabbed some shots of them in our plum trees, despite the fact they are a little more skittish than the average garden squirrel as my parents regularly chase them with shouts of "bloody tree rats".

This winter I finally had the chance to photograph them in the snow, resulting in an image with an almost monochrome palette. I always find simple palettes help reduce the complexity of images making them more effective, especially when they are combined with narrow depths of field such as those produced with the 300mm F2.8 lens I currently have on loan from Nottingham University's biological photography department.

I hope you will agree that the moral of the story is not to neglect your local wildlife. Just because it is everyday does not mean it is uninteresting, even if it is a nasty foreign invader! This term my aim in Nottingham is to photograph the Foxes and Badgers that seem to be only too keen to leave their deposits in my garden, I shall keep you posted.