View on Nature

The music of the Forest

viewonnature — Sun, 13 Nov 2011 10:29:05 +0000

And now for my yearly Fall post! I try do different things each year but I’m always drawn back to 1 or 2 sites which have never left me down. I’ve discovered the secret to sun ray photography and boy, is Fall a good season for that! Mushroom shots are still on my to do list but I haven’t had the time for that unfortunately. So what have I been up to?

Amazing view this was! There’s a small window of just a few days in which all the trees reach their full color potential. The sun is essential as well of course.

One of my favorites! Amazing leaf colors.

Looks like a harp right?

Gorgeous sunrise. I cropped it to 2×1 for a more panoramic view.

Please have a look at more of my recent shots.

Until next time!

I am haunted by light

viewonnature — Sun, 23 Oct 2011 16:06:52 +0000

Finally something new, or at least a little bit new as I’ve done these kind of shots before. It has been a somewhat unproductive last few weeks for me, hence the lack of posts. I took several decent shots but unfortunately, most were missing the X-factor. Now that Fall has kicked in, things are starting to pick up again and I’m eagerly awaiting the Fall climax of my favorite forest. I took some of my very best landscape photo’s over there. Anyways.. time for the new stuff:

Tips: know how to work with HDR software and learn not to overdo the HDR effects! Maybe I already did that here, but I’m still learning ;. Furthermore, these kind of images don’t just pop-up out of nowhere. I took location, season, time and weather conditions into account and ended up with the shot above and those below. I actually have another one with joggers that come running out of the light, really great shot. Fills up the void a bit.

I call this one: between two Giants:

Tips: basically pay attention to composition when these rays are visible. Keep in mind that this effect is not visible when you walk 10 meters to your right or left. Search for spots where the light hits the ground (those are the rays you are looking for!).

Tips: look for a decent composition. In most cases you are bound by the location so look for a good one! This location isn’t bad but it can be better of course!

Tips: Fall is the season! Have a good, soft, colorful background. This one is too plain for my taste but I’m still happy with it. Experiment with flash and point the flash in different directions towards the subject.

Last one, but definitely not the least I would say! This was an awesome moment:

Tips: it basically comes down to some luck! But also looking around when taking a walk, fast handling and good material. Unfortunately this is somewhat cropped but I’m still very happy with this one!! Amazing how these birds can balance on something that small.

Until next time!

Into the woods

viewonnature — Sun, 21 Aug 2011 15:42:22 +0000

After a long spell of bad weather my Saturday started sunny and it remained so until sunset. I had set my alarm clock at 6.00 am, knowing that the sun would rise at 6.30 am. I looked out my window and I was greeted by open skies and foggy trees in the distance. Fog and clear skies form a good combination so I decided to head out into the woods. I found this great open place with old and majestic trees that I thought would be excellent for the shots I had already thought up in my mind. I often form these images in my head that I would like to shoot in real life. I then ponder about the ‘how’, ‘when’, and ‘where’ question and start to look for the right places. I found a place not long after my pondering so that’s where I decided to go (nature photography tip: know your places). I knew from experience that sunny skies and misty weather conditions go well together and my experience proved me right once more:

To clarify how I took these photo’s I must first explain that a camera does not have the dynamic range of the human eye. Our eyes can adjust to various intensities of light, thereby letting you see detail in dark places, even when there’s a bright light source in your point of view (to a certain extent, the human eye does have its limits of course). Unfortunately, for the camera this is a different story. If you have very dark and very light area’s in your camera’s field of view, it’s dynamic range is not large enough to accurately expose both the light and the dark places. You as a photographer have to tell the camera what to base the exposure on (dark area, light area, or the area in between). You basically want every point of your photo to be exposed correctly. The way to solve this is to shoot several bracketed photo’s, each about 1 stop apart, and digitally merge these later on using HDR software (I used Photomatix Pro). You will get a range of photo’s that will go from underexposure to overexposure, thereby toning down the highlights and lighting up the shadows. The software will determine what area’s of your 3, 5 or 7 shots are correctly exposed and combine these into 1 image. You have to use a tripod though to get images that accurately overlap. After some small fine tuning in the software you can get a ‘realistic’ HDR photo that more resembles what your eyes actually saw. You can do this to varying degrees but I like to keep it more realistic in stead of the abstract you often see with HDR photo’s as well. What you would use depends on your personal taste of course.

