Notes from the field
Bolg stats
Just a quick note to thank all of you for taking the time to visit my blog. I’m not usually one for statistics but last month I topped 2200 visits to my blog so a massive thank you to all. Most of my updates are put onto facebook as it is quick and immediate so those of you that have access to this and haven’t yet LIKED my page, please do so as this is where my latest images and news appears first. However, I shall make a concerted effort to update this blog more regualarly, appreciating that not everyone wants to be on facebook. Next entry very shortly…..promise!!!
Spring happenings
As with the rest of the country, spring arrived very early indeed with flowers blooming a good 10 days earlier than usual. I love spring. It’s my favourite season by far. As we emerge from the winter gloom and the days lengthen we at last feel that we have time on our hands to actually do stuff! Late April through to late June invariably finds me getting up very early to shoot dewy flowers or bird and hare activity on the marshes. Wood anemones and bluebells are only around for a short time so I try to make the most of them and set about photographing them at first light. Why so early? Several reasons. The light is soft, wind almost non-existent and the countryside as a whole is much quieter, human-wise anyway, allowing you to experience the dawn chorus. After a few hours photography I pack up and go home, just when everyone else is getting up and going to work!
This first image of a wood anemone was taken at 07.20 hrs at a local nature reserve called Cromer’s Wood where I have been assistant warden since it’s conception in 1990. I had this shot in mind and so it was ‘simply’ a matter of looking for the right specimen. If only you could see me dashing up and down the pathway, bending down, laying down, searching! As the sun rose, I shielded the flower from the sun to retain detail and also to obtain this contradiction of hues of the coolness of the anemone with the warmth of the background. I used a wide aperture of f4 to throw everything except for the lip of the flower out of focus with the resulting shutter speed being 1/25th sec. The same technique was also used for the bluebell image, several days apart but along the same path.
Wood anemone
Bluebell
Prior to the above image being made, I visited a beechwood just a few minutes away to get some pictures of the rising sun bursting through the trees illuminating this swathe of bluebells.
Bluebells in beechwood
I deliberately chose not to add an ND Grad to the image, below, since I didn’t want any detail in the trees. As I composed it I thought it had a rather heavenly, dreamlike quality so left as it is.
To round off the session in this particular wood I shot this young bracken surrounded by the bluebells.
Bracken and bluebells. Nikon D300, 200mm, iso 200, 1/40th sec. f5.6, Manfrotto tripod.
Our earliest flowering woodland orchid, the early-purple.
Another early morning flower shoot. This time of a common dog violet. I just can't get enough of them dewy mornings!
I do photograph other things other than flowers….honestly! A few evenings were spent laying close to a rabbit warren in the hope of capturing the youngsters. I only had fortune on my side the first evening but will continue to shoot (pardon the pun!) them throughout the spring and summer.
Rabbits outside warren
Young rabbit. Nikon D300, 300mm f2.8, 1.4x teleconverter, iso 400, 160th sec. f5.6, beanbag, full camo clothing.
Male pheasant displaying. It doesn't matter how often I photograph this behaviour, I just can't help myself. Although an introduced species, I cannot imagine the countryside without them. It would be like losing the cuckoo though sadly, if one were to disappear, it would most likely be the latter.
Cock pheasant displaying
Although suffering a rapid decline, corn bunting's are still, thankfully, very common throughout the North Kent Marshes.
Warm days followed by cold nights are providing wonderfully atmospheric conditions in which to shoot in at the moment and since the mist reduces the sun’s harshness for another half an hour or so, this in turn extends my photography a little longer. This brown hare was captured a few days ago as it nibbled on some grass.
Brown hare at sunrise. Nikon D300, 300mm f2.8, iso 800, 1/2500th sec. f5.6, beanbag.
These yellow flag irises were spotted a few days prior to shooting them and was fortunate enough to have great cloud formations, something which simply cannot be guaranteed. Positioning the tripod was the biggest problem here with two of the legs in water and another at quite a peculiar angle in which to move the camera slightly overhead. I was careful not to leave it unattended through fear it may well end up in the drink! Due to the exposure range I used two ND Graduated filters. A 0.3 (1 stop) at a 45 degree angle covering the sky and ditch and a 2 stop (0.6) covering just the sky since this was brighter than the water in the ditch.
Yellow flag iris at sunrise
It’s easy to for us to take this season and all that it offers for granted thinking “well, there’s always next year to photograph them.” As a recent personal event reminded me, there may not always be a “next year” so we have to grasp every opportunity and, indeed, make a concerted effort to enjoy this very special time of the year.
