Easdon Tor is on the east of Dartmoor, England, close to the villages of North Bovey and Manaton. It may not seem a particularly notable tor. Its peak is a collection of dilapidated rocks and an OS trig pillar.  However, at its 439m peak the 360-degree view is spectacular, with Hameldown ridge to the west, Haytor and Hound Tor to the south and the market town of Moretonhampstead  to the north-east.  On a clear day the English Channel is visible in the far distance.

The picturesque village of North Bovey on the north-easterly slope of the tor is a highlight in its own right, with its thatched cottages, a splendid pub (The Ring of Bells) and the River Bovey meandering past.  Easdon Tor and its slopes have varied vegetation, with open moorland, bracken, heather and gorse, as well as mixed woodland, particularly to the north and east.

This varied landscape and the fact that this tor is somewhat outside the oft trodden tourist paths on Dartmoor, makes Easdon tor highly suitable for a spot of bird photography. It is one of my favourite places for a quiet day with my camera and the 800mm lens which is perfect for bird photography.

I have meandered around this tor on quite a few occasions with my long lens, spending hours patiently seeking birds. I often bring a portable camping stool and a monopod and sit for long stints quietly letting the birds come to me.  With patience this can be really rewarding.  Other times I simply hang my camera and lens on a shoulder harness and trek around Easdon, observing the birdlife from one of the many granite rocks scattered across the landscape. And the beauty of it all, I rarely encounter another human being to scare away the birds.

One thing is for sure, I will be back to Easdon Tor with my camera soon hunting for further bird species to capture, and for better images of birds I have already photographed.  I am particularly keen to observe and photograph the Redstart and the Yellowhammer.  But any beautiful bird will do … and there are plenty on this underrated tor.

The collection of images in this blog post is just a small sample of the abundant birdlife in this part of Dartmoor.  I will let the photos and the captions do the talking …

Here on Dartmoor it has rained every day so far this year.  The rainfall has often been heavy and constant, which is not really optimal conditions for wildlife photography, or any photography.  But, yesterday the sun managed to win the battle of the sky for a few hours before the rain continued …

Is this a sign that the weather will improve as we move towards spring?  The snowdrops think so, as they’ve popped up like a white carpet across the ground.  Fingers crossed …

For several years now I have used a pair of ProGrade Cobalt 325Gb CFexpress Type B version 2.0 (v2.0) cards in my Nikon Z9.  These cards and the Delkin Black cards have always featured prominently as recommended cards for the Z9.  The ProGrade cards have been flawless so far.  I’ve experienced no issues and they have been fast and reliable.

However, I have been on the outlook for larger capacity cards for the Nikon Z9 recently, and when my local photo shop had the Delkin Black 650Gb v2.0 cards at 50% sale, then I pounced.  But, alas, the shop sent me the wrong cards.  Instead of the v2.0 cards they sent me two Delkin Black 650Gb CFexpress Type B version 4.0 (v4.0) cards.

The Nikon Z9 was released when the v2.0 cards were the fastest available, and it is built to take full advantage of these cards.  The v4.0 card specification was announced in autumn 2023 and have on paper much improved performance characteristics.  Thes cards have exactly the same form factor as the v2.0 cards, but utilise newer PCI bus standards, theoretically doubling the throughput performance of the v2.0 cards.  The v4.0 Delkin Black have a marketed max read speed of 3530Mb/s and max write speed of 3250Mb/s.  Twice the speed of the v2.0 ProGrade Cobalt cards I have up till now used in my Nikon Z9.  The Cobalt card has a max read speed of 1700Mb/s and write speed of 1500Mb/s.

The Z9 cannot take advantage of the improved throughput capability of the v4.0 cards.  I was pondering sending back the Delkin v4.0 cards as the shop was very helpful and apologetic, but then I decided to keep the v4.0 cards and find out how they would work with my Nikon Z9 and my 4-year-old Sony CFexpress card reader (model MRW-G1).  Were indeed these cards as backward compatible as claimed?  Would there be any performance implications?  After all there is an element of future-proofing in sticking with the v4.0 cards, as no doubt future Nikon cameras, such as the Z9ii will be built to take advantage of the latest cards’ standard and capability.  So, I decided to do a bit of quick testing …

Z9 speed test and comparison

Method used:  First, I did a full format of the new Delkin Black v4.0 cards in the Z9.  I only tested for photography, not video, as that is what I use the Nikon Z9 for.  The Z9 had the latest firmware (v5.30).  I put the Z9 in Manual mode, on ISO100, 1/2000s shutter and f/2.8 aperture. I put on a 28mm lens, with the lens cap on.  I turned the camera shutter sound on.  The frame rate was set to 20 frames per second (fps), which is the maximum for Raw shooting.

I tested both Full Lossless Raw and High Efficiency* (HE*) Lossy Raw.  Using a stopwatch, I pressed the shutter and kept it down, listening to the rhythm of the shutter sound, waiting for it to slow down to less than 20fps as the card started to struggle to keep up with the data load throw at it.  For each Raw format I repeated this continuous burst test 5 times.  I did a full format of the card before each test burst.  If the shutter speed did not slow down after 10 seconds I stopped.  10 seconds at maximum fps equates to 200 images and more than enough for most wildlife action.  Below are my findings:

ProGrade Cobalt 325Gb v2.0:

• Lossless Raw: Continuous max burst 4.5 seconds (90 frames). Shutter speed slowed significantly after 4.5s but it kept the burst going.

• High Efficiency* Raw: Continuous max burst 10 seconds (200 frames). Test stopped after 10 seconds as no drop in performance observed. Assume max rate can be sustained till card is full.

Delkin Black 650Gb v4.0:

• Lossless Raw: Continuous max burst 4.3 seconds (87 frames). Shutter speed slowed significantly after 4.3s but it kept the burst going.

• High Efficiency* Raw: Continuous max burst 10 seconds (200 frames). Test stopped after 10 seconds as no drop in performance observed. Assume max rate can be sustained till card is full.

Speed test conclusion:  For all intents and purposes the cards perform similarly and very well.  I mostly shoot High Efficiency* compressed lossy Raw which is a superb format with indistinguishable results in most situations from lossless Raw at 60% of the same file size.  This is the default Raw setting in my camera.  And with HE* both types of cards can shoot continuously at max burst rate for a long time.  The cards’ write speed can keep up with the demand of the Z9.  Even with full lossless Raw, ~4-5 seconds of action before the frame rate slows down is sufficient in most scenarios.

An interesting aside:  When performing full card formatting in camera (which is what I do between shoots to ensure a clean reset of the card), the Delkin Black v4.0 was significantly slower than the ProGrade Cobalt v2.0.  It takes ~1.5s to complete a full format of the ProGrade Cobalt card, but a much longer ~18s to complete a full format of the Delkin Black card.  Not that this has much of a practical implication, as it is not something I do in the field.

Card reader test and performance

My CFexpress v2.0 card reader from Sony (model MRW-G1) had no problems with the newer v4.0 cards.  I tested uploads of 200 HE* raw files (average size 29.5Mb) shot with both cards three times each.  Upload speeds were similar for both type of cards using this reader.  Clearly a v4.0 reader will likely provide improved upload speeds depending on the performance of your computer and ports/cables.

Overall conclusion

With the v4.0 cards now becoming prevalent, and they seem to be considerably cheaper in $/Gb terms than the fast v2.0 cards recommended for the Z9, it makes sense to invest in these v4.0 cards going forward.  There does not seem to be any meaningful performance difference, and they provide a level of future-proofing.

Clearly, this test and its conclusion was limited to my cards, camera and my use, which is wildlife photography.  I only tested two v4.0 Delkin Black cards.  Delink Black has a very good reputation for performance and durability.  There is no guarantee that other v4.0 cards will perform similarly, so do your own testing.  Regardless of CFexpress versions, always buy fast and high-quality cards.

After 4 years and firmware 5.30:  How I now configure my Z9 … and my wish list for future firmware updates …

Happy New Year!

The Nikon Z9 is the gift that keeps on giving.  They keep improving the camera’s software. Last month (December 25) yet another firmware (fw) update arrived, and again this is not a bug fix type of update.  It is an update rich in usability and functional enhancements. One of the new features in fw 5.30 has even made me change my Z9 button configuration (more of which later).

I have had my Z9 for 4 years now.  It has taken more than 150,000 images (actuations).  Every single one a RAW image.  It has been across the globe.  It has mastered torrential rain, snow, heat and dust.  It has been submerged in Costa Rican thick wet mud (the evidence is still there!) and it has been dropped on a couple of occasions with no issues … it is built like a brick (the lens fared less well!).  It has never stopped performing.  It has been the best camera I’ve ever owned.

Four years ago, the Z9 was great out-of-the-box with its initial firmware, and then Nikon did something I never expected and which I had never experienced with my previous generation cameras … they kept issuing substantial new firmware versions.  These updated were not the usual bug fix updates, but rather they included new functionality and improved ergonomics.  Nikon seemed to listen, and many of the ideas on the wish lists of seasoned Nikon pros have been included in the firmware updates among many more enhancements.  All in all 9 major firmware upgrades have been released (I exclude the 7 minor upgrades which were mostly bug fixes).

