As a child I was obsessed with wildlife, especially birds and butterflies. I was a member of the Young Ornithologists Club and bred butterflies in a rabbit hutch. I knew every bird and butterfly in their respective Observer’s Book Of by heart.
Once I discovered horses, I transferred my passion to equines. I was still interested in the natural world, but as a setting for riding. Hacking was my main equestrian pastime, and I watched yellow hammers and red kites from the back of a horse.
Due to illness and subsequent ballooning weight, I gave up riding in 2017. I needed a new obsession to keep me relatively sane.
I started bird watching again in August 2018, joining Rutland Water Nature Reserve and Leicestershire and Rutland Wildlife Trust.
On my first visit I discovered my ancient field glasses were pretty useless. A pair of Nikon binoculars quickly followed. On my third trip to Rutland Water I got talking to a woman who was using a camera with a large zoom lens. This seemed like a great idea, so I scoured Facebook Marketplace for a second hand zoom for my old Nikon D40X. Thank you man from Corby for my Nikkor 75-300 mm, and my rapid adoption of bird and wildlife photography as a hobby.
Once I started taking photos with my ‘new’ zoom, I discovered a few things:
Blurry little egret, Rutland Water, August 2018
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I didn’t know much about my camera and what it could do.
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Using auto focus resulted in a lot of clear reeds and blurred egrets.
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300mm isn’t big enough.
My wonderful farrier Mark, who trims my ponies’ hooves and is also a photographer (albeit a Canon man) gave me a very basic tutorial on a few settings, and how to shoot in manual mode.
I joined a few wildlife photography Facebook groups, and learnt a tremendous amount. On enquiring about courses, Mike Ford sent me a message offering one on one instruction, at Rutland Water, at a very reasonable price.
Heron, Rutland Water, August 2018
Through Mike I learned some basic principles of photography, and which settings to use on my camera for best results. No more blurry egrets! He also explained what the histogram did, something that had been a mystery previously.
A couple of months on, and my photos were looking better and better, but still a lot of far away birds. The zoom issue was becoming intolerable to me. Welcome Sigma 150-600mm Contemporary lens. Now I can take photos of far away birds that look like fairly close birds in my pictures.
I learnt to photograph in NEF format, open in Adobe Lightroom and process my images.
I am at the very beginning of my wildlife photography journey, and spend rainy days scouring the internet for free advice. I’m scared to see an owl at dusk, as despite much camera fiddling, I can’t work out how to take images in low light. Owls are part of every bird photographer’s progress; “My first owl” a hoot often accompanying a stunning photo on Facebook.
Mike has agree to return from the North to help me level up – perhaps when the ospreys return to Rutland Water?