Peak District workshop
Having arrived a couple of days prior to the workshop, I thought it would be good to check on a few new locations. One of which was a stream with quite a substantial waterfall. Well, substantial it was not due to the dry weather we had been experiencing. It looked pretty pathetic and certainly didn’t warrant any pictures but in autumn and after heavy rain, I’m sure it would be a gem!Well worth a look when I return. One of the locations which I take my clients to is Curbar Gap which aside from 2 stunning edges, Curbar and Baslow Edge, there is a marvellous stone-walled National Trust site at it’s base. I arrived at dawn in the hope of getting a sunrise shot of Baslow Gap which, with clear skies and a sharp frost, looked promising, only for the clouds to roll by and give me seconds of red light.
Baslow Edge
From here I walked down to it’s base to shoot the stone walls, taking advantage of Nikon’s self-timer function!
Curbar Gap
The other place I wanted to check-out was Derwent Edge. There didn’t seem to be a “short-cut” to the top so after a fairly lengthy trudge with backpack and tripod, I found myself looking over the most exquisite view. I arrived a couple of hours before sunset to familiarise myself with it and decide upon a suitably photogenic outcrop.
Hurkling Stones
Hurkling Stones, Derwent Edge.
As is so often the case with this kind of work, you spend long periods of relaxation and contemplation waiting for the light, only to dash around like a blue-arsed-fly when it’s at it’s optimum!
Dungeness and Romney Marsh
With plans to run a workshop here, I visited these areas once again, over 2 days, earlier in the month. I found some new locations too including church ruins which will be fantastic when painted with light at night. My attentions, however, were firmly fixed on Dungeness and so I spent a very pleasant few hours on this vast shingle bank from late afternoon to twilight. The subjects in question were the old, rotting fishing boats that, with their decaying hulls and nearby fisherman’s huts, make for great subjects to shoot.
Shooting in the late afternoon enabled me to take advantage of the low, warm sunlight.
To retain detail both in the sky and boat, I took 2 images and exposed one for the sky and the other for the land, then merged them in photoshop. No different to using an ND Grad really other than that unlike a grad, you retain detail in the boat.
And then sunset gave me innumerable photo opportunities. I would have liked more cloud cover to add more atmosphere and drama and I can imagine that even on the most uninspiring, grey days, strong images are more than possible, especially in black and white.
Painting with light at twilight can be great fun but requires you to stay on until at leaat 30 minutes after sunset. You can use either a torch or flash light and in this instance I chose the latter. A 6 second exposure gave me just enough time to fire 3 bursts along it's length. The image was composed to also show the nuclear power plant in the distance.
On another day I re-visited Romney Marsh. a wonderfully atmospheric location which I had the pleasure in being commissioned to shoot for Country Walking magazine. Please click on the link to read the article on my Publications page.
Fairfield Church, Romney Marsh.
I’ll be running a short, late afternoon workshop at Dungeness for Rye and District Camera Club over the next few months and have plans to run others. Should you be interested, please register your interest by contacting me at either rmcanis@msn.com or Tel: 07939 117570.
February
Well, I don’t need to tell you what a dreary February it’s been! And so, as a result, it hasn’t been the most productive month in terms of taking pictures. Hides are in position and hares on the marshes will have started doing what they do best….running and boxing, but, the light is so darn awful! It has, however, given me the chance to catch up with all image processing and agency submissions which in turn should (hopefully) free up my time over the next month or so to concentrate on taking pictures. Here are a selection taken earlier in the month when the weather was more favourable.
Those of you that follow me on facebook (that’s where you will get my latest news on projects and workshops) will know that for the last month or so I have been attempting to photograph barn owls. A permanent wooden hide is in position and so far my efforts haven’t been rewarded as much as I would like. Activity at present is quite sporadic so I’m hoping that with the possibility of young to feed in late spring and summer, I’ll have stronger pictures to show here.
Lapwing numbers are incredibly high at the moment reaching several thousand strong on the marshes. Courtship displays have already begun and once again I am sure I will endeavour to record this aspect of their lives. Due to all the rain, breeding condititions are good too with lots of pools and flooded areas throughout the area.
Northern Lapwings in flight
Lapwings will take to the air and form long, tightly packed flocks, gradually gaining altitude if approached by a bird of prey such as a marsh harrier or peregrine falcon.
Reedbed
Shortly after sunrise on a perfectly calm, misty morning, I began shooting general views and close-ups of a reedbed.
A small pool behind provided a clean backdrop.