After 4 years, and with rumours of a new Nikon Z9 Mark II being imminent, it was a pleasant early-Christmas present when firmware 5.30 landed last month.  For still photography this includes key new items such as Improved AF performance, subject detection improvements and ability to use subject detection with more AF modes, the ability to cycle subject detection using a button, improved AF area C1 and C2 customisations, new picture controls, and the ability to limit the focusing range.  These are but a few of all the enhancements included in firmware 5.30.

A couple of the new functions caught my eye, in particular the ability to cycle through subject detection modes using a button.  For wildlife photography it is a great bonus to be able to quickly toggle between Bird and Animal modes, and on occasions when I use my camera for people photography, I can include this mode too.  It also allows subject detection to be switched off quickly. Useful in the few instances when the algorithm gets confused and ‘finds’ a subject when there is none. This is much quicker in the field than using the i-menu.  In fact, I liked this addition so much that I changed my button configuration to fit it in.  My latest Z9 configuration can be found below.

If anyone from Nikon visits this website then firstly, thank you for all the software updates to the Z9 which have made an already impressive camera even more so with numerous functional enhancements.  Secondly, if I am allowed to be greedy, here is my wish list for a Z9 firmware v6.0.  Keep it coming Nikon 😉 The list below relates to still photography which is what I do:

1. Raw pre-capture:  Ideally this would cycle through +20 raw images before the shutter button is pressed, but even if it only cycles through 5 raw images in the buffer prior to pressing the button it would be valuable.  The key use case in wildlife photography is waiting for action, e.g. a bird on a branch about to take off.  The delay between seeing the action and pressing the trigger is approx. 0.2s.  At 20 fps a pre-capture buffer of 5 raw images is 0.25s.  Enough to override the human reaction delay for the perfect action sequence.  If this is the only remaining feature Nikon includes for the Z9 I will be a very happy man indeed.

2. Assign cycle VR to a button:  Like Subject Detection Cycle in fw 5.30, it would be great to be able to assign a button to cycle through the VR modes (Normal, Sport, Off), particularly as the Z series telephoto lenses do not have a VR mode button on the barrel.  I often switch between VR modes, depending on situation, and currently I have to access the i-menu and scroll between the modes.  A dedicated cycle button would be much better.

3.  Setting Banks that reset:  I do not find the setting banks in the Z9 intuitive or user friendly.  Others love them.  They just don’t agree with me.  I would like to be able to set up different banks for different situations (e.g. one for Bird photography, another for general Wildlife, one for Nature, and one for People).  Currently if I do so, and switch to a new bank and start to use it extensively in the field, it keeps the latest settings.  I would like it to always reset to a pre-defined set of settings as a starting point, so every time I use a new bank, I know what to expect.

4.  Improved file naming structure.  The current structure is a bit 20th century.  I would like to be able to use more characters to create a more intuitive naming standard.

5.  Spot metering on a button:  Currently it seems you cannot configure a button hold to activate spot metering.  This was useful and possible on the Nikon DSLRs to check metering of the subject, particularly in highly contrasting or backlit scenes.  It is not such a big deal but rather a nice-to-have.  Currently I get around it by using Recall Shooting Functions for this. 

And that’s it!.  A very short list which reflects how good the Z9 is after such extensive firmware upgrades over the past 4 years.  Impressive work Nikon!

How do I configure my Z9 now that fw 5.30 has been released?  There are thousands of different ways to configure your Nikon Z9 to suit your preferences, shooting style, subject matter and the situation in the field.  There is no right or wrong way to set up the camera.  What works for someone will not work for someone else, but over the years I have gleaned setup ideas from other shooters and tuned my setup accordingly.  I have trialled some settings that I have discarded and others that have helped me.   Below is a list of the latest configuration of my Z9 after the release of fw 5.30. 

This is not an exhaustive list, but rather focuses on some of the most used items:

Key Button configurations (Custom Settings f2):

• Shutter: Image capture only.  No AF activation (I’m a back-button AF guy)

• AF ON:  AF activation on for back-button autofocus.

• ISO: No change – for ISO selection

• Video Record: I don’t shoot video, so this button has been re-purposed to review images. A second press and the image is enlarged to 100%.  This allows me to check images without taking my eye from the viewfinder.

• EV comp:  No change - EV compensation is a key button in the right place.

• Fn1: Single point AF + AF On activation.  No subject detection.  Used frequently in tricky situations or to get AF in the right zone before another AF mode or subject detection takes over.

• Fn2: Cycle AF-area mode (Wide Area C1, Wide Area C2, 3D, Auto Area).  This is a brilliant feature introduced with fw 5.0.  It allows me to quickly cycle between my most used AF modes.

• Fn3: Cycle Subject Detection (Animal, Birds, Off)

• Fn4: Brings up MyMenu (See below for MyMenu items)

• DISP: Recall Shooting Function (Hold) for quickly bringing up settings for Birds in Flight photography.  It toggles the camera to widest aperture (set it to f/1), and sets 1/2000s shutter speed, highlight protected metering, AF Auto area, Bird subject detection, Auto ISO, 20 fps frame rate

• Sub-selector Centre:  Configured with Recall Shooting Function used to activate Spot Metering when button is held down.  I don’t use this very often but handy in tricky lighting situations.  I find this button tricky to use, as you need to be highly precise in how you push it to avoid it being used in the arrow mode.

• OK:  Select Centre focus point.  Quick way to re-centre focus.

My Menu entries in order (and as described above, I have configured Fn4 button to bring up My Menu):

• Battery Info – % capacity remaining

• Continuous High Speed – setting frame rate

• Vibration Reduction selection (On, Sport, Off)

• Active Subject Detection options (g6)

• Auto ISO sensitivity control

• ISO sensitivity

• Focus limit setting (a17)

• Focus mode restrictions (a9)

• High fps viewfinder display (d22) – usually set to Off

• Power off delay (c3)

• Self timer (c2)

• RAW recording - typically set to High Efficiency*

i-Menu entries (top row left to right, then bottom row):

• Row 1:  VR mode, White Balance, Warm display colours, View Mode, View Memory Card info, Metering

• Row 2:  AF area mode / subject detection, Focus mode, Flash compensation, Focus peaking, Airplane mode, Metering

Note both rows’ right-hand side entries are for metering – easier to hit one of them with the finger on the touch screen, particularly with gloves.  This, and VR mode, are the functions I use the most in i-Menu.

A few other key settings:

• Camera always set to AF-C (a9) for continuous auto focus

• AF activation (a6) set to ‘Off’ on shutter release – as I use back-button AF with AF-ON button

• Focus peaking (a14) set to ‘On’ – useful if I accidentally touch the lens focus ring as then MF peaking area (red colour) shows up in the viewfinder

• Picture control set to ‘FL’ (flat)  -  I shoot Raw and this control creates a file with low contrast and saturation creating more flexibility in post processing

• Active D-lighting = Off  -  as above.

I will enjoy my Z9 in 2026 with or without any further firmware updates, but let me dream of a firmware version 6.00 with my wish list adopted 😊 Happy shooting in 26!

Light, light, light – Good light makes an image.  We all strive for wildlife images in glorious light.  Typically, this means early morning and just before dusk, when a low sun creates a warm glow.  But, it isn’t always that easy.  Some animals are hard to catch in good light, either they thrive in the middle of the day – when light can be harsh - or they are in restricted areas where access is only possible during the height of the day.  Some animals’ habitat is the dense jungle, where light can be at a premium.  Other animals, particularly birds, like it high up in trees, where the background can be highly contrasty and heavily backlit.  These are challenging photography conditions.

Such situations are familiar to all wildlife photographers, and we strive to find shooting conditions to minimise the impact of tricky light.  We cherish those moments when it all comes together:  Glorious light, an interesting subject/action and a pleasing background.  But we cannot always get what we want.  Sometimes tricky light is the order of the day.  Particularly, if you are in a place with limited access or where you are unlikely to return soon.  You have encountered a new / exciting animal, and you have this one opportunity to get an image of a particular species.  Working with tricky lighting conditions is sometimes unavoidable.

Tropical rainforests are teeming with life, the noise tells you animals are everywhere.  Spotting them can be trickier.  The jungle is dense and dark, with huge and tall trees, thick canopies and impregnable foliage.  Even at the height of the day, light struggles to penetrate, and if it does, it can create tricky and highly contrasty light to deal with.  The lack of light means that the ISO values quickly skyrocket, resulting in noisy images.  The shutter speed typically required to freeze animal action and secure a sharp image would likely render the image too noisy and unusable, even with a large aperture lens and today’s impressive camera sensors and post-processing software.

The trick here is to set the lens aperture wide open and the camera on continuous shooting at the highest frames-per-second setting.  Use image stabilisation, and shoot short bursts of images of the subject, steadily decreasing the shutter speed as far as you think sensible - and even well beyond -  until the ISO level is acceptable to you.  Do this as long as the subject allows depending on its movements.  Try to time your short burst with the animal’s activity, to coincide with a stop in its motion.  With practice, this approach can be highly successful.  Take as an example the Red-Crowned Barbet shot in the Santubong rainforest, Sarawak, where I managed to capture some sharp images at 1/125sec at 800mm.  A faster lens, with a low maximum aperture, will help a lot in such situations, but those lenses are large (or too short in focal length for skittish jungle animals) and cumbersome when trekking through a dense rainforest.