So in summary: know your area, weather conditions, choose a correct lens (in my case a Nikon 10-24mm), decide to bracket, know how to work with HDR software.

After my visit to the forest I went to the heather of National Park the Meinweg. The heath bushes have almost reached their full flowering stage and are already creating seas of blooming pink/purple colors. No HDR this time as I did not take my tripod with me (in stead, I used an extended monopod to get a higher point of view).

Until next time!

Nature photography – how does it work?

viewonnature — Sat, 06 Aug 2011 12:52:58 +0000

Before I show you my last photo’s I wanted to write a ‘small’ piece about what, I believe, is needed to become successful at nature photography (photo’s are below the text). Many people seem to think that the right gear will give you great shots, and this is true to a certain extent, but unfortunately a little bit less so for nature photography. What’s most important is being there at the right moment, at the right time to capture these moments (this is actually true for all things in life of course). You can have the best gear available but it’s useless when there’s nothing to take pictures of. It will give you a broader range of opportunities though (higher ISO, longer range (mm’s) etc) and thus a higher chance of a good shot or qualitatively better shots. Below you will find (in bold) some factors which I believe are essential to become a good nature photographer.

First of all, patience is key! You will often have to sit and wait for hours in your hide for something to photograph. The worse you are at choosing a correct site (and moment!) the more time you will have to spend in your hide! Things I often do when waiting for something to happen is playing Angry Birds, reading a book or just surfing the internet. Depending on your subject though, you will have to pay a lot of attention in order not to miss the correct moment. In general, decent preparations can lower your time in the tent. That’s where the next part of the puzzle comes into play:
Knowing your subject. The more you know about the behavior of your subject, the higher the chances are that you will be able to setup a ‘meet’ and get close. Often, you will need to read into your subject or observe them for some time. Know where and when they will be. For Kingfishers this comes down to knowing when and where they have a nest and also in what developmental stage their young are (how old is the nest). You can see this by the type of prey the adults bring into the nest (e.g. insects or very small fish means early development; larger fish means that the youngsters are just a few days away from leaving the nest). Same goes for Roe Deer. They mostly come out of hiding in the early morning or late in the afternoon/evening so you have to make sure you are present then and make sure that they don’t smell you (so check the wind direction and anticipate where the sun will be when your subject arrives). This last part has to do with:
Experience. The more failures you have, the more you will have learned. The more you learn, the higher the chances are of a successful encounter the next time because you should now know what not to do! An example would be to enter an area when the Roe Deer are already present. You will learn that they will see/smell you and run off or be very cautious. This leaves you with no opportunity to setup your tent/gear. The right approach into an area is very important (e.g. time and wind direction).
Know your gear. You will need to know which buttons to press. How’s my light? What ISO do I need? Do I expect action or will my subject be standing still most of the time? Does my bird have bright white patches or does it have darker colors (e.g. white spots on the cheeks of King Fishers will often be overexposed compared to the other blue parts, so take that into account when setting your exposure). Same goes for white swans or black crows… Do you need fast autofocus? If so, use the AF limiting dial for faster focus. And the list goes on and on…
Another important factor is the area you will spend your time in. Nature photographers generally invest most of their time in an area that is close to their home (e.g. within appr. 5-15 km from their house) because those are the area’s they will visit most often. There are area’s in which you can easily find roe deer when taking a walk but also area’s in which you have to invest a lot of time to get great (acceptable) shots (e.g. National Park the Meinweg; hunters like to keep the deer density low and their fridges well filled). And with acceptable I mean that you have to get the roe deer within 10-20m from you. A minor note about this range. You will often see shots of foxes that seem to have been made within 5m of the fox. This can either mean that a nature photographer has spend hours and hours observing/searching for foxes and made his ‘battle plan’ but it can also mean that the images were taken in an area in which you can approach the (domesticated) fox within 5 meters because they are extremely tame. This has nothing to do with nature photography! Don’t be fooled, no skill was needed to take these shots. Same goes for bird shows where you can find the most rare or endangered species. There is no skill in taking these kind of shots and many nature photographers refuse to even take their camera’s out (including me).
Next up is Luck. Sometimes you will get lucky if you just happen to run into a bird feeding on whatever. These encounters are rare and are never ‘controllable’ in that you can’t decide up front what kind of shot you want to have. For this, you will need to spend quality time with your camouflage tent . But your ‘luck’ can be increased when you have the right experience and preparations. Laying out bait (e.g. dead pigeon) in winter time at a place you know that is regularly visited by bird of prey will get you great shots. But again, you need the luck that one of those birds sees your bait, but you also needed to get the idea into your head to use bait, sit at the correct site, and at the correct moment. Many factors play a role, of which luck is most often just a small one.
Furthermore, you will need a lot of dedication. There are times that you will sit in your hide for hours and hours without seeing anything. Most often, this is a combination of bad luck, bad preparation, wrong time, wrong place. Dedication is needed to get into your hide the next day, and the day after that to get what you were looking for. I’ve spend over 30 hours in a tent for the last few weeks just to try and get close to Roe Deer, wild boar, a buzzard and so on. Nothing, Nada to show for it. So dedication and perseverance is needed! But I’ve learned from these failures and will try not to make them the next time.
In order to take great shots you will also need talent! You do need a good eye for taking the right shots. Make the right composition when in the field, and not while behind your computer at home. You need a feeling about how to make the picture speak. Talent is something which can be developed of course by experience/learning. A good base level of talent is essential though.
Craziness. You have to be somewhat nuts to sit in a tent in the freezing cold for several hours, waiting for that buzzard to come along. And then when it doesn’t, you have to be crazy enough to do the same thing again the next few days (perseverance, also see dedication above).
Another important factor is a social network. You alone won’t be able to see all that goes on in a specific area. Have a network of people that are also interested in nature and ask them to let you know when they see something special you might want to photograph. In the Netherlands we have waarneming.nl for that. This is a website dedicated to nature observations and can be divided into specific sub area’s. Whenever a member goes into an area and spots wild life, birds, plants etc. they put that into the website’s database for all to see. This is a very efficient way to get to know an area. Other examples are joining a nature group that has regular field visits etc. The more people you know, the more information you will have, the more chances you have of taking great shots.

