The Little Owl

Little Owl landing, backlit by early morning sun

The last Saturday of May. It is still early morning, and I am cold, getting cramped already, hunched over a camera in the confined space of a hide.

Outside, the sun is well above the horizon. Insects play in the shafts of light created by the shadow of an oak tree. The sky above the tree line is deep blue. It is going to be a gorgeous day.

Martin and Neil are sitting next to me in the hide; Neil with binoculars to his eyes, peering through the camouflage netting.

We wait. A few pigeons and jackdaws cross our view, but not the elusive quarry we are here for. The minutes pass like treacle.

A whisper from Neil. "Movement". Quiet. We still wait. "The male is on his high branch in the oak". From my angle, and with the scrim in front of me, I still can't see the bird. But I can feel the tension rise, and I check my camera settings once more, fearful of missing the moment.

"He's coming". I hear him first -- the slight slap of the wings as the bird approaches. I've got him. The camera's viewfinder blinks repeatedly in front of me as I hold down the shutter to get a series of pictures.

And there he is. My heart is beating with delight that the morning's promise is fulfilled. Backlit by early morning sun, the little owl sits on a perch in front of me. He turns and fixes me through my viewfinder with a stare that communicates that he knows I'm here, and defies my intrusion into his domain.

The owl pecks at something -- food for the young in his nest -- and is gone.

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Thanks to Neil

A few more pictures in my photostream on Flickr

At last – Spring is springing!

Greylag goose family in evening sunshine at Oare Marshes

This year has seen a truly miserable run of weather since the New Year. Cold, miserable, grey and far too much late snow. I've just got back from a week in Wales with the family, which turned out to be pretty much a photographic bust: still icy cold with howling gales when we got there, which turned into rain and low cloud. Never mind, a relaxing time with a nice log fire anyhow.

Greylag flying in front of the hide at Oare

Coming back to the South-East of England, though, has been a revelation. Yesterday hit nearly 20°C with gorgeous light towards the end of the day. I could not resist taking the opportunity to get out with the camera, so late afternoon I headed off to Oare Marshes with the hope of seeing some interesting birdlife in the reserve there.

A Sunday evening swim for the family

 There was plenty to see, but one thing that really cheered me up was the sight of a family of greylag geese, with the newborn goslings like bundles of fluff. Mum and dad kept a watchful eye on them as they pecked at the grass, and went for a gentle swim. Even though the RSPB describe greylags as "uninspiring", the sight of new life in warm evening sunshine was truly uplifting.

New life: balls of fluff with parent (an almighty crop from the original image)

Focus stacking wild orchids

Monkey orchid flower head: D300/ 90mm Tamron f/2.8. Focus stacked with Helicon Focus.

Orchids in the landscape. D300/Sigma 10-20mm f/4-5.6

As a follow-up to Martin's last post on photographing wild orchids, here are a couple of mine from this week.

The evening when Martin and I went to see the orchids was very still, so it looked like a good time to photograph them: even though the light was quite dim, the orchids were not moving in any wind, so slow exposures were possible. The sky was also quite bright, which gave the opportunity to open up the shadows in the orchid flowers by using a small reflector positioned at the base of the orchid plant.

I wanted to be able to get some close-up pictures of the flowers where the background was suppressed by being defocussed. The problem with this is that the orchids were in quite dense foliage, so to get an out of focus background means using quite a wide aperture. Correspondingly, there is then the problem of depth of field across the flower. As I have blogged previously, one solution to this problem is to use focus stacking. In this, a series of images is taken by changing the focus point through the subject, and then the images are combined in software (I use Helicon Focus) to produce a sharply focused image across the depth of the subject. The background is still so far out of the plane of focus that stacking does not change its smoothness.

We met Martin's friend Steve at the site, who was also out photographing the orchids. He is another Nikon user, and he offered to lend me his Tamron 90 mm f/2.8 macro lens to use on my D300. The picture at the opening of this blog post (upper picture) is a stack from one of the resulting series of images with his lens (thanks, Steve!). The images were all taken at f/5.6, which I chose to give a sufficiently smooth background, but with enough depth of field within the flower so that the individual planes of focus did not have to be impossibly close to each other. I set the camera onto manual control (aperture, shutter speed and focus), and then used the smallest possible movements of the focusing ring between shots to move the plane of focus across the subject.

Back home, I simply exported 16-bit ProPhoto RGB Tiffs from Lightroom, and popped them into Helicon.  As a first go at focus stacking orchids in the wild, I think it is not too shabby, and the Tamron lens seemed to live up to its very high reputation.

I had taken my own 60 mm micro-Nikkor: although that is a great studio-type lens for flowers, on this occasion I really feel that the extra focal length of the 90 mm was very helpful. It would also have been nice to be able to control the camera using automation to ensure even and small steps. Helicon Remote does this very well, but you need to run it from a laptop, and I have enough to carry without schlepping a laptop on countryside shoots! I see on their forums that Helicon are finding it difficult to adapt Helicon Remote to the iPad: I hope this can be sorted because I think that controlling focus stacking from an iPad in the field would be a very powerful approach.

I went back with Gina a couple of days later. She was also keen to see the orchids, and was an uncomplaining assistant with another shot. The evening we went back it was too breezy for focus stacking -- the orchids were waving around far too much. But the overall light was nicer, so I tried some pictures to show the orchids in their landscape setting (lower image, above).