Another common situation faced by wildlife photographers is a subject in a tree against a bright sky.  Apart from the challenge of being below the animal and shooting up towards the subject (e.g. the bird belly shot), the light can be tricky, with the subject often in the shadow and a bright sky behind it.  The camera’s sensor cannot easily handle the contrast and wide dynamic range of the scene.  You’re faced with a choice:  Do you expose for the subject and blow out the sky?  Or do you expose to retain detail in the sky, but render the subject significantly underexposed?  There is no good answer, and every situation is different.  In the latter case, depending on the dynamic range of the image, you can sometimes bring back the details in the subject in post-processing.  In other cases, avoiding clipping the sky will render the subject just too dark to recover.

So what is the solution, if you cannot recover the image sufficiently in post-processing?  You could attempt to take two images of the subject, with one exposed for the sky, and one for the subject, and combine as an HDR merge in post-processing.  However, a wildlife subject is seldom that accommodating, with movement between your two images making this a tricky post-processing manoeuvre.  A different approach which I sometime use, when all other options have been ruled out, is to:

• Focus on the subject and carefully expose for it.  Ignore the fact that the sky will be blown out and rendered totally white without any detail

• Then, ignore the subject and take a photo of the scene exposed for the sky.  This second image’s sole purpose is to create a reference colour for the sky

• Use a photo editing software which can handle layers, and create an empty layer behind the image layer (with the subject correctly exposed)

• Sample the sky’s colour from the refence shot (with the sky correctly exposed), and fill the empty layer with this colour

• Use luminosity masking to select the blown out (white) parts of the subject image and blend the two layers applying this mask.  This turns the clipped sky into the actual colour of the sky when the images were shot.  See the examples of the orangutang images from Borneo.

View fullsize

View fullsize

Click on the above image and use the arrow keys to switch between them and compare. The image is of a female Orangutang in the wild on the Kinabatangan river, Sabah, Borneo. Image exposed for the subject and the sky layered in during post processing. Shot at 800mm, f/6.3, 1/400s, ISO 1250.

Clearly, the best option is to avoid the bright sky altogether.  Sometimes moving a few yards in one direction or backing up a bit can be enough to remove the sky and backlit areas from the composition.  Or patiently wait for the animal to move into a better position.  If possible, return to the location again, with better lighting conditions.  But, when there is no other option, and this is the one chance to capture a species, tricky lighting situations can be overcome with a bit of planning in situ and effort in post-processing. 

View fullsize

View fullsize

Click on the above image and use the arrow keys to switch between them and compare. A young Orangutang in the wild on the Kinabatangan river, Sabah, Borneo. Image exposed for the subject and the sky layered in during post processing. Shot at 800mm @ f/6.3, 1/800s, ISO 14400.

A fortnight ago I had the pleasure of visiting friends on the Erme estuary in Devon, England.  I decided to pack my 800mm lens and use the opportunity to catch a couple of hours of photography along the mouth of the river.  This beautiful part of the world is teeming with birdlife.  I observed many waders, ducks, gulls, buzzards, house martins, cattle egret, little egret, great white egret, a grebe, a kingfisher, and a green woodpecker among many of the usual passerines.

One priority was to photograph Curlews on the mudflats - to catch them feeding in gorgeous autumn light. Sitting quietly on the edge of the water, I spotted in the distance what I assumed to be two Curlews, with their distinct long beaks.  The birds moved closer and closer.  I captured a few initial images and studied the results in my viewfinder.  I hesitated as the birds looked rather brownish … not at all the colour of a Curlew.  I could not think of any other bird so similar in size and shape to the Curlew in the UK.

A bit stumped, I fished out my iPhone and took a quick photo of the bird displayed on the low-resolution screen at the back of my camera.  I fed the photo into the Merlin App and it provided only one suggestion:  A Glossy Ibis.  Nah?!  Not here in England?  And the Merlin App seemed to agree, as its maps suggested that the Glossy’s range did not extend as far north as the UK.   Intrigued, I now suspected this was a rare sighting, so I re-focused my attention on capturing images of these rather elegant birds.  A positive identification could wait.

The next day, back home in front of the computer I could confirm that it was indeed a Glossy Ibis.  A new bird to add to my list of Ibis images (African Sacred Ibis, Australian Ibis, Green Ibis, Hadada Ibis, White Ibis).  Not only a new bird to add to my list, but one photographed in a surprising location.  Or maybe not so … after a bit of googling, it seems the Glossy Ibis has recently become a visitor to the UK.  Indeed, a first recorded breeding in England was in 2022, and this September a couple of hundred sightings have been made.  When a couple of birds were observed in Gloucestershire in 2007 it was considered a complete aberration.  My RSPB Britain’s Bird book published in 2016 has this to say: “Rare migrant/winter visitor from SW Europe, sometimes small groups, mostly in S[outh]; increasing”.  A bird more commonly found around the Mediterranean is most likely expanding its range north as the Med is becoming drier in summers and winters in the UK milder.

I almost didn’t bring my camera and long lens on this weekend trip as photography wasn’t really the aim of our visit, but in this case I’m glad I did.  What a pleasant surprise 😊

Dartmoor National Park in Devon, UK, is a moorland area covering almost 1000 square kilometres. In late August the moor is carpeted in purple and yellow as the heather and gorse are blooming.  It is stunningly beautiful.  It was during this time of year that I had the pleasure to spend a couple of days on the moor with Malcolm Snelgrove  -  a pre-eminent Dartmoor Pony expert and photographer.  His knowledge of the moor and its ponies combined with his excellent photography made for a great outing in this magnificent national park.  He is good company too ;-)

You can find Malcom’s impressive work here: Malcolm Snelgrove Photography.

There are two types of ponies on Dartmoor:  The Dartmoor Pony and the Dartmoor Hill Pony.  The former is an endangered distinct breed.  Only around 200 of approximately 1000 ponies on Dartmoor are of this native breed.  These hardy ponies are solid in colour with thick coats, manes and tails to protect from the rain and harsh weather, and have hard feet suitable for granite and bogs.  They only grow to a maximum of 12.2 hands high (125cm).

The Hill Pony is more common on Dartmoor, and can be found in many sizes, shapes and colours (often spotted or multi-coloured).  Some of these are Shetland ponies or Welsh ponies or cross breeds.  Most of these ponies on Dartmoor are semi-wild.  Whilst owned by farmers most of the year they roam freely on the moor.

We spent a couple of days photographing across the moor but focused most of our time on Haytor.  Arguably Dartmoor’s most famous natural landmark.  Haytor is situated on the south-eastern side of Dartmoor and easily accessible by the nearby road.  These imposing granite rocks offer spectacular views in all directions.  The rocks are a distinct feature visible from many miles away.  Haytor is protected and designated a site of special scientific interest.  Our aim was to combine ponies with the flowering heather and gorse and/or with the Haytor rocks as backdrop.

Dartmoor’s dramatic scenery and shifting weather makes it a prime area for photography almost any time of day, and any time of year.  There are always opportunities for interesting compositions, particularly with the ponies as subjects.  They lend themselves very well for ‘animalscape’  compositions (animals in a wider landscape setting).  See my blog post on animalscapes here.

Dartmoor is made for photography, and I can guarantee I will be out on the moor to hone my skills capturing pony images in the future.

Thank you Malcolm for your time and insight.

We were at the end of a productive morning drive through Queen Elizabeth National Park in Uganda, when Kamya’s radio sparked into life.  A colleague in another safari vehicle had spotted lions in a tree.  The beautiful morning light had all but gone as the sun climbed high.  It was getting hot – uncomfortably so in the direct sunlight.  The heat haze lay thick along the horizon and photography was tricky as a result.  We decided to do a bit of reconnaissance and looped around to the tree to take a look at the lions on our way back to camp.

As we approached this lone tree in the middle of the savannah, we caught a glimpse of two lionesses high up on the tree’s trunks.  Their bellies seemed full, and they were clearly settling in the shade and the relative coolness of the light breeze.  As we observed this majestic fig tree with the lazy lionesses, we agreed that this was a place to re-visit later, when the sun would be setting and the light would do this picturesque scene justice.  It was odds-on that the lions would be there when we planned to return, as long as we could catch them before they decided to hunt again at dusk.

The scene with the lions in the fig tree had clear potential, but the light was too harsh and hard just before noon, so it was worth planning to return later.  With so many photography opportunities in this vast and beautiful national park on the equator in southwestern Uganda, we had to make a call around what subjects and locations to focus on.  And this fig tree was added to that evening’s list.

The radio message to Kamya was also received by other safari vehicles in the park. Unsurprisingly three other vehicles arrived in the 10 minutes we’d stopped at the fig tree.  iPhones, iPads and cameras popped up and plenty of photos and videos were captured in quick succession.  And as soon as the vehicles had arrived, they drove off … photo of a lion in a tree … tick … next stop please.  I am not sure many of those tourists even knew it was a fig tree.  And what about the lions?  They were snoozing, eyes closed, mostly in the shade, with harsh backlight from the sun high in the sky.  Not sure the photos captured were that great as a result.  But does that matter?  They will have an image which will remind them of a once-in-a-lifetime experience.  Some of those images may be worth printing and framing, but I suspect the vast majority will live in the cloud, to be viewed on mobile phone screens.  Billions of images are shot like this each year.  A snap recording of a moment in life – of a special occasion or location.  The quality of the image isn’t the point.  It triggers a memory.  It is merely a part of the wider holiday experience.

