wildlife
20 years of lecturing
I have been giving talks for many years now on nature and wildlife photography. Infact, my first one was some 20 years ago to the Swale Group of the Kent Wildlife Trust. Since then I have, easily, given in excess of 400 to all manner of clubs and societies throughout England in the autumn and winter months, ranging from gardening societies and WI’s to the RPS and National Trust. I just love communicating, whether it be about wildlife in general or nature photography. Typically, at some point, I’ll digress as I recall a particular moment while out in the countryside watching and photographing, a funny (to me, at least) story or get on my soapbox and have a moan or two about current issues, not least the proposed airport on the Thames Estuary…..Grrrrr!! But this, I feel (and hope) gives the talk a personal touch. Otherwise I may as well hand out scripts for the audience to read as I move from one image to another.
It goes without saying that you need to structure a talk, particularly if it is about a certain area but, I have to say, the one I enjoy most is that which I came up with after returning year upon year to the same clubs which were, as a result, rapidly exhausting my portfolio. The title I have given it is “Bob’s Best of the Year.” It does what is says on the tin. A selection of my favourite images taken over the last year (to 18 months!). It not only gives the audience something different every year but, from a personal perspective, it allows me the opportunity to review my own work taken over that period. As photographers we tend to go from one subject or project to another and rarely look back at what we have achieved and, dare I say it, even pat ourselves on the back for a job well done. Nothing wrong with a little self gratification!
Ultimately, it is the response of the audience either during or after that keeps me on the lecture circuit, particularly if members come up during the interval or afterwards to comment on how much they enjoyed it or to ask questions. As I said, at the beginning, I just love communicating and so, if after a talk, I have enthused or inspired a member of the audience to try their hand at a field of photography they hadn’t yet considered or made others think that actually, it’s not just a piece of marsh with sheep on it and that it REALLY is worth conserving, then I shall remain on that treadmill for many, many years to come. That is, if they sill want me!
Below are just a few letters I have received over the years and, if you belong to a club and are on the lookout for a speaker, then why not get in touch.
On behalf of the Clacton Camera Club a very BIG THANK YOU for coming all this way and giving your lecture and showing so much of your work. I think and hope you could tell by the atmosphere, chatter and enthusiasm of your audience what an excellent evening you gave us. I am sure we will be talking about you and your images for many weeks to come. The evening seemed to go all too quickly, and we have had many phone calls thanking us for the evening, an evening which you made special.
Jean Pain, Programme Secretary, Clacton Camera Club
Many thanks for coming along yesterday and speaking to the Croydon Group both in the afternoon and evening. Your talk on Wildlife of the North Downs went down very well and your photographs were superb. I understand we had a record turnout for both meetings! I hope you had a safe journey home and look forward to inviting you back at a future date.
Judith Dunworth, Indoor Meetings Organizer, RSPB Croydon Local Group
I would like to thank you very much for such an interesting talk entitled ‘Field Techniques in Nature Photography’ and I know members were impressed with the amount of information received on wildlife, as well as all the various tips on taking such wonderful photographs. I particularly like the hares! Many members were enthused about the evening and I was very pleased with the turnout – one of the best.
Margaret Rimmer, Secretary, EPIC (Eynsford Photographic Image Club)
Environmental Photographer of the Year – Highly Commended
Last week, I received some rather good news. My image, below, of a female glow worm, glowing has just been awarded Highly Commended in the Environmental Photographer of the Year and will appear in the exhibition at the SW1 Gallery in London. It’s the first time I have entered this competition and, with over 10,000 entries from 105 countries, I’m pretty chuffed! 
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.
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.
Exhibition
From Tuesday October 26th to the following Tuesday November 2nd I will be holding an exhibition of my photography at the Riverside Country Park in Gillingham, Kent. The title of which will be “Secret Life of Kent: It’s wildlife and Landscape.”
It has been timed to coincide with Kent’s Coastal Week which runs from Saturday 23rd to Sunday 31st October. A series of events are to be held across Kent celebrating Kent’s wildlife and to give an insight into the work carried out by a multitude of organisations that are responsible for managing our coast line. For more details regarding this please visit the Kent County Council website where a downloadable programme of events is available.
Common buzzard. An image featured in the exhibition.
The exhibition will consist of several very large impressive framed prints and a number of slightly smaller ones depicting the wonderful and diverse wildlife and landscape of my home county, Kent. All are limited edition and available to purchase. I will be there in person on the opening day giving 3 2 hour photography workshops (no spaces available, all booked up!) so you may be able to catch me in between giving these.
Seal Circus
I have only been to this location once, in 1992. Those of you that are familiar with seal photography will know where Iam talking about and for those of you that don’t, all I will say is that it is on the Lincolnshire coast. Please read on to find out why I do not give it’s exact whereabouts. Back then, it was hardly known of and indeed all I wanted to do as a 22 year old was photograph grey seals that autumn. I understood through popping into my local library (this was, after all before the days of the web) that they come ashore from October to February to breed and give birth along the Norfolk and Lincolnshire coast and further. So, I first wrote a letter that summer to the Lincolnshire Wildlife Trust who gave me the address of the warden who I also then wrote to. All this communication by ‘snail-mail’ took several weeks but in the end I was given details of where I should be able to find them.