My idea was to try to show the orchids (really quite small flowers) and the slope of the valley they are growing in. As I've mentioned previously, I have a predilection for using an ultrawide lens; I thought that by getting down to the level of the flowers, and as close to them as possible, with the Sigma 10-20mm lens set at 10 mm on the D300, it should be possible to show them in their context.

Several difficulties came up with this, not the least being that while the lens needed to be set on very close focus for the orchids, but I also wanted to show the extent of the valley. The simplest way to get the required depth of field was to use f/22. If you read the forums, you will be told in no uncertain terms never to stop down this far because diffraction effects will ruin the picture. And there is no question that this setting does nothing for the ultimate sharpness of the image. In general terms, it might have been possible to use focus stacking to achieve the extreme depth of field I wanted, but with the flowers waving in the wind I didn't fancy effects of ghosting. The other problem was with the range of brightness between the side of the valley where the flowers were and the sky that I wanted to include. The brightness range was in excess of four stops. So to get everything on scale with a correct exposure overall in a single image, I put a three stop graduated neutral density filter over the sky (which also impinges on the tree line), and then lit the foreground by firing in a flash through a large diffuser. The flash helped give the orchid colours a bit of pop. I am reasonably happy with the resulting image: it required minimal post processing, and just for tidying up. I suppose I could have HDR’d it, or blended several exposures by hand in Photoshop, but I’d actually prefer not to.

Thinking about it, I think these two pictures illustrate the way I prefer to work. I’ll assemble a picture in post-processing when I need to (there’s no better way to get the first picture than by focus stacking), but I enjoy the challenge of getting a picture in a single raw file if I possibly can, even if it means using a combination of ultrawide lens, tripod, remote release, flash and wireless trigger, diffuser and ND grad. Nothing’s simple!

Lots of fun, and thanks to Martin for getting us there in the first place.

Photographing wild orchids

Introduction

It's all too easy to be lulled into thinking that you have to travel the earth got get interesting photographs. For me, one of the joys of photography is that there vast array of subject matter on my doorstep. All one needs is a bit of imagination and a sense of adventure.

For instance, Anthony and I were on the North Downs in Kent yesterday evening photographing monkey orchid. As well as proving interesting subjects, the peace and tranquillity in the countryside at that time of day proved a real tonic after a hectic day at work. 

In contrast to this, we will be at the Folkestone Air Show on Saturday, with as much noise and raw power that one could want. Totally disparate subjects and environments with entirely different photographic techniques required - a challenge that we both enjoy!

My nature photography journey

I've been interested in nature from a very young age, with a particular fascination for birds. Seasonal, gender and age variation together with migration meaning that there's always something interesting around at any time of the year. I have been photographing birds seriously for about eight years now and last year I diversified and developed a passion for wild orchids. Living in Kent gives me lots of opportunities to capture images of these as there are a number of excellent sites in the county.

My bird photography is characterised by paying very careful attention to the background (diffuse but complementary) as well as rendering the main subject sharp, and my approach to photographing orchids follows the same principles. The advantage with orchids is that they don't fly away; the disadvantage is that they are static and can't 'pose' for you. So it's all about lighting and composition.

I very much like to photography butterflies but numbers are very low this year, I guess in part due to the very wet April.

My approach to photographing orchids

Everyone has their own approach and there's no right or wrong way; that said, some work better than others. Here's a quick check-list:

• Do some research to estimate the best time of year to go for your target species. Some will only be in flower for a couple of weeks and this period will vary from year to year depending on how warm/wet the spring has been
• Keep an eye on the weather forecast and plan your trip for when there will be light winds - ideally less than 5mph - you may think the flower head is not moving but it's the biggest factor leading to blurred images
• Avoid bright sunny days as there is likely to be too much contrast to capture the subtlety of the flowers effectively
• For the two previous reasons I prefer the hour after sunrise and the hour before sunset to maximise my chances
• Equipment wise, an SLR/macro lens combination is preferred. However, any lens with a focal length above 200mm can give good results. A tripod and/or a large beanbag is a must, as is a reflector to push light under your subject when doing close-up shots (don't underestimate the value of these simple props)
• Technically, I use mirror-lock-up in combination with a 2-second timer delay (although many people prefer using cable release)
• I shoot in aperture priority mode, with apertures ranging from f/4 for the whole flower to f/16 for close-ups
• It's then a case of composition and execution - carefully checking exposure, focusing and keeping those backgrounds nice and uncluttered!
• Start wide and work in close - see the examples and comments below

Monkey orchid in their natural environment. Early morning dew still heavy on the vegetation. Note the different shapes and heights. For single flower and close-ups pick a good specimen!

Single flower in its environment. This was taken in direct sunlight - note the high-contrast effect which  is a bit heavy for my taste

Getting in a bit closer now and depth-of-field is much narrower. I like this representation as it focuses the eye on the orchid flower and stem, with a subtle, complementary background melting away

Just the 'flower spike' lots of detail becoming apparent now, with the individual 'monkeys' clearly recognisable. The background is complete mush but a very natural colour!

A single 'monkey'. You really need a macro lens to get in this close.

If you have never photographed wild orchids before I'd recommend you give it a try. You won't get it right first time but you'll start on a journey that is not only fun but it will seriously hone your photographic skills