But what if they had at least entertained the idea of returning to this beautiful tree when the sun would be lower on the horizon and the light would be glowing warm.  As the temperature dropped the lions would become more active and photogenic as a result.  They may not have had the time to return.  Their tour schedule possibly wouldn’t allow it.  They had that one moment and they snapped it.

We, on the other hand, had options. With photography the prime reason for our 4-day stay in Queen Elizabeth National Park returning that evening to the same fig tree was a no-brainer.  It was a stunning scene.  We circled the tree to optimise the viewpoint in terms of the sinking sun and the position of the lions.  And then we waited … the lower the sun, the better the light, and the more active the lions … eyes opened, heads were raised, legs stretched.  We spent more than 2 hours in the same spot, observing and shooting images, and soaking in this fantastic scene and beautiful sunset.  In a strange way, time seems to slow down on location in the wilderness when you are patient and take the time the subject and location deserve.  That is a great feeling: the sense of peace, the beauty, the smell of nature and the sound of wildlife.  This idyll was only interrupted on a handful of occasions by other safari vehicles turning up for the obligatory 5 minutes and a quick snapshot.  None of them took the time to really observe this wonderful scene and reflect on it.  For me, that is their loss.  For them, they got the snap of a lion in a tree … tick.  In our different ways we are all happy and that is all that matters. 😊

On my recent trip to Sarawak and Sabah (see my previous Borneo post here) I had the opportunity to photograph this island’s wonderful avian fauna.  There are over 400 species of birds on this beautiful island, including over 60 endemic species only found in Borneo.  Needless to say, I was not going to get anywhere near shooting all those species during a short stay and with little time at each location.  But that didn’t stop me trying to capture images of as many birds as possible.

See more bird images in my Borneo gallery here.

I packed my longest focal length – the 800mm lens – to optimise my chances.  Not surprisingly I faced two common challenges of photographing birds in the tropics.  The first, is the lack of light – even in the middle of the day – in the depth of the jungle.  The layers and layers of dense foliage up to 80-100m made the forest floor quite dark most of the time.  Low shutter speeds and high ISO were the order of the day.

Secondly, many of the island’s birds – such as the majestic large hornbills – prefer to be high up in the canopy.  You find yourself pointing the lens up at their bellies with often strong backlight from the sky and sun.  This creates problems for the camera’s sensor with a dynamic range much less effective than a human eye.  Either you under-expose the subject and prevented blowing out the highlights, or you exposed correctly for the bird and end of with washed out background void of detail.  Either way it is tricky and can require quite a bit of post processing to eek out an acceptable image.  This can be quite frustrating when you see a rare bird, such as the spectacular Helmeted Hornbill, for the first time in your life (and maybe the last!) and you cannot find a position which avoids the bright sky. There is just no option to create a less contrasty and more pleasing backdrop.  This can be highly frustrating, particularly if you know you have limited time on location and cannot re-visit for a better composition.

But, alas, that is the challenge with bird photography, and the reason it is highly tempting to re-visit Borneo to seek better images of some of the spectacular birds on this island.  The majestic and large hornbills were a favourite. Ditto, the hunt for species deep in the dense rainforest, such as trogons, drongos and barbets among others.  It is fun to go hunting for birds to shoot without knowing what species you’re aiming your camera at.  You must wait till the end of the day to analyse the images and find out.

On one trek through the rainforest in Sabah I came across a bird with a beautiful song deep among the trees in poor light.  It didn’t seem to notice me, and I managed to get quite close and take some good images.  It was a bird I had never seen before.  Only when I got back to the camp at the end of the day could I determine that it was a White-crowned Shama.  Not only is this bird endemic to Borneo, but it has a range limited to a small pocket of the rainforest in Sabah on the northern edge of the island.  Quite a special bird to photograph.

Local knowledge is always helpful when photographing birds in an area unknown to you.  In Sarawak, I was lucky enough to team up with Julianna Sim, a local bird expert, for a couple of days. You can follow her on Instagram: simjulianna.

Her knowledge was immensely helpful, and I managed to obtain images I would not have been able to capture without her guidance.  One such bird was the shy Red-legged Crake which inhabits dense wetland locations and it hard to find.  It was a treat to photograph this elusive bird (even at the cost of quite a few mosquito bites!) and there is no way I would have been able to do that without her expert guidance.  Thank you, Julianna!

All in all, I managed to photograph 91 species of birds during my Borneo trip.  The full list can be found below.  Borneo is a beautiful and magical place, with wonderful and friendly people, topped up by a spectacular wildlife scene.  I had a brilliant time.

The full list of bird species photographed:

• Asian Fairy-bluebird

• Asian Glossy Starling

• Asian Red-eyed Bulbul

• Black and Red Broadbill

• Black Drongo

• Black Hornbill

• Black-crowned Night Heron

• Black-eared Barbet

• Blue-throated Bee Eater

• Bornean Blue Flycatcher

• Bornean Spiderhunter

• Brown Wood Owl

• Brown-throated Sunbird

• Buff-banded Rail

• Buff-rumped Woodpecker

• Charlotte's Bulbul

• Chestnut-breasted Malkoha

• Collared Kingfisher

• Common Iroa

• Common Kingfisher

• Common Myna

• Crested Serpent-Eagle

• Dollarbird

• Dusky Munia

• Edible-nest Swiftlet

• Great White Egret

• Greater Racket-tailed Drongo

• Greater Sand Plover

• Green-billed Malkoha

• Grey-breasted Spiderhunter

• Grey-cheeked Bulbul

• Gull-billed Tern

• Helmeted Hornbill

• Javan Myna

• Large Woodshrike

• Lesser Adjutant

• Lesser Cuckooshrike

• Lesser Fish-Eagle

• Lesser Green Leafbird

• Little Spiderhunter

• Long-tailed Shrike

• Malaysian Pied-Fantail

• Malaysian Plover

• Mangrove Blue Flycatcher

• Maroon-breasted Philentoma

• Medium Egret

• Olive-winged Bulbul

• Orange-bellied Flowerpecker

• Oriental Darter

• Oriental Magpie-Robin

• Oriental Pied Hornbill

• Ornate Sunbird

• Pacific Swallow

• Pied Triller

• Pink-necked Green Pigeon

• Plaintive Cuckoo

• Plume-toed Swiftlet

• Purple Heron

• Red-crowned Barbet

• Red-legged Crake

• Red-naped Trogon

• Rhinoceros Hornbill

• Rock Dove

• Ruddy Turnstone

• Rufous-tailed Tailorbird

• Scaly-breasted Munia

• Scaly-crowned Babbler

• Scarlet-rumped Trogon

• Spectacled Bulbul

• Spectacled Spiderhunter

• Spotted Dove

• Stork-billed Kingfisher

• Storm's Stork

• Striated Heron

• Stripe-throaded Bulbul

• Sunda Crow

• Terek Sandpiper

• Tree Sparrow

• Velvet-fronted Nuthatch

• Violet Cuckoo

• Whimbrel

• White-bellied Sea Eagle

• White-breasted Woodswallow

• White-crowned Forktail

• White-crowned Shama

• White-rumped Shama

• White-throated Kingfisher

• Wrinkled Hornbill

• Yellow-rumped Flowerpecker

• Yellow-vented Bulbul

• Zebra Dove

For many more bird images see my Borneo Wildlife gallery.

Last month I returned from a three-week family trip to Borneo.  This was not a focused photography expedition, rather a holiday with wildlife photography as a sideline, to be balanced with other activities.  Even so, I managed to find a few opportunities to photograph this island’s magnificent wildlife with some success: 

See more images from this beautiful part of the world in my new gallery as well.  A separate blog post covering birds of Borneo in more detail is here.

We travelled across Malaysian Borneo, from Sarawak in the south to Sabah in the north.  Boneo is the world’s third largest island, rich in natural resources, wonderful rainforests and tropical beaches.  The people are fabulously friendly, the food is great, and the scenery is stunning.  It was a truly memorable experience.  It is more than tempting to return … for more focused photography 😉

So, what camera gear did I pack?  For a family trip, I chose to go relatively light.  I went for the Nikon Z8 camera body over the Z9, as it is smaller, and I decided to only bring one lens:  The snappily named Nikon Z 800mm f/6.3 PF VR S.  Risky?  Maybe, as it is at the extreme end of long focal lengths.  But, as a trip where the photography is not the sole purpose, I reckoned it would be a good choice.  I would not be using hides, nor would I have a chance to go on repeat visits to locations to allow me to observe wildlife in detail and get intimate with a subject.   Distances would be greater than usual.  There would be fewer chances to get up close and personal to wildlife.  The focus would be birds and primates where the 800mm’s long reach would be advantageous.   Add to this, the fact I am totally in love with my 800mm lens.  I have used it for over 80% of all the images I have taken so far this year.  See my review of it here.

The Nikon Z 800mm is fantastic for distant or smaller wildlife, and perfect for birds.  It is also lightweight.  I can carry it for hours on treks through nature with little bother using a Blackrapid harness.  It is sharp wide open and with the Nikon vibration reduction (VR) system, it can produce sharp images at very low shutter speeds when handheld with good technique.  This is particularly useful in dense dark tropical jungles where light is a premium even in the middle of the day.

So, I packed only the 800mm.  For everything else I would rely on my iPhone.  There is something quite liberating about only having one lens to use.  You have no options, no hesitation about which lens to choose, no delays or hassle swapping lenses, and no extra weight to carry around in rainforests.  You are forced to make the composition work within your sole chosen angle of view.

