Female glow worm glowing. Nikon D300, 105mm Micro Nikkkor plus Nikon 3T close-up filter, iso 400, 15 seconds, f16, manfrotto 055 tripod, mirror lock-up, cable release.

She was photographed at a local nature reserve, here in North Kent, where I have been an assistant warden since it’s conception in 1990. They only appear along one particular path which we have aptly named, and not terribly creatively, The Glow Worm Path! So, I spent a number of evenings this summer looking and “trying” to photograph them. They are extremely small and especially tricky to do justice to as you want to illustrate the glow while at the same time, provide just enough illumination to show what she looks like as she has the most beautiful pink markings.

After spotting one in a favourable spot (i.e. not in a thicket!) I then, over the next 30 minutes set up the camera and experimented with shutter speed times and flash output and angles. This is the one I preferred the most as it was as much about the shape of the leaf and lighting as it was about the insect. I hope you like it too.

In it Igo through the variety of subjects which can be found and techniques employed when working on an area such as this from using different lenses, hides and even appropriate clothing to keep you working in what can often be, in a such an open landscape, freezing conditions. I hope you enjoy reading it and perhaps, for some you, pick up a few useful tips along the way!

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.

Those of you that have visited my website will know that I have quite a substantial collection of images, taken in all seasons and weathers, of the city they call “the golden city” or “the city of a hundred spires.” Since the majority were taken 4-5 years ago on transparency I have had to scan them, then convert. I am no expert on Photoshop (and I hope will never be!) but a basic understanding of tweaking colours, levels, curves, and a bit of dodging and burning can really transform an image. Prague is such a colourful city and sometimes it’s sheer vibrancy can deflect from the beauty of the architecture and gives it a rather old-world, timeless feel. Indeed many of them could have been taken a hundred years ago and you would never know!

Prague Castle, St Vitus Cathedral and Mala Strana or The Little Quarter. Photographed on the coldest day I have ever experienced in the Czech Republic. The large, digital road-side temperature sign read -15 C but with a strong wind blowing into my face it must have been close to -25. You really don't care what you like when it's that cold!

Statue on Charles Bridge (Karluv Most).

Steps from Prague Castle

West Towers in winter along Charles Bridge. Undoubtably the best time to experience this ever-busy bridge is to get there at dawn.

Taken during a blizzard. I added a vignette, sepia'd and cut down sharpening to give it that 'old' look. Matter of taste but quite like it. Good to try something different.

Buildings along Masarykovo Nabrezi, Prague. Taken moments before the sun set.

Tram moving across The Bridge of Legions (Most Legii) with the National Theatre (Narodni Divadlo) behind.

On the photographic side, over those years, my kit never changed. Nikon F5, 20mm, 28-105mm, 80-200mm, polarisers, ND grads, Velvia and Provia and a Manfrotto tripod. Everything was packed into a Lowepro backpack. Above all else, comfortable walking shoes! Prague is one cobbled street after another.

I have recently been accepted by a second picture library (I have been with my other, FLPA, for 10 years now) called Wildlife GmbH, in Germany and as a result, I am in the process of submitting material to them, one of which is of this puffin in flight.

Atlantic puffin in flight.

Taken on Skomer a few years ago, I stayed for a couple of nights to photograph these and manx shearwaters. Manx shearwaters are incredible birds spending most of it’s life at sea, only returning to land at night to feed it’s young. Why at night? In  nutshell, they are are very clumsy on land due to their legs being set far back towards their tale and so if they were to come ashore during the day, they would end up as dinner to gulls and the like. Anyway, back to the puffin. On my second day, fog rolled in along with strong winds. I fitted my flash-unit to attempt the flash-and-blur technique. If you pull it off it can be quite effective with the resulting image exhibiting both sharp and blurred elements giving the impression of movement. It’s relatively simple to do too. Select a slow shutter speed of say 1/30th sec. and your TTL flash-unit to -1. With the flash unit set to minus one stop the effect will be subtle though evident. Experimentation is the key here as the speed of the subject, it’s direction and distance will determine both shutter speed and flash output.