In order to retain detail in the highlights and obtain a high contrast, graphic image, I exposed for the background then stopped down 1 1/2 stops.
All these reed images were taken hand-holding a 300mm f2.8 lens, something I don't often do when photographing plants as I prefer to use a tripod. But, due to their location, rapidly changing light and the fact I could activate the vr, I was confident of securing sharp images.
On the way back I noticed a pair of swans and lay on the ground with the 300mm f2.8 resting on a beanbag. It was still quite misty which not only injected atmosphere into the scene but cut down the overall contrast.
Project barn owl
This is probably the best picture I have of a barn owl. Compared to many out there, it’s nothing special at all. The lighting’s flat and it’s a little too much over to the right. The one thing I do like, however, is the wing position. It’s not hovering or floating but heading straight for the camera. It was taken some years back on the Isle of Sheppey in Kent on a small patch of grassland that is a mini nature reserve. I attempted photography from the car through a gap in the hedge but clear views were few and far between and more often than not the bird would hunt the far side of the field.
Barn owl
Although barn owls can be seen quite regularly throughout the North Kent Marshes, their movements are rather unpredictable, preferring large expanses of rough grassland and marsh as opposed to following the predictability of a reedbed. Indeed, many of the top barn owl images you see today have been taken in Norfolk where their population densities are greater than here in Kent.
Over the last week I have secured permission from the land owner to place a couple of permanent hides on the site so, with Christmas and New Year out of the way, normality can resume and I can start work on attempting to get some half decent images of this beautiful bird. I’m not sure I can produce anything better or significantly different than what has already been done but I’ll certainly have fun trying! Over the last few months I have seen short-eared owls regulalrly use this site as well as marsh harriers and hen harriers so I look forward to spending many cold mornings and afternoons in my hides.
Waxwing invasion
Over the last month or so there has been an influx of one of Europe’s most beautiful birds, the waxwing, or the Bohemian waxwing to be exact. As their main food source, berries, become scarce they cross the North Sea from Scandinavia to the UK. Not surprisingly, they are usually seen in northern England and Scotland first, then gradually further south. My first encounter with them was around 15 years ago. I found myself standing with a group of birdwatchers close to a rowan tree on the edge of an industrial park, observing these ‘exotic’ birds just 10 or so metres away. They have very little fear of humans on account they seldom come into contact with them during the rest of the year. As a result, they are fantastic birds to photograph. No need for hides. Just patience and warm clothing! They are sticklers to keeping to a location until they have stripped the bushes and trees bare so will very often linger for a several days.
Bohemian waxwings
On this occasion, a sizeable flock had turned up at a retail park in Folkestone opposite B&Q. Oh, how such places love to plant berry bushes to break up the concrete. Good news for birds though! I had heard about them being there but the weather transpired against me and so with a clear day forecast I set off. I first went to a location in Hythe where a number had been spotted over several days but as I arrived I was informed that they hadn’t been seen all morning and that they were probably joining the flock in Folkestone. 10 minutes later I was standing with 4 or 5 other photographers photographing a flock numbering at least 150. Due to the incessant traffic they deployed a hit and run tactic. First gathering in a nearby tree and then after about 10 minutes fly down to the rowan, gobble as many berries as possible within 30 seconds and then retreat back to the tree to digest. This gave me very little opportunity to obtain portraits of them and anyway, I already had some nice images I took several years earlier. Instead, I looked for alternatives. Lowering the iso and reducing the aperture gave me a slow shutter speed of 1/30th sec. and so, over a couple of hours I photographed them as they flew from tree to tree. The slow shutter speed inducing blur giving a feeling of movement.
A loud moan emanated from the photographers as we spotted a large bank of cloud to the west. That’s our afternoon scuppered we thought. As the sun disappeared behind the clouds I took advantage and went back to my car to warm up and have lunch. Leaving never entered my mind as you just never know what will happen. 2 hours passed by and with just 10 minutes to sunset, the sun popped out and bathed the flock in red.
As the sun set I positioned myself to try and obtain images of them as they landed onto the rowan by which time there was clear sky with just a hint of cloud to provide a tinge of pink.
Nikon D300, 300mm f2.8, iso 800, 1/1000th sec. f4. aperture priority, hand-held.
I stayed till twilight when the flock left to roost for the night and as I walked back to the car I couldn’t help but smile, thinking of all the other photographers leaving a few hours earlier that had thought the sun would never return.