Even with its highly narrow angle of view, the 800mm proved a good choice.  I photographed an abundance of birds (more to come about the birds in my next blog post).  Even with the 800mm lens, I ended up cropping quite a few of the images during post processing.  I would not have managed to photograph so many beautiful birds with a shorter focal length.  For primates, it also worked well, although once or twice the 800mm proved a bit too long.  At the Kinabatangan river, I came across an Orangutan close to the camp and I struggled a bit to get all of her in the frame.  Clearly, on that occasion a shorter 400-600mm focal length would have been ideal.  Also, a faster lens could have been beneficial, but this proved less of an issue as the Nikon Z 800mm is easy to handhold at low shutter speeds.

Over the 3 weeks I managed to find time to enjoy the 800mm lens on every day bar two, with some great results.  However, when time is limited on a location, with no opportunities to go back, there are always a few regrets.  The possibilities for better photos and more intimate observation of subjects were limited by the restricted time at each location.  It is very tempting to go back to Borneo and explore photography in more depth.  It is a beautiful part of the world with an abundance of wildlife and fantastic scenery.  I would love to spend more time with the magnificent hornbills and primate and seek out some of the more skittish endemic birds to photograph.

And to the wonderful people of Sarawak and Sabah … Terima kasih!

See more images from this beautiful part of the world in my new gallery as well. 

A few years back on my last day of a trip to the Scottish Highlands, I was driving down the beautiful Glen Affric when I stopped at the river rapids.  I grabbed my tripod and the 24-70mm lens to take some river shots at slow shutter speed.  Whilst I was setting up the tripod in the middle of the river, I spotted a little bird a mere five yards away.  It was a Dipper flitting about until it saw me and fled upriver.  I managed to grab a photo, but with a wide zoom lens, the Dipper turned up as a small speck in the frame.  It was hard to even identify the species.

See more images in my Dipper Gallery here.

So, I made it one of my projects for this year to capture better images of this unique bird.  A good place to search for the Dipper is on Dartmoor.  The Dipper is UK’s only aquatic songbird, the size of a starling. It lives in fast moving shallow and rocky waters, where it swims and dives (it can stay under water for a surprisingly long time) in search of food.  It eats aquatic invertebrates.  The Dipper got its name from its habit of curtseying, or bopping, up and down whilst perching on rocks in a river or stream. 

The Dipper is territorial and will occupy a stretch of river and fend off unwelcome other Dippers.  A pair will establish a nest in a confined area close to running water.  These birds are dependent on clean and clear fast-moving water with ample food, hence why they thrive in Dartmoor’s rivers and streams.

The first step in my search for the Dipper was to identify promising river sections, and on Dartmoor there are many possible places to search for the Dipper.  I chose to focus on the River Dart and spent a few days without any camera gear just walking along the river at several places away from the beaten track.  I stopped frequently for long periods to listen out for the Dipper’s distinct chirp and to see if I could spot a Dipper on a stone bopping up and down in its characteristic manner.

After a few unsuccessful days, I spotted a Dipper.  I returned the next day with my long lens and sure enough, on the same stretch of river I saw a Dipper … possibly the same one.  Thankfully this stretch of river is away from the main walking paths and thus void of walkers and dogs scaring off the birds.  The Dippers turned out to be quite shy.  A mere glimpse of me and they would quickly disappear down the river.

After a few days returning to the same stretch of river I started to get into better positions for photography.  The riverbanks were quite steep, so it was difficult to get low.  The solution was to use the high position to compose images with plenty of water around the bird.  This is after all a key part of the story of the Dipper: the rapid flowing water it thrives in.

I experimented with very slow shutter speeds (down to 1/10s) to capture the feel of fast flowing water.  A difficult concept to pull off with an 800mm lens handheld.  Camera shake is hard to avoid at such slow speeds.  Also, it requires the Dipper itself to be still for a relatively long time, which again is hard to pull off as it is such an active bird endlessly ‘dipping’ and flitting about.  After many failed attempts I managed to capture a few interesting images.  In some instances, I would shoot two images in quick succession:  One at >1/500s to freeze the bird, the one at 1/10s to capture water movement.  These I then combined into one image in post-processing.

After several days tracking this pair of Dippers in their territory, I managed to get closer and lower, for some different compositions.  The trick was to wait till the Dipper would dive, then move closer, and repeat this until I could get down to the river’s edge.  Also, by getting ahead of the Dipper upstream, I could get into a hidden position and wait till it made its increasingly predicable way up the river hunting for food.

As always, investing time and many repeat visits increase the chance of capturing good images as you start to understand the birds’ behaviour, recognise the calls and patterns of movement.  In the end I could identify individual Dippers, in particular one, with its slight scaling on the left foot.  A female I think, as on one occasion she seemed to be courted by a strutting male in the middle of the rapids.  This is a beautiful section of the River Dart, and I will return many more times to listen to and watch these rather sweet river inhabitants.

Fun Fact:  The Dipper is Norway’s national bird, and there it is called ‘Fossekallen’.  Very loosely translated to ‘The Maestro of the Rapids’ 😊

Sometimes, just sometimes, it all perfectly comes together.  This was such a moment.  For now, ignore the ‘near’ in the title of this blog post, which I will address later.

Wildlife photography is rewarding but can also be frustrating.  There are so many variables at play, and just one of those can ruin the opportunity to capture a great image. It all has to come together at the right moment: The animals need to appear and pose or do something interesting, the light and background is equally important, the composition and the technical settings need to be spot on, the right gear and lens are at hand, and quick reactions and ability to put it all together in a pleasing composition is required … what could possibly go wrong 😉

Well, frequently one of those variables affects the images captured in a sub-optimal way.  Sometimes, this can be recovered in post-processing, but most often not.  Treks into wilderness or a local nature area, with hours spent seeking great photo opportunities, can often result in disappointment.

But, that is what makes it so rewarding when it all comes together for a magical moment.  And I experienced one of those moments a few weeks back in Norfolk, England.  I have been in pursuit of the Bearded Tit for a few years, but up until that moment with no luck.  I had seen these beautiful birds fleetingly, but never got a shot, not even a mediocre image.  Not even a sniff.

The Bearded Tit, in my view, is one of the most beautiful birds in the UK.  Your milage may vary, but I have always loved this little bird.  Maybe because they are so difficult to spot as they reside deep in reeds by the water, rarely to come up into the open.  The plumage is colourful with cinnamon brown, orange, blue, grey and white.  And the male has a majestic black moustache which is an impressive feature.

Bearded Tits, also called Bearded Reedling, is a resident UK breeder found in a few wetland pockets.  Their territory is large reedbeds, where they reside throughout the year, feeding on insects and seeds.  There are only around 600-700 pairs in the UK due to their restricted habitat.  They are quite noisy with a distinct ping sound which is a sure sign of their presence.

In Norfolk, over three days, we searched several places known to be good spots for the Bearded Tit.  Day one yielded a fleeting glimpse of one darting away into the reeds.  Day two ditto – nothing much.  I got a shot of a female between dense reed stalks.  The auto focus caught the stalks and not the bird. On the sixth and last reedbed location searching for this elusive bird we got lucky.  And truly lucky!

A male Bearded Tit popped briefly out to the edge of the reeds by the open water.  And that was all we needed.  He performed beautifully for us for a mere 9 seconds before disappearing deep into the reeds.  I quickly scanned the images in camera and smiled as it seemed I’d caught a couple of good ones.  A closer look had to wait until I could get back to my computer and download the images on the big screen.

And sure enough, after all the effort to photograph this little bird, this was it.  For me, this was a perfect moment when it all came together.  The images of this Bearded Tit looking at me stretched between two reed stalks is hard to beat.  Bingo!  What a beautiful bird in a perfect pose.  A few moments like that makes it all worthwhile … all the missed opportunities, endless waiting, bad weather, animal no-shows and disappointments are instantly forgotten.

So, why did I put ‘near’ in the title?  Was or wasn’t this a ‘perfect moment’?  Well, yes, for me it was a great moment resulting in images I had only before dreamt about capturing.  But here is the thing with wildlife photography … there is always an even better image out there.  That is what keeps it going, the quest for ever better images.  In a way that is the fun part and the frustrating part in equal measure.  After admiring and polishing my Bearded Tit images on the computer, I stood back and became a tad more critical.  It would have been great if the winter evening sun had warmed up the image a tad more … and I could possibly have used a slower shutter speed which would have reduced the noise in the image a little … and what about that one straw to the right partially covering the tit’s foot … ? You see, there is always a better image out there. 😉

On the RSPB website it states that only 74 individuals of this bird species are wintering in the UK.  That is quite a specific number.  Not sure how they can be that precise? Nevertheless, it is indicative of this bird’s rarity in this part of the world.  This winter visitor from Scandinavia only appears on our shores in very small numbers, depending on the severity of those Nordic winters. From low hundreds to maybe only a handful each year.

So, spotting this infrequent migrant measuring a mere 6 inches long is not that easy.  It is worth trying to find it, as it is a rather beautiful lark.  Its name is the Shore Lark, also called the Horned Lark, due to two black feather tufts on its head in breeding plumage.  If you’re lucky enough to spot one, it will be on a sandy or shingle beach on the east side of England.  They move around in small groups.

In Europe there are an estimated 6,000-18,000 pairs and many of them are found in Norway, where it is called Fjellerke (Mountain Lark) as it resides in the mountainous regions mostly in the north.  If the winter gets too severe a few will make the trip over to English shores for the season.