Now that’s basically what I wanted to share with your. Now time for the news:

Beaver:

Tips: know your area (bite marks on trees), be there at the correct moment (dusk), be a little bit lucky .

Hovering dragonfly:

Tips: know where they are, when they mate, when they will hold still long enough for you to take a shot. Gear: use a macro lens with enough mm’s, choose a high F-number to get more depth of field, choose a high shutter speed.

Flower macro:

Tips: know where to find these flowers, if the light is bad (which it was) use a flash and try to point it in different directions relative to the flowers.

I think I might start giving these tips from now on on how I took my shots and which decisions I made when taking them.

Until next time!

Colors of Summer

viewonnature — Mon, 18 Jul 2011 14:45:31 +0000

I made it back alive and well from my trip to India. It certainly is a special country with special people… The city of Hyderabad is one big dump but the traffic is kind of ‘fun’ though. They just go left to right, to left, honking the horn every 10 seconds or so. When its dark you can really see the amount of pollution in the streets when all the exhaust fumes are lit up by the car lights. It is definitely not healthy to spend a lot of time in that traffic. Crossing the road is exciting though :p. Did it twice and don’t like to do it a third time. Cows, dogs and pigs live next to the road and so do the people. Tents made up of plastic and twigs next to the roads make for an impressive, though sad, scenery. Little boys and girls coming to beg to you for money and food at the local markets..

Anyways, enough on India (I didn’t take any camera with me so no photographs to share with you). So now I am back in the good old Netherlands, where the food doesn’t burn holes in your mouth (I hate spicy food, and that’s about all they had in India), I finally have 3 weeks off from work and now the weather s*cks big time. Rainy, windy, cloudy. I guess I will go to work again and have no Summer holidays this year. It’s a shame to spend my holidays inside watching the Tour de France..