Male marsh harrier 'floating' over reedbed. Nikon D300, 300mm f2.8, iso 400, 1/2000 sec. f7.

Instead, I opted for positioning a 4 sq.ft. wooden hide, approximately150m from the nest, making sure the parents returned, then left it for a week to give them plenty of time to get really used to it. I then moved it closer at 20m intervals over the following week or so until I was around 50m away. This was done once myself and photographer friend, Phil, were happy that the young had hatched. How did we know the young had hatched? Well, during incubation the male brings food to the vicinity of the nest whereby the female, who does the majority of the incubating, then flies up and catches the food which the male drops, known as an aerial food pass. When both parents were bringing food back on a semi regular basis, we knew the eggs had hatched. This is very important since there is a much stronger bond between parents and young as opposed to when they have eggs.  

Male marsh harrier

Male bird.

With the hide being 50m from the marsh harrier’s nest, this may seem like it is still an awfully long way away but in such an open area it literally feels as though you are on top of it! Also, if I work too closely, when the birds are flying around the adjacent reedbeds, I would have to tilt the camera up further than if I were working from a greater distance. The marsh harrier pictures you see here are from the first few sessions. Time of day and wind direction played a vital role. Photography was only possible first thing in the morning and late afternoon when the sun was low in the sky so as to illuminate the underside of the bird. And, if the wind direction was blowing from the nest site to me, the birds would fly away away from me as such large birds prefer to fly into the wind giving them greater maneuverability so as to accurately land on or near the nest. I wanted side or head-on shots so needed the wind to be opposite to this. As you can imagine, this often limited hide sessions to just a few visits each week. Thank goodness the young remain in the nest for around 40 days! In the next installment, pictures of parents with prey.

Slender parasol 'troop.'

Upon noticing this marvellous ‘troop’ I went straight home, grabbed my camera bag and returned to photograph them.  If I were to leave them for another day they would have gone over or even kicked over. I then spent the next hour photographing the fungi from various angles, concentrating on using a wide-angle to exaggerate their size and in the case of the image below, trying to achieve something a little different to the norm. If you are interested in attending a mushroom photography workshop, please click here as I am running two in October at a favourite haunt. 

Standing close to 8 inches high with a cap the size of small dinner plate they are tough to resist for both the photographer and the forager for they are simply delicious! Over the last couple of years I’ve become a bit of an anorak when it comes to mycology brought on by me spending countless hours in the field photographing mushrooms from September to November. Identifying them in preparation for the agent invariably means I end up reading about them and finding out if they are edible or not. Now, don’t get me wrong, I don’t walk around a wood picking every edible fungus but if there are good numbers of funnel or slender parasol in a ‘troop’ I will pick one or two. Carefully picking a mushroom causes no harm since you are simply picking the fruiting body.  The part that really matters is underground, the mycelium.  Leave this intact and it will grow again. It’s a little like taking backberries or apples. To state the obvious, you should NEVER consume a mushroom unless you are 100% it is edible. If you are ever in any doubt, leave well alone. Many folk are surprised to learn that there are a number of species found in our woods that can kill.  

Nikon D2x, 12-24mm, iso 200, 10 seconds f16, camera resting on ground, 3 bursts of flash to different parts of scene.

I’ll be blunt here, by and large, the British are useless at identifying wild food, edible mushrooms in paerticular which I think is a bit of a shame. In mainland Europe it’s a family pastime to go out mushroom and berry picking. Children go out with their parents, learn from them then pass on their knowledge to their children. Even if you have no intention on picking them and all you want to do is look or take pictures, consider taking a pocket guide along. You will be surprised at how it can give focus to an afternoon stroll and with it a deeper understanding of the natural world.