Occasionally, these rather beautiful larks with their yellow and black head colourings pop up on the north Norfolk coast.  This is where we found them a few weeks back.  A small group of six flitting along the shingle beach looking for food.  They blend in rather well and are tricky to spot. It is hard to get close for a good photo opportunity.  Too close, and they’re off to another section of beach, possibly to the other side of the tidal channel …

Finding these cute birds was a bonus surprise on my Norfolk trip, and it was nice to add another species to my list of birds photographed.  See more from my Norfolk trip here.

After my trip to Norfolk three years ago, I always knew I had to go back … and, that is what I did late last month. The first trip was good, but this one was even better!

See my blog post from my previous visit here.

Norfolk is blessed with an abundance of birdlife and is arguably one of the better places in England to photography the Barn Owl.  The trick though is to enlist local knowledge, as the Barn Owl is a shy bird.  I captured some good shots last time, but I enjoyed photographing this beautiful bird so much that I wanted to see if I could improve my collection of images - particularly flight shots - of this majestic owl.

I contacted David Tipling, a renowned wildlife photographer and bird expert based in northern Norfolk.  There is no-one better to enlist to seek out the key areas to observe and photograph birds in Norfolk.  He knows this part of the world like the back of his hand … and he is great company too.

For most of my short week’s visit the weather was kind, bar the odd downpour.  As Barn Owls are mostly nocturnal – although in Norfolk they tend to start hunting earlier in the evenings than many other places – the best time to photograph them is early morning or in the evening when the light is often very good.  Good light makes a strong wildlife image and the weather gods were mostly on our side with some lovely evening light in particular.

We focussed initially on the owl, and we had some great encounters with Barn Owls both from a hide and whilst on foot.  In one place a Barn Owl was so focussed on hunting along a road verge in the sunset it almost flew into us, veering off at the last minute.  It got so close that it was way too big to fit in the frame with my telephoto lens attached. Quite a moment!

After a good success rate with the Barn Owl, we mixed it up a bit, and went hunting for other birds too, including the Shore Lark and the Bearded Tit – both of which are a bit special and deserve to be covered in separate blog posts later (Spoiler alert: I had decent success photographing both of these tricky customers!).

We were out before dawn and kept going till sunset.  The success rate was impressive, as we encountered and photographed an array of birds. In addition to those mentioned above, we came across Short-eared Owl, Marsh Harrier, Kestrel, Sparrowhawk, Red-breasted Merganser, Little Grebe, Yellowhammer, Linnet, Stonechat and several waders, geese and ducks.

Norfolk is just magical for bird photography.  I very much doubt this will be my last trip.  Many thanks to David. So long and till next time Norfolk!

More owl photography can be found in the Birds of Prey Gallery.

Wildlife photography invariably involves using a long telephoto lens.  Getting close to a wild animal through the lens is a rewarding moment.  You want to catch the animal in its full glory – every detail -  and capture a strong image, a good portrait, action maybe or an animal’s behaviour.  Most of the images on this website will fall into this category, namely a relatively close-up view of wildlife.  There is nothing wrong with that, indeed filling the frame with a wild animal requires patience and fieldcraft and is highly rewarding.

But, sometimes it can be beneficial to take a different approach, and deliberately ‘go wide’, indeed very wide.  Close ups can become a tad repetitive and ‘samey’.   For example, how many close ups of elephants do you need?  Often when I return from Africa, I end up with many similar elephant shots filling the frame.  Unless there is an element of unique action or interaction, these images are often discarded.  I’ve seen it / done it before.

Elephants are huge animals, and they easily fill the frame with a telephoto lens.  This can create a strong sense of how powerful these animals are.  But by taking the opposite approach, and by going very wide and putting the elephants in the landscape, you can project something else.  Even elephants can seem a bit vulnerable in a larger context.  You are now telling a different story.

Going wide can sometimes be the only option if you cannot get particularly close to wildlife.  But often, with a telephoto lens at hand, you have the option.  In this case, by all means go in close, but also think about going wide – as wide as possible.  Many animals live in a fabulously beautiful landscape which can be somewhat lost when you focus solely on the animal.  The surrounding scenery can be stunning, but this doesn’t get captured adequately.  Stepping back and taking in the wider landscape can be highly rewarding.

A wide shot of wildlife in its surroundings, also called  ‘animalscapes’, can be very powerful in communicating how wildlife interacts with its habitat.  It sounds easy, just use a wider lens and bring in more of the surrounds. But, a good animalscape needs careful composition and thought.  It combines wildlife photography and landscape photography approaches – capturing the static with movements.

As such, it can be tricky to pull off.  By the time you’ve thought through the landscape composition the animals will probably have moved (most likely behind a bush ;-) and the moment is missed.  You don’t have the time usually available for pure landscape photography – it is like doing landscape photography at speed.

It helps to familiarise yourself with the environment and to understand the pattern of animal behaviour in the area.  If a composition is missed – then wait – animals are creatures of habit.  Another elephant may come into position soon and you’ll have another shot at the image you want.

Going wide does not necessarily mean a wide-angle lens.  Whilst clearly a good tool for a wide shot, often a telephoto lens can be better for animalscapes as they compress the composition.  With wide lenses it can be tricky to create the right balance between the close and the distant elements in the image.  Indeed, all the images in this blog post were captured with relatively long focal lengths (70mm all the way up to 560mm).

There is nothing wrong with going ‘close’.  Indeed, being able to get close to wildlife (with due respect to the animals) and ‘fill the frame’ is often highly rewarding – it gives you a sense of being there with the animals.  The fieldcraft, the patience, the stalking, the observation, the feeling of inching closer is a wonderful part of photographing wildlife.  But a wider view can create stunning images by placing animals in their often impressively beautiful habitat.  So, mix it up!  One of my aims for 2025 is to pay more attention to the wider view – and capture more animalscapes.

Africa is blessed with an astonishingly rich and varied wildlife, with many magnificent animals.  It is a privilege and joy to observe and photograph any of them.  But one animal is a clear favourite:  The African Leopard (Panthera pardus pardus). 

This powerful cat is an impressive predator.  Its beautiful coat, spotted with rosettes, works as an effective camouflage as it hunts for primates, deer and other animals.  Indeed, the diet is highly adaptable from beetles to large antelopes.  It is an opportunistic hunter and prefers to stalk its prey under the cover of darkness.  Leopards are less active during the day.

Due to habitat loss and fragmentation the leopard is listed as ‘vulnerable’ on the IUCN’s Red List of threatened species.  It is mostly found in sub-Saharan Africa and is highly adaptable, living in a wide range of habitats, including grasslands, the savannah, mountain forests and jungle.

Most leopards have a pale yellow or deep gold coat with black rosette patterns.  However, there is one type of leopard that is significantly rarer – the Black Leopard (also called a Black Panther).  These highly elusive leopards have a melanistic colour variance and are almost entirely black due to excessive black pigment.

Getting close to and observing any leopard in the wild is tricky even for experienced spotters.  They are shy and solitary creatures more active during the dark than the day.  Spotting a black leopard is even harder as there are so few of them.  Before a confirmed photo sighting in Kenya in 2019, it was 110 years ago since the previously confirmed photographic sighting in Africa! That’s right, all the way back in 1909!  These black leopards have a mystical reputation as they are so rarely seen.  They are hard to detect as they blend into the shadows and are near invisible.

That’s why when I had an opportunity to go looking for these rare leopards, I jumped at it.  Cue a flight to the Laikipia region of Kenya.  Embarking from the Twin Otter at the bush airstrip we were met by Dan Peel, a highly experienced guide, ranger and photographer.  Dan had spotted a black leopard in Laikipia a couple of years earlier  -  a young female they named Giza Mrembo (Swahili for ‘the beautiful darkness’) -  and he was going to help us try to find it.  Dan was at pains to explain the long odds and the likelihood we would be disappointed.  They had not seen Giza for over 6 weeks.  With the low expectations set we started our 5-day stay in Laikipia …

Day 1 – no sighting.  Day 2 – no sighting.  Day 3 – still no sighting.  Day 4 - no luck that day either.  You may think we were despondent?  Not really, although we were itching to photograph the black panther, we weren’t exactly spoilt for photo opportunities in this beautiful wilderness.  The area is rich in wildlife.  We spent hours photographing elephants, giraffes, lions, cheetahs, ‘normal’ leopards ;-) and a whole host of other animals, including a stunningly rich array of bird species.  With or without a black leopard, this is a wildlife photographer’s heaven.  But … it was niggling that we hadn’t had a sniff of Giza.  I cannot deny that.  4 days down and only one to go …

Then on our last day one of Dan’s spotters thought he saw the black leopard jumping into a large dense bush in the middle of the savannah.  He was far from certain, but it was all we had to go on.  Mid-afternoon we jumped in the 4x4 and headed for the thickets which might or might not be the hiding place for this elusive black panther.   Parking the vehicle 40-odd yards away from an incredibly dense bush, we prepared cameras and waited.  There was no visible indication of the possible leopard.  After a couple of hours of zero movement or activity, merely a dense thicket to look at, Dan heard something we didn’t.  He could detect a faint gnawing sound which suggested a leopard was indeed inside the bush and feeding on a kill – most likely a Dik Dik – a tiny African antelope.

