Goshawk, Eagle Owl & Black Grouse of Finland

Booking: Bookings are now closed for this ongoing or past event.

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Date: Sun 7th Apr - Fri 12th Apr 2024
Price: £3,095.00
Deposit: £310.00
Group size: 6
Tutor / Guide: Robert Canis
Location: Oulu, west Finland.
Duration: 5 nights
Cost includes: All transport within Finland including airport transfers. Breakfast, packed lunch, and dinner. Single/double room occupancy. No single supplement is required. No discount for couples sharing.
Cost excludes: Flights. You will be advised which tickets to purchase. Circa. £450. Insurance and items of a personal nature. Possible cafe stops.
Accommodation: Lovingly restored and opened in 2019 by Finnature's owners, Jari and Kaisa Pelotomaki, our accommodation for the duration of the tour will be Villa Finnature. With walls adorned with their beautiful large prints and bookcases filled to the brim with inspirational nature photography books, they know all too well the needs of photographers and so in each comfortable and spacious bedroom, there are multiple charging points; essential for the digital photographer! Bedrooms are spread on two levels where each person will have a room to themselves with shared facilities, and to keep it fair the room allocation selection will work on a first come first served basis.
Fitness level: Very low. Depending on the conditions, perhaps a couple of hundred metres to the grouse hides through moderately deep snow. Less than 5 metres from the minibus to the owl/goshawk hides! Although we will be in the grouse hides for just three hours, for the eagle owl we will be overnighting in a spacious, comfortable, heated caravan. We will enter at 4pm and leave at 8am the following morning. They're very cosy with a private toilet.
Sunrise / Sunset: 6 / 8.30
Experience Level: Intermediate upwards. A full briefing will be given to everyone prior to any hide photography with hints and tips on settings and lens selection.
Equipment needed: A lens of 400mm upwards will be required for the eagle owl, goshawk and grouse with, potentially, a 1.4x teleconverter. It might be worth hiring such a lens though this is not essential, especially if you have a fairly high (30 MP and above) resolution camera where you can always crop later in post-production.
Booking: Bookings are now closed for this ongoing or past event.

If you would like to hear first about future events, including early access to NEW workshops, click here to subscribe to Robert's monthly newsletter.

Join me on this six-day wildlife photography tour to Finland to photograph some of the most exciting birdlife that Europe has to offer. From our base on its west coast, just 100 miles outside of the Arctic Circle, you will have the opportunity to photograph the incredible goshawk. Europe’s largest owl species - the mystical eagle owl, and one of nature’s great spectacles – lekking black grouse.

There was a time when unless you were photographing the elusive eagle owl at the nest, obtaining close-up images was next to impossible. But, since 2015 at a carefully managed location, they come to feed on a very regular basis – at night. And, at this same location (both day and night) it is also visited by the stunning goshawk. Two nights will be spent in comfortable, heated hides photographing eagle owl and goshawk and three mornings for lekking black grouse. This is also an excellent time to go out on ‘safari’ in search of hunting owls. Finnature is Finland’s oldest and most respected nature photography company and employs only the very best guides so if there are owls around (or anything else come to that that might be of interest including, perhaps, rogue capercaillie) they will know about it!

With such a mix of exciting wildlife subjects, this tour has all the ingredients for a truly memorable photographic experience. I hope you can join me!

Highlights include...
2 x Eagle owl sessions
 2 x Goshawk sessions
3 x Lekking black grouse sessions
Heated hides
Full-board
4WD minibus transportation
Robert Canis plus a Finnature guide: 
Finland's longest-running and most
respected nature photography operator

Download the brochure for the full tour description and itinerary

Finally…
Thank you very much indeed for considering this tour and should you have any questions - however small or insignificant you think they might be - then do drop me a line. I’m here to help and provide you with an incredible experience!

Itinerary
Workshop info

Thank you for dropping by and considering attending a workshop. I love nothing more than to pass on to others the knowledge I have gained over the last 30 years as a professional photographer and 15 as a workshop and tour leader. My group sizes are always small ensuring a fun and friendly group dynamic, lots of 'personal space' in which to photograph without too much fear of others getting in your way and as much tuition as you would like or feel that you need. I hope you can join me!

Although under the 'umbrella' of Workshops, please note there is a difference between the three types that I offer. To avoid any confusion, please see below.

Workshops

Those taking place in the UK are classed as Workshops where learning is the primary aim, and in the case of those which are multi-day residential, very often include image critique and post-processing sessions.

Tours

Overseas trips are classed as Tours where the logistics are all taken care of and where the emphasis is on getting you to great locations at the best time of the day. Since these may include hide photography and working in cold, windy conditions where one-on-one tuition isn't practical, these are less hands-on. However, prior to the hide session or upon arriving at a location, I will give advice and suggestions on composition, lens selection and exposure.

Creative Visions

Creative Visions is a new concept that I have designed to specifically nurture your artistic growth. They can take place in either the UK or abroad combining both workshop and tour principles. There will be critique and post-processing tutorials and, most importantly, you will be encouraged to go beyond the record and representational and instead produce more intimate creative interpretations.

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