So, now for the photo’s! My favorite subjects for the Summer are Day Lilies. They have such great colors and allow me to take the best out of my Sigma 150mm macro lens. Amazing colors and bokeh:

Another one that I really like is this lady bug. I should have chosen a larger depth of field but then I might have had a too slow shutter speed.

Anyways, that’s it for today. Hopefully the weather clears up a bit but I fear it will not so I will probably go back to work once again.

Until next time!

Meet Beautiful Gorgeous!

viewonnature — Sun, 19 Jun 2011 09:38:23 +0000

One of my photography dreams has always been photographing a little owl (steenuil in Dutch). Well, this week I was granted a 10 second dream when one landed on my branch. I of course knew that they were present in the area so I had started to catch mice, and even a mole, to help with the feeding. Every evening I placed a freshly caught mouse on my branch thereby hoping that the owls would start to use it as their regular feeding place. Sure enough, all the mice were gone the next day. Now I still didn’t know if the owls got them or maybe a Crow or Magpie. So on a sunny evening I sat underneath my camouflage net when, very silently, this little guy flew in and sat on my branch. Light conditions were terrible unfortunately but 1/20s still works decently I’d say.. After 5 shots, he didn’t trust it anymore and flew off. The mouse was gone the next day though :p.

Another favorite subject is the daylily. Gorgeous flower:

Until next time!

Sitting, waiting, wishing…

viewonnature — Sun, 05 Jun 2011 18:38:41 +0000

Since my last Kingfisher post I’ve had the opportunity to take a week off from work. The weather forecast was good so things were looking quite positive. I planned to spend a lot of time at one of my Kingfisher sites in order to take those dream shots of parents feeding their young etc. So, I created an excellent site at which the youngsters could dine and I could sit with my tent. Things were a little bit tricky since I had to cross the river to get there, also meaning that I had to walk through the, relatively fast flowing, river with about 10k worth of gear on my back. You don’t want to take a swim then I can tell you! Luckily it all worked out and I was able to spend, ow lets say, 14 hours in my tent. Result: nothing, nada (hence the ‘sitting, waiting, wishing’ title). They just did’t like my branches or something.. (even though I saw them sitting on them a few times when I was observing them). To get my dream shots I even got up at 5 am, something I don’t like to do at all :p. So, it wasn’t meant to be. Another subject I wanted to photograph under somewhat more controlled conditions were wild boar. So I got up at 5 am (again…) and went to my favorite forest. No luck! They didn’t show up.
Luckily, the one thing you can always count on (besides taxes and death) is the sun! That’s when this happened:

Great moment!

So the morning wasn’t a total waste. On my way home I also drove past this barley field which was also the home of a lot of red poppies. So that’s were the following shot was taken. I really like the flying bumble bee.

The last shot is a woodpecker silhouette. I actually took this one while waiting for the wild boar. I underexposed this photo and then darkened it a bit further in Lightroom. I really like the blue color in the darkness.

That’s it for today. Until next time!

Gone fishing..

viewonnature — Sun, 22 May 2011 10:55:27 +0000

Lately I have been busy with several different projects which took a while to pay themselves off. I’ve mentioned in some of my previous posts that I’ve been busy observing king fishers for the past few weeks and that I managed to find some pairs that are in love with each other. Now, one thing leads to another of course, and the female, as in any other relationship, starts to show clear ‘nesting’ behavior. For humans this means regular visits to the Ikea in which the male, under supervision of the female, has to pick out the right cushions for the new sofa. If the chosen color or fabric of the cushions is not to the liking of the female, the mating is postponed until the male comes up with the correct combination of both color and fabric… For king fishers, this whole selection process basically comes down to fish. If the male wants to win over the heart of the female, he basically has to present her with a dozen fish. Now the (emancipated) female, rather catches her own fish instead of accepting the gracious present of the hard working/fishing male. Were it not for persisting males (both humans and birds), both populations would be doomed of course. So after several gracious fish presentations, the (bird, not human) female gives in and the romantic mating ritual can begin. For humans, this is a little bit more complicated since the male also has to pay the restaurant bills and hold open as much doors as possible for the female. Since I don’t have any pictures of mating humans to show you (even though I would consider this to be ‘nature photography’) I will stop with the whole human – bird analogy and continue with the king fishers.