But there is a feature that the D300 has (and many other cameras besides) that the D2x does not and that is Live View.  Over the 6 months I have come to quite literally, LOVE this feature for close-up photography.  Take the scenario below.  It’s around 5.45 in the morning and through blurry eyes I scan the grass for chalkhill blue butterflies, the size of a 10 pence piece.  Why so early I hear you ask?  At this time of the day they are still too cold to move and possibly wet from the nights dew, and if you can find one, you can take as long as you like before the sun rises to compose and take your image.  Once the sun’s up, it warms, it’s wings quiver as the blood flows and then it’s off!

Nikon D300, 105mm f2.8 Micro Nikkor, Nikon 3T close-up filter, iso 200, 1/20th sec f8, Manfrotto 055 tripod.

When shooting at such close quarters, it’s absolutely vital to get the camera back (used to be called film-plane) parallel with the most important part of the subject and with this individual, that means the wings, both vertically and horizontally.  Depth of field is so small in comparison to shooting landscapes, that unless you do this your images will end up in the recycle bin.  Don’t even contemplate firing the shutter until it is sharp across both axes. 

Given a sufficient distance between the subject and background and if there isn’t a nagging wind, I would usually use an aperture of f11 or 16 as this would allow me a tiny amount of lee-way.  But, there was a nagging breeze and the background was only a few feet away, so a compromise had to be met.  Shooting at iso 200, I opted for an aperture of f8 which gave me an all-action-stopping 1/20th sec!  Now, this is where Live View really comes into it’s own.  I had to be certain that at full aperture the butterfly was sharp on the eye and along the 2 axes of it’s wings.  I therefore activated LV and zoomed right in to it’s eye, just as if I were zooming into an image to check it’s sharpness after I had taken it.  After focusing on the eye, using the cursor, I then just moved the focusing point to the edges of the wing, checking its sharpness.  My first attempt showed that the wing tip was slightly out of focus as it was further back, so I raised the tripod an inch or so which in turn tipped the camera down and brought the wing into sharpness.  I repeated the process with zooming the LV until all areas were sharp. 

Zooming in and focussing on the eye.

Then checking the sharpness of the wings.

It doesn’t stop there.  Aside from sharpness, any wind movement is greatly magnified at such close quarters, so you need to be sure of a dead calm before taking the picture.  Rather than straining your eye to see when this is, activate the LV again and zoom in a little where any movement immediately becomes apparent.  Cool eh?  Unfortunately, as in all things in life, there is a downside.  With shutter speeds of around 1/15th sec. and longer and especially when working so close, the sudden de-activation of LV and the slap of the mirror during exposure can cause enough vibration to result in unsharpness.  I tested this and it was apparent so I would really only use the technique to see when the wind stops at 1/20th sec. and above.  Of course, if you are shooting a stationary subject such as a mushroom, then simply de-activate LV first and better still, if you have it, use mirror lock-up.

There’s probably some of you reading this saying to yourself, “I’ve been doing that for years.”  But for those of you that haven’t, it’s a jolly useful technique to have up your sleeve.

So, to conclude, is the slightly inferior image quality that I get when shooting at iso 200 with the D300 worth sacrificing for the benefits of Live View? Definitely!  In my book, it’s better to get a tack-sharp image with a bit of grain than it is to have a grain-free out of focus one.

I used a 0.6 (2 stop) ND grad to 'equalise' the exposure of the reflection and sky.

As I parked the car and ran the 100m or so to where I wanted to take the shot (yes, I got there a little late!), I noticed a cow wandering toward me, which, as it got closer, turned out to be a bull.  I was just to the side of its path.  To get back to the car I would have had to run toward the bull.  It looked rather cantankerous, swaying its head from side to side and making low moaning noises.  Cattle are not to be underestimated, as has been documented over the last few months.  I felt pretty nervous I can tell you.  The only place I could go if it charged was in the water.  These are not the kind of thoughts you expect at 4.30 in the morning.  Anyway, it ambled past me and I got my pictures.  Apparently, this particular individual was just roaming around the marsh keeping away from the alpha bull as it were, who, a week earlier had cornered a fireman at a local barn fire!