Niall Benvie. Paul Harcourt Davies. Andrew Parkinson.

August can be a busy month at Podere Montecucco, for this is the prime time for family visits  because of the strictures of school holidays. This year, it has also been unbearably hot – OK, I know that this will generate no sympathy from the UK whatsoever, but there has been a heat wave with early afternoon temperatures up to the low 40’s on the Celsius scale. It makes sense for humans to stay in and all sensible life forms  disappear until evening.

Tomorrow, the first day of September, the hunting season opens some three weeks earlier than before and it is expected to be a disaster for birds late to fledge because of the heat…I have blocked holes in hedges to prevent access and already had ‘meaningful’ discussion with a hunter just ‘exercising’ his dog…near a badger sett.  Hunters tend not to be so brave when they are not carrying a shotgun… and this one knows I have photos of him acting illegally. Damn them all, the season for slaughter comes around far too quickly and, yet again, I know that the next four months will not be easy. Silly perhaps, but I feel personally responsible for the other living things on our patch – I never think we own it: we are the stewards and I take that honour seriously.

In the past few days it has suddenly got cooler, there is a glut of aubergines, courgettes and tomatoes testing our inventive skill as cooks to create new recipes and stock the freezer….the mantids are back on the lavender bushes and convolvulus hawks sample the nicotiana each evening. They are safe, I am a vegetarian! Pressures to write books, design websites and all sorts of other things mean there is no ‘hardship’ staying indoors and where walls are nearly a metre thick they keep temperatures tolerable.

I keep a camera on my  desk ready for sorties (even a few minutes escape provide relief from the screen) and there is alwasy something small to be photographed – usually thanks to a shout from Lois whilst she waters ‘her’ flowers and things move out of the way of the spray.

This first garden shot is of a mature female mantis (Mantis religiosa) that was intriguing one of the cats as it (mantis, not cat that is) waved its legs from a vantage point on an old wine cask

I like the way mantids are always alert to movement and give you the 'once over' - this image was taken with a 15mm f/2.8 Sima rectangular fisheye

At the other end of the scale the Sigma 150mm macro comes into its own. I have taken to carrying just these two lenses for trips 'down the garden'

This year, heavy rains throughout winter and into early summer have meant the vegetation has grown at a rate we cannot control… and the drive was washed away. Fennel plants are some 3 m tall, covered in hoverflies visiting the yellow florets that we collect, dry and use as a herb. It is one of those ‘undiscovered’ tastes and quite different from the seeds. Fennel is a useful plant to have being the principal foodplant of common swallowtail in the garden   and also a source of leaves from which we can extract flavour and colour ( a near ‘radioactive’ green) with 95% alcohol, dilute with a sugar syrup and make a superb ‘liquore’… purely medicinal, life is hell at times!

Fennel is also a source of ‘crawlies’,  especially those we have christened ‘bonking bugs’ for that is what they always seem to be doing. The technical name is Graphosma italica – though the more alliterative (and evocative) name is the one we tend to use.

those amorous bugs - 'doin wot comes naturally'

Although there is a lesson to be learned for those who follow the ‘path of pleasure’ and let their attention wander whilst indulging in the carnal pleasures of life:

not quite the entomological equivalent of an Airfix kit - though with a tube of 'superglue' and a delicate touch one might be able to do a Baron Frankenstein. One hopes that they died in delirium.

Ok, here is a bit of speculation based on a faint hunch backed by paper-thin evidence. But I want to hear your ideas – to rubbish the notion or say, “maybe there’s a spark of truth in this.”

Is it possible, perhaps, that the peak of interest in participative nature photography is past? That the surge of interest we have seen in the last 15 years or so is beginning to decline. That fewer people want to do the hard work – as Andy details below – and are happy just to view photography (or use ready made photo opportunities) instead? Evidence? What about the dramatic fall in workshop and tour bookings and the reduced quality of nature coverage in many of the photo mags. (as I said, paper-thin and perhaps simply economically related.) But let’s face it;  the whole process is so expensive and complicated nowadays that maybe people just don’t want to get into it any more.

But I hope I’m wrong. Your thoughts please!