If anything was going to happen it would probably not be before sunset as that is when the leopard was most likely to become active and start hunting.  We couldn’t risk leaving the site and another two hours passed until the sun settled.  The Laikipia sunset was again extraordinarily beautiful although somewhat lost on us as we kept staring at a bush in the fading light.

And then it suddenly happened as darkness fell.  There indeed was a leopard in that bush!  Giza jumped out into the open, looked around and walked silently towards us.  Just incredible.  This powerful and elegant creature strode past the 4x4, totally ignoring us, before quickly disappearing into the darkness not to be seen again.  After four hours of waiting we had 90 seconds with Giza.  Wow!  A once-in-a-lifetime experience.

Witnessing this black leopard was incredible, but what about the photography?  It was easy to forget the camera in that fleeting moment of magic.  Photographing a black leopard in the darkness is also not particularly easy – the camera’s sensor struggles to capture enough light in such conditions.  Dan’s spotter had a soft hand torch which he expertly used to provide some light for photography.  The soft spotlight provided weak and highly uneven cover particularly as the light was not pointing directly at the animal to avoid discomforting her. 

My lens was wide open at f/2.8 to gather as much of the little light as possible.  The camera was set to Auto-ISO so I could focus on optimising shutter speed.  I dialled in a negative EV compensation of minus 2 to avoid the areas were the torch light hit being bleached out completely.  I figured it was better to lose shadow detail than clipping the highlights.  It was a split-second decision and almost the right one.  In retrospect, -1.3 EV would probably have worked as the torch light was not as strong as I suspected.

The last thing I wanted was to come home with blurry images as the opportunity to photograph a black panther again is most likely just a dream.  With so little light to work with, a fast shutter speed to freeze the action meant that the ISO would go through the roof, so I had to be careful.  I wanted to be as conservative as I could to secure a sharp image, but I also needed to control the ISO setting as much as possible.  I started with a shutter speed of 1/250s as the leopard was coming toward us, then increased it to 1/320s as Giza passed by the side of the 4x4. The resulting very high ISO numbers were unavoidable in these conditions. The images required quite a bit of work in post processing to deal with the high levels of noise and the uneven exposure.

During those 90 seconds a lot of photography thought processing takes place in short order.  Hesitate and you miss it!  This is when practise and muscle memory kicks in.  Knowing your camera, its configuration and controls is absolutely key to capture such critical moments.  Did I succeed?  In the circumstances I am quite satisfied with the resulting images.  Could they have been better?  Probably. Both EV setting and shutter speed could have been optimised further, which would have made a difference, but ultimately the lack of light was such a limiting factor.  Ideally, Giza would have appeared from the bush before sunset or made repeat appearances … but such is wildlife ;-)  Am I happy?  You bet.  That was a truly once-in-a-lifetime moment of pure joy!  Godspeed Giza!

And thank you Dan.   See Dan Peel’s website here:  www.danpeelphotography.com

Happy New Year!

Any outing with my camera is fun.  Packing the gear and heading off on foot, in a car or on a plane for a day, days, weeks or even a month to explore the wilderness and connect with wildlife is a real privilege.

But, alas, photography trips or expeditions are not possible every day.  Not to worry, great wildlife photo opportunities can often be found a mere yards from the kettle in the kitchen.  Most gardens attract wildlife, even small gardens in a city.  Here in England that mostly means birds.

Targeting birds in the garden is a great way to keep your photography skills refreshed.  It is an easy place to practice, hone skills and experiment, to tune the muscle memory and sharpen reactions.  It is a good way to test out new equipment and configuration changes.  Indeed, you don’t want to use your new kit for the first time on a once-in-a-lifetime wildlife adventure.  The garden is a great place to practice and learn to fully take advantage of all the features of modern camera gear.

With a bit of planning and patience good bird photography is possible in your garden.  Here are some considerations for great garden images:

• A feeder:  First you need to attract the birds.  There are many inexpensive options for garden feeders and bird food.  Set up a feeder and let the birds get used to it over time.  Winter is great as birds will have fewer food options and are more likely to be attracted to a feeder, although all times of year work.

• A perch:  A photo of a bird on a feeder isn’t going to create a great image.  You want to capture the bird in a more natural looking environment, not with a man-made feeder as a prop.  You need a perch: A good-looking branch that you arrange next to the feeder.  The aim is to put this perch close enough so that birds will land on it occasionally before or after visiting the feeder, but out of sight of the feeder itself.  See the picture above for the set-up I used this week.

• Positioning:  This may be limiting for some gardens, but with a bit of thought a good location should be possible.  You want the sun behind or to the side of you when you photograph the perch.  Also, the background is important.  Ideally you have a clear background with any vegetation, clutter or walls etc as far back as possible.  Optimally the background is further back from the perch than your shooting position.  This will throw the background way out of focus and create a pleasing blurred framing for the bird.  In the images I shot this week I positioned myself so that the far away background was mostly a hedge with dead brown leaves.  With the low sun this created a warm orange-brown background.  Test out the composition carefully to optimise the background.

• Lens:  A telephoto lens is required to allow you to sit well away from the perch, so you don’t disturb the birds.  Too close, and they will be too frightened to come.  Also, a long lens (400mm or longer) will help throw that background well out of focus as these lenses have a narrow depth of field.  Shoot with the aperture wide open.

• Light makes an image.  A low sun can create a wonderful warm glow.  Diffused light can also work well to expose the bird and avoid nasty shadows.  Choose the time of day carefully to optimise for the light.  Gloomy light with rain or snow can create dramatic effects.  Winters are great with the sun low on the horizon for most of the day, and if you get snow even better ;-)

• Be patient and be comfortable.  Invest at least a couple of hours shooting.  First, the birds will fly away when you get into position, but after a while they will ignore you if you are patient and careful with your movements.  A stool to sit on and warm clothing help.  There is no point being uncomfortable.  I use a monopod or a tripod to ensure the lens is always pointed at the perch as the moment to capture a good shot can be fleeting.

• Finally, do experiment.  Capturing a portrait of a bird against a good background is rewarding but try to experiment to capture behaviour and action.  Observe how the birds approach the feeder.  There is often a pattern to their behaviour.  Try to predict movements, such as when they fly off from the perch and try to capture this action.  Use the opportunity to explore the camera’s potential, experiment with setup and particularly how to optimise your use of the auto-focus system.  Practice and familiarity with your camera equipment will increase the keeper rate more than anything else.

Enjoy wildlife at home :-)

I have had many wonderful times in nature photographing wildlife. It is an uplifting experience.  But some wildlife encounters are a bit more special than others.  Having the opportunity to observe the Shoebill was an experience I will not forget in a hurry.  There is something magical about this pre-historic looking magnificently large bird.  It is a bird like no other, rare and vulnerable, and not easy to find.

The Mabamba swamp on Lake Victoria in Uganda is the home to 300 species of birds, and among them the Shoebill, a bird of the stork family.  This vast swamp of over 2400 hectares is based around papyrus, water lilies and other wetland vegetation.  It is known for its lungfish (also known as mudfish), a key element of the Shoebill’s diet.

The Shoebill stork is a large bird.  It stands up to 1.5m (5 ft) tall, weighing in at 5-7kg and with a wingspan of 2.3m (7.5 ft).  It has a global bird protection status as 'vulnerable' as there are only around 4000 left due to habitat loss, nest disturbance and hunting.

This strangely beautiful bird is a solitary animal with a silent and stoical approach to hunting for its favourite catch, the mudfish, from which the Mabamba swamp gets its name (the fish is known locally as Mamba).  The Shoebill can stand still for a long time, even hours, watching out for movement in the mud, before rapidly launching forward to grab a mudfish.  Its statuesque pose is a beautiful sight against the green wet surroundings.

We battled across the choppy waves of Lake Victoria in a wooden canoe on a late afternoon and the following pre-dawn morning to observe this fascinating bird.  A local spotter helped us locate the Shoebill.  She talks to the local fishermen every day to get a bearing on where to find these solitary birds - which is not always easy as they are far and few between.  But the spotter knew her business.

At a respectable distance we observed the Shoebill’s patient fishing technique, standing completely still, seemingly not doing much, for many minutes before a sudden forward leap as it shot its beak into the mud and caught a fish.  Up in its beak came mud, vegetation and a mudfish.  The mud and weed were filtered out and the mudfish swallowed whole.  Then, as quickly as this was over, the Shoebill again took up its statuesque poise – standing absolutely still again.

Now and then, after many minutes of still pose, the bird would move a few feet to a new position.  At one time it drifted close to a pair of black-headed lapwings, seemingly protecting a nest.  The lapwings did their best to scare off the much larger bird, but to little effect.

On a couple of occasions the big bird would lift off and fly a short distance to another hunting spot.  Seeing this large bird in flight with its massive wingspan was an impressive sight.  Then the light faded, and it was time to navigate out of the labyrinthic swamp channels and head back across Lake Victoria to Entebbe in choppy water in the dark.  The good thing was that we were going back the following morning for another attempt at locating this impressive bird.  Two trips to the Mabamba swamp that I will never forget.

Further images of the Shoebill can be found in the Birds of Africa gallery here.

Target rich, that is a good way to describe it.  The photography opportunities on my recent tour of Uganda and Kenya were outstanding, from the big beasts of the Savannah to the primates of the jungle mountains, and there were plenty of other wildlife to photograph too, from tiny butterflies and snakes to big mammals.  East Africa is a stunningly beautiful place with a diverse and vibrant ecosystem.  I have already posted a few items from this tour, but there are plenty more to come.