Frost and snow
The following images were taking during the (obviously) snowy period we had a few weeks ago and, by the looks of it, there’s more to come by the end of the week. If you’re anything like me and reside in southern England, when we do get it I kind of go into panic mode, frantically thinking of places to visit. Bird feeding station? Marshes? North Downs? It’s unpredictability prevents us from planning, slowing down and thinking more carefully about what pictures to take.
These woodland scenes were taken at a local nature reserve called Cromer’s Wood, just south of Sittingbourne. I’ve been a voluntary assistant warden here since it’s conception in 1990 and although not a huge area (62 acres) it does have some very interesting plant species as well as a large pond where, amongst others, sparrowhawks occasionally come down to bathe.
Nikon D300, 28-105mm, 5 images stitched using PTGui Pro.
I deliberately kept this image light to accentuate the graphic lines of the grasses.
Freezing fog regularly occurs on the marshes and as I drove along a track early in the morning I noticed this pair of pheasants feeding on a hawthorn.
Partridges
I thought I should post this sooner rather than later while the heavy snow most of us experienced is still in everyone’s mind.
Here in north Kent we had a severe dumping in the early hours of Thursday morning so the following day I headed off to the marshes to see what I could get. At the entrance to the reserve a covey of grey partridges scraped the ground to find food. They formed a tight group and it began to snow providing me with a window of opportunity.
Covey of grey partridges. Nikon D300, 300mm f2.8, iso 400, aperture priority, 1250th sec. f4, +1 exposure compensation, beanbag over car window.
I drove on a little further but it soon became clear that as well as I know this area, I would be foolhardy to continue as I couldn’t make out the difference between track and marsh.
Wing tagging Marsh harriers
Apologies for the lateness of this post. I really should have added it shortly after Marsh harriers Part 2, back in mid October but I have been awaiting detailed information regarding this practise before committing it to a post.
A month into photographing a pair of nesting marsh harriers, I accompanyed two very experienced ornithologists, Rod Smith and Brian Watmough who were hoping to find a number of nests in order to wing tag the young birds. This is a relatively new practise and 2010 was only it’s second year. Initially, ringing the birds was the only option but of course the only time data could be collected was when the bird was deceased. With wing tagging however, simply looking through binoculars can inform you both of it’s origin and year it was tagged. It is therefore far easier to collect data such as age and where it goes throughout the year. One bird, for example, that was born on the Isle of Sheppey, has been seen in Lincolnshire! But why I ask myself should a bird leave an area that has an abundance of food and fly 100+ miles? Just one of those things I guess.
If I remember correctly, 4 nests were identified as possible sites to tag the birds. The first 2 revealed nothing even though I had myself been photographing the parents bringing in food to one of them. This isn’t unusual however. Reedbeds are so dense that visibility can be just a metre or so and when you have a large area to cover, regardless of how much you have pin-pinted it’s location, you can quite literally be on top of it and still not see it. After around 30 minutes they decided to move on to allow the parents to return and resume feeding. On the third nest, we got lucky. As I stood, some distance away from where they entered the reedbed, I could see a huge pair of wings flapping among the reeds. A sure sign they had located the young and were now in the process of gathering them.
Three, four week old Marsh harriers being brought out of the reedbed by Rod Smith (who is pin-pointing its location on his GPS) and Brian Watmough.
Once brought out they were taken to the car where both ringing and wing-tagging would be carried out. Two tags were attached. A blue one which indicated the year (in this case 2010) and a white one which indicated location which in this case was for the Isle of Sheppey, Kent.
As I looked on I could see how experienced Rod was in doing this. Totally confident in the way he handled them and maneuvered the birds to get them into the position he needed.
Blue tags for the year.
And white for the location.
After exactly an hour (to the minute actually according to the image EXIF data) they were taken back to their nest. I had never seen a nest of a marsh harrier before so upon borrowing a pair of waders, I followed.
I was instantly amazed just how deep the water was. At at least 2 feet deep it was the ideal place to keep the eggs and young safe from predators such as foxes.
Upon reaching the nest site I had just a few seconds to get pictures since as soon as the birds were released, rather than modelling perfectly in the centre, they scattered in all directions!
Immature Marsh harriers in nest.
I have to say I was a little disappointed with the nest. I had visions of a monster structure, perfectly entwined amongst the reeds. Instead, it was a simple nest of flattened reeds. But it was practical. It served it’s purpose, which afterall is what it’s there for.
It was a perfect conclusion to two months spent photographing these magnificent birds of the marsh and with approximately 30 nests on Sheppey, it looks as though they are going to flourish for many years to come. Hooray to that!
About Robert Canis
Robert Canis is a professional photographer specialising in the natural world.
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