I was advised by the warden to only go there at the weekend, for a very good reason. I drove up on the Friday with my dad, booked into a B&B then went to the local pub for lunch. Whilst at the pub we chatted to locals who gave us directions as to where the best spot is for seeing them so later that afternoon we parked the car where they suggested and walked along the dunes where lo and behold there they were! What a sight I thought. All the letter writing and driving had finally paid off. I remember taking quite a few shots but at the same time being mindful that I only had a certain amount of film with me. Seems funny looking back on it in this digital age that you had to consider things like that.
The following dawn we both walked across the beach, which took around half an hour to where the main colony was. The early mist cleared and I began shooting with seals all around. But, the images I was really after were of the seals swimming, perhaps with their heads bobbing in the water, typical of this species. But the North Sea didn’t play ball. It was very rough and they were concealed most of the time by the waves. In my concentration I forgot about the waves and all of a sudden my wellington’s were filled with ice cold sea water. Not very pleasant I can tell you! My dad however, in typical fashion, came prepared with spare socks and bags which I slipped my feet into and then back into the wellies. Arh, warm and dry again. On the Sunday however a kind of estuary occurred between the sea and main beach which the seals seemed to be enjoying. It was like a mill pond. I set up the camera on the tripod and just sat there while cows and bulls swam close by, sometimes so close they filled the frame too much. I looked behind me to see my dad with two pups that had come up to him. Looking back I wish I’d taken a photo of that moment but was too focused on the job in hand. How many others were there to share this? Three at the most. Colleagues tell me it’s a very different matter these days. Donna Nook is a ‘must’ for nature photographers fuelling their need to photograph these animals and for pro’s to further saturate the market with identical looking images. On Alamy alone there are 2746 images if you type in the location and my own agent has 186 images and I’m sure they have a lot more taken here which the author has omitted from the caption. Many thousands now go there and every year there seems to be stories about irresponsible behaviour by photographers, getting too close and stressing the animals.
Nikon F4, 500mm f4P, Kodachrome 64.
I don’t think there were many photographers that knew of that site at the time as within months of me submitting the images to my then agent Planet Earth Pictures they were were being used in newspapers, calendars and magazines and even Getty took a few. Certainly images of them were few and far between and unlike others I didn’t immediately start doing workshops there to make a few quid, one of the main reasons I believe for the surge, even before internet forums. I’m personally very reluctant to give away subject locations these days of those areas that may attract large numbers of photographers and indeed only do so to a few like-minded friends and colleagues. This isn’t because I’m worried that they may take similar or better images and put them in the market place in competition with me but that ultimately the subject may become stressed by the sheer number of others in that vicinity. And anyway, surely by doing your own homework you will benefit from producing your own set of fresh images and the personal satisfaction that comes from doing so.
Last year I worked on a site for several weeks photographing a short-eared owl from my car. Using a hide wasn’t an option as it hunted in a field adjacent to a road. I would sit there patiently most afternoons observing and photographing until one afternoon I turned up and there were at least 8 photographers semi-blocking the road with their cars, standing next to the field, cameras on tripods, noisily chatting to one another. The owl did appear but of course headed for the far end of the field and eventually crossed to another some distance away. A perfect example of inconsiderate behaviour by those that were acting as though they were on an outing, comparing lenses and tripods than actually taking into account the well-being of the bird and observing from a discreet distance, inside their vehicles.
I have to say that I’m reluctant to go back to the same seal colony as I fear it will tarnish the perfect memory of spending two whole days with the seals and my dad on an almost empty beach. Instead, I’m looking for a fresh venue and I think I may have just found one.
Brents
Although north Kent in autumn and winter has an influx of waders and wildfowl, geese, to a certain degree don’t tend to come this far down in the kind of huge numbers you can experience in Norfolk. So every year I look forward to the arrival of the brent geese with its far carrying call of the north. Brent geese are the most northerly breeding geese in the world and every autumn travel over 2,500 miles from their tundra breeding grounds in Siberia. Their route follows the coastline of northern Russia, through the White Sea and Baltic Sea and along the North Sea coast and the English Channel. That’s quite a trip for the smallest goose to visit our shores!
There are two races of brent goose. The dark-bellied form as pictured here, which winters in western Europe, with over half the population in southern England and the pale-bellied race. The latter breed in Greenland, Svalbard and Canada and winter in Denmark, north-east England, Northern Ireland and the Atlantic coast of the U.S. from Maine to Georgia.
Brent Geese (dark-bellied form) in flight.
Brent Goose (dark-bellied form) landing to feed.
Brent Geese (dark-bellied form) feeding on mud-flats.
Brent Goose (dark-bellied form) in flight.
Brent Geese (dark-bellied form) flying over mud-flats.
Over the years I have ammased quite a number of images of this species but I’m unsure I will ever truly be able to do this bird the justice it so deserves, but I’ll have fun trying, that’s for sure. And who knows, perhaps I’ll even get to see them at their breeding grounds one day.
About Robert Canis
Robert Canis is a professional photographer specialising in the natural world.
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