As always, I never miss the opportunity to photograph birds, and this trip was no exception.  The birdlife in East Africa is second to none, and the variety immense.  I have now gone through all my images from the trip, and I managed to photograph 206 different species of birds. Some of these I have photographed in other parts of Africa or Europe before, but many were new to me.

More images of this vibrant birdlife can be found in my Birds of Africa gallery here.

Although all birds are special, by far the most exhilarating experience was the opportunity to photograph the rare Shoebill.  That was so special it warrants its own blog entry, which I will post soon.  An incredible pre-historic looking large bird … so watch this blog!

The diverse avian world of East Africa is immense as demonstrated by the opportunity I had to photograph over 200 different species. The full list of bird species captured on camera can be found below:

• Abyssinian Thrush

• African Blue Flycatcher

• African Cuckoo-hawk

• African Dusky Flycatcher

• African Fish Eagle

• African Golden-weaver

• African Green Pigeon

• African Grey Flycatcher

• African Grey Hornbill

• African Harrier-hawk

• African Jacana

• African Openbill

• African Orange-bellied Parrot

• African Paradise-flycatcher

• African Pied Wagtail

• African Skimmer

• African Spoonbill

• African Stonechat

• African Thrush

• African Wood-owl

• Angola Swallow

• Augur Buzzard

• Baglafecht Weaver

• Barn Swallow

• Bateleur Eagle

• Bearded Woodpecker

• Black Bee-eater

• Black Sawwing

• Black-and-white casqued Hornbill

• Black-and-white Mannikin

• Black-and-white Shrike-flycatcher

• Black-bellied Bustard

• Black-capped Social-weaver

• Black-crowned Waxbill

• Black-faced Sandgrouse

• Black-headed Gonolek

• Black-headed Heron

• Black-headed Lapwing

• Black-headed Weaver

• Black-necked Weaver

• Blacksmith Lapwing

• Blue-cheeked Bee-eater

• Blue-naped Mousebird

• Broad-billed Roller

• Bronze Mannikin

• Bronze Sunbird

• Brown Snake-eagle

• Brown-throated Wattle-eye

• Cape Wagtail

• Cardinal Woodpecker

• Cassin's Flycatcher

• Chestnut Sparrow

• Chestnut Weaver

• Chestnut-bellied Sandgrouse

• Cinnamon-chested Bee-eater

• Common Bulbul

• Common Ostrich

• Common Waxbill

• Copper Sunbird

• Crimson-rumped Waxbill

• D'Arnaud's Barbet

• Double-toothed Barbet

• Eastern Chanting-Goshawk

• Eastern Plantain-eater

• Eastern Yellow-billed Hornbill

• Egyptian Goose

• Fine-banded Woodpecker

• Fork-tailed Drongo

• Goliath Heron

• Great Blue Turaco

• Great White Egret

• Green-backed Camaroptera

• Green-headed Sunbird

• Green-throated Sunbird

• Grey Crowned-Crane

• Grey Kestrel

• Grey Parrot

• Grey-backed Fiscal

• Grey-capped Social-weaver

• Grey-headed Gull

• Grey-headed Kingfisher

• Greyish Eagle Owl

• Guinea Fowl

• Hadada Ibis

• Hammerkop

• Hooded Vulture

• Kenya Rufous Sparrow

• Klaas's Cuckoo

• Kori Bustard

• Laughing Dove

• Lesser Masked-weaver

• Lesser Striped Swallow

• Lesser Swamp Warbler

• Lilac-breasted Roller

• Little Bee-eater

• Little Bittern

• Little Weaver

• Lizard Buzzard

• Long-crested Eagle

• Long-tailed Black Widowbird

• Long-tailed Cormorant

• Long-tailed Fiscal

• Long-toed Lapwing

• Luhder's Bushshrike

• Madagascar Bee-eater

• Malachite Kingfisher

• Malachite Sunbird

• Marico Sunbird

• Martial Eagle

• Mourning Collared Dove

• Namaqua Dove

• Northern Black-flycatcher

• Northern Brown-throated Weaver

• Northern Double-collared Sunbird

• Northern Fiscal

• Nubian Woodpecker

• Olive Sunbird

• Olive Woodpecker

• Olive-bellied Sunbird

• Palm-nut Vulture

• Pied Crow

• Pied Cuckoo

• Pied Kingfisher

• Plain Greenbul

• Purple-banded Sunbird

• Purple Grenadier

• Purple Heron

• Pygmy Falcon

• Rattling Cisticola

• Red-bellied Parrot

• Red-billed Buffalo Weaver

• Red-billed Firefinch

• Red-billed Hornbill

• Red-billed Quelea

• Red-cheeked Cordonbleu

• Red-chested Cuckoo

• Red-chested Sunbird

• Red-eyed Dove

• Red-faced Woodland Warbler

• Red-necked Spurfowl

• Red-throated Bee-eater

• Reed Cormorant

• Reichenow's Seedeater

• Ring-necked Dove

• Ross's Turaco

• Rosy-patched Bushshrike

• Rufous Chatterer

• Rufous-naped Lark

• Ruppell's Griffon

• Ruppel's Starling

• Sand Martin

• Scarlet-chested Sunbird

• Sharpe's Starling

• Shoebill

• Slender-billed Greenbul

• Slender-billed Weaver

• Somali Ostrich

• Sooty Chat

• Southern Yellow White-eye

• Speckled Mousebird

• Speckled Pigeon

• Speckle-fronted Weaver

• Spotted Morning-Thrush

• Spotted Thick-knee

• Spur-winged Lapwing

• Squacco Heron

• Square-tailed Nightjar

• Stout Cisticola

• Stuhlmann's Sunbird

• Superb Starling

• Swamp Flycatcher

• Taita Fiscal

• Tawny Eagle

• Variable Sunbird

• Verreaux's Eagle

• Verreaux's Eagle-owl

• Vieillot's Black Weaver

• Village Weaver

• Vinaceous Dove

• Violet Wood Hoopoe

• Von der Decken's Hornbill

• Vulturine Guineafowl

• Wattled Lapwing

• Wattled Starling

• Western Cattle Egret

• Western Citril

• White-backed Vulture

• White-bellied Bustard

• White-bellied Canary

• White-bellied Go-Away Bird

• White-browed Coucal

• White-browed Crombec

• White-browed Robin-chat

• White-browed Sparrow-weaver

• White-chinned Prinia

• White-eyed Slaty-flycatcher

• White-headed Buffalo Weaver

• White-rumped Shrike

• White-starred Robin

• White-tailed Blue Flycatcher

• Winding Cisticola

• Woodland Kingfisher

• Yellow-billed Duck

• Yellow-billed Kite

• Yellow-billed Stork

• Yellow-crowned Canary

• Yellow-necked Spurfowl

• Yellow-rumped Tinkerbird

• Yellow-throated Longclaw

For more images see Birds of Africa gallery here.

They are shy and not particularly comfortable with human contact.  So, to be able to observe and photograph these apex predators is a special treat.  The opportunity was there on a recent trip to the remote wilderness of British Columbia, Canada.  Brad, who knows this area from many years of running expeditions, had encountered a wolf pack 3 weeks earlier and he decided to try out the same shoreline again.  (see Brad’s website here for some impressive wildlife photos:  www.naturalart.ca).  Not unexpectedly, he was at pains to point out that the chance of spotting wolves again was pretty low.  That is part of the equation in wildlife photography.  There is never a guarantee that you will come across wild animals, particularly those which roam vast distances in often dense terrain.

The Pacific Coastal Sea Wolf is a wolf subspecies found in the Great Bear Rainforest of Canada.  They have a diet which is highly marine based, such as salmon, seal, otter and even shellfish, although they also eat other prey such as deer.  They are highly intelligent creatures.  Interestingly, they only eat the salmon head to avoid parasites found in other parts of the salmon.  These coastal wolves are strong and fast swimmers and can cover large distances moving from island to island in this large coastal wilderness.

To see if we could spot the sea wolf, we jumped into the zodiac.  The light was getting low, and the afternoon wore on as we drifted along the shore in a small inflatable whilst quietly scanning the horizon for any sign of these beautiful animals.  Luck was on our side as two wolf cubs suddenly appeared from the forest out onto the beach about 30 yards from our boat.  They noticed us and kept a wary but curious eye on us, but decided we were not an immediate threat.

We had around 20 minutes of opportunity to observe the young wolves as they played around on the beach and among the rock formations.  And as suddenly as they had appeared they disappeared into the dense forest again.  It was an exhilarating few minutes, which more than made up for the uncomfortable shooting position hunkered down low in a small inflatable craft.

We decided to scan the same shoreline the following morning.  We set out in the zodiac before dawn, and as the light improved we closed in on the same stretch of the shore.  After 90-odd minutes with nothing much moving around apart from a few surf scoters, we spotted a wolf among the trees.   This one was alone and much older – a young adult.

It looked at us and started to scan the shoreline at a fast pace for food such as dead salmon.  It kept a rapid pace in and out of trees and rocks.  The light was improving and the moving wolf made for some great shooting opportunities.  Again, after 20-odd minutes the wolf disappeared into the forest not to be seen again.  A magical few minutes in such a beautiful wilderness with such a majestic animal.

More images of wolves and from the Great Bear Rainforest can be found here.