Now one of the nesting sites is situated along a small creek somewhere in the middle of a dense forest (so pretty bad light conditions!). I carefully entered the area trying not to step on any branches, most of the time succeeding in this, and pretty much always getting my Wimberley tripod head stuck in some branches.. Anyways.. first I always sit down about 50-100m from the nest to listen if there’s any activity going on. I can’t just walk in uninvited to their romantic candle light dinner now can I? So, after about 5 minutes of quietness I sneaked towards some sticks that I placed above the water for the king fishers to sit on before they would enter their nests. They often use these kind of look outs for resting or cleaning themselves. I unpacked my tent and gear and was ready for the birds. After about 10 minutes (of playing Angry Birds on my phone), I suddenly heard the unmistakable sound of an approaching king fisher. He landed on one of my branches and I was able to take a few great shots. Now, as I previously mentioned, the light conditions in the forest are really bad. After a few try-outs I noticed that I could still get amazingly sharp images at ISO 200 and 1/15s. Luckily these king fishers don’t move around that much and can sit perfectly still. I decided to focus on limiting my ISO to 250 since 1/15s produced excellent images. Having a Nikon 500mm f4 VR on an excellent Gitzo and Wimberly head II also does wonders of course! For the first shots I noticed that I was sitting too close to the branches since my lens couldn’t focus close enough (3.85 meters). All of the shots below are therefore full-frame! So I did some camouflage-tent re-decorating and was able to move it back by half a meter. Next time I have to try to increase my F-number to get some more depth of field. It is way too narrow now at f4, but I think I need some more light to do this.

Whenever the birds didn’t land on either of my 2 branches, I spent the time observing their behavior. They didn’t just have 1 nest but also a freshly dug outhouse and garage. That’s 3 in a row.. a real settlement. Let’s hope that they will start with a second round of mating really soon to improve the population figures (the king fishers have had some harsh winters for the past few years). So after a few hours of taking photo’s I suddenly noticed I got several small itches all over my arms. These itches were caused by little ticks crawling over my arms to find a nice spot to dig in and suck the life out of me. Luckily I was able to get all 8!! of them off of me. These little buggers can be quite dangerous since about 15% of the ticks are carriers of the bacteria that cause Lyme Disease. So there is a realistic chance of getting this disease, something not to be taken lightly of course. So I was freaking out a little bit since they were just crawling all over me. Last year I got 8 in 3 months, in this half an hour yesterday I had already broken that record. I decided to call it a day and drove home and took a shower as soon as possible to try and wash those ticks off that I couldn’t find. I looks like I’m tick free for now.. However, I think I will go back there in the coming days since the youngsters are about ready to leave the nest. Once that happens, I can have 3 or 4 king fishers sitting on my branches at any given time. I’ll have to take even better precautions to prevent the ticks from forming a problem.

Next to my king fisher expedition I also visited a site which had a rare Melodious Warbler (Orpheusspotvogel). These are quite rare for the Netherlands and the little guy soon attracted bird watchers from all over the country (it was like last years bee eaters all over again). Here it is:

Until next time!

Baby bringers..

viewonnature — Sun, 08 May 2011 15:08:16 +0000

A quick post this time as I don’t really have any interesting to tell :p. The first photo is of a White Stork. I had just prepared my ‘natural’ hide in a nearby forest (for wild boar) and was cycling home when I suddenly saw 7! White Stork together in a field. The field had just been ploughed over and the birds were eating up all the goodies. So, I sneaked in closer for a few shots and was able to take this stunning image:

The next one is of some tulips:

Also check out my website / recent photo’s for some more latest photo’s that didn’t make the cut for the blog!

I currently have several ongoing projects that eat up most of my free time (e.g. wild boar, black woodpecker, king fisher, foxes etc). I hope to have more on that in the next few weeks but unfortunately patience is a virtue which I don’t always possess .

Until next time!

Magic…

viewonnature — Mon, 25 Apr 2011 16:28:12 +0000

A magic moment through the leaves (hence the ‘vagueness’). How about that bokeh huh!

10 seconds later:

Until next time!