The time will shortly be upon me when I have to pack up my little van, head north to Aberdeen and then face the 12-14 hour ferry trip to Lerwick in the Shetland Islands. From there I will again head north across the mainland and Yell to the most northerly island of Unst. Still heading north (do you see a theme developing) I will then venture to its most northerly tip, to the National Nature Reserve of Hermaness, a place that I have eulogised about at length before in my blog postings. And this is the bit I’m really dreading. I am then faced with the arduous task of moving all of my camping equipment, sleeping bag, stoves, food, water, camera equipment, tripod, climbing/abseiling equipment, 2 ropes etc the 3 or so miles north (there it is again) across boggy moorland to the cliff tops overlooking Muckle Flugga.

This will then be my home for as long as my tent will last (Force 8 is fine but Force 10 winds are a tent breaker) when I will then be forced to move all of my equipment back to my van and have to face a daily trudge instead. Either way I am hoping to stick it out until early October, 2 weeks later than I lasted last year. As tedious as it sounds however I know that when I am there I will be utterly content with the simplicity of my existence and the daily physical and emotional challenges that I’ll face. Of some things I can be certain. I know the weather will be almost relentlessly grim with low cloud, high winds and heavy rain all serving to compound the feeling of remoteness, isolation and loneliness. I know that I’ll have to work particularly hard to avoid simply repeating what I produced last year and that my daily abseils down Hermaness’s treacherous cliffs will fill me with an almost perpetual unease, a feeling that is exacerbated as I am buffeted about in gale force winds.

Similarly, when I am making my way to the gannetry, gingerly moving along the base of the rapidly eroding cliffs before scrambling across a tidal boulder field, I will feel every ounce of the fear and trepidation that such vulnerability illicits. Dark, precipitous, soaking wet cliffs rise ominously above my route, the sound of crashing waves occasionally punctuated by the sound of falling rocks, worse still, falling sheep. The boulder field is not a nice place. It is like a cemetary for the bold, the careless or the unlucky, a place where countless juvenile gannets get washed ashore to die. Some jumped of their own accord, tempted by the feeling or freedom of flight, a false promise borne of those early, carefree leaps that they enjoyed in the safety of the colony. Others either fall or are clumsily pushed. Some however, those that are ready, those that have the strength and fully developed plumage, they simply make a bad choice.

Below a large and exposed part of the colony is a channel of water, a natural narrowing in the rock where a millennia of waves has exploited a weakness. This channel is open to the ocean, open to the full ferocity of whatever storm can be generated by some 3000 unbroken miles of the North Atlantic. It is into this channel,  a channel where waves that are forced through a narrowing gap can reach an almost incomprehensible scale, that hundreds of young gannets have to take their first tentative leap. For those fortunate few that time it right, that find a break in the waves, the open ocean beckons and the possibility of survival. For the heartbreaking majority however, those that don’t head for the exit with enough purpose or those that are greeted by a wall of white water, their fate is so rapidly sealed. The pounding is instant, it is relentless and exhaustion soon creeps insidiously into their little bodies, their first enthusiastic wingbeats searching for flight soon become desperate flaps for buoyancy. All the while the boulder field awaits.

If they are lucky they drown or get smashed against the rocks, their suffering cut short. For too many however they survive the pounding, pluckily dragging themselves out of the tumult only to endure a longer, more lingering death, succumbing slowly to starvation. Even the skuas, so often brutally opportunistic, prefer to wait for nature to take its cruel course. It is this boulder field that I have to cross most days, past the dead and the dying, past lives in which so much parental energy was invested. Witnessing such suffering takes a heavy emotional toll.

I am not usually one for the traditional wildlife photographer tall stories on which a few have built their careers but this place genuinely scares me. I don’t mind admitting that it has reduced me to tears on a few occasions, not least during a torrential rain storm last year when the rising tide had cut off my normal route out. As evening fell and the darkness gathered I became aware that waiting for the tide to come in, and then retreat, would leave me negotiating the boulder field in darkness and that that would be a risk too far. To the left of my traditional route lay the carcasses of two sheep that had fallen to their deaths several days earlier, their insides spread grusomely over a wide area. It was my only way out. With my boots unable to grip the slippery boulders I had no alternative but to drag myself slowly up the rocks, through the rotting intestines of the long dead sheep. This was it for me. This was the fine line where genuine fear, exhaustion, cold and loneliness finally broke me. As I whimpered and whined myself slowly up through the stench I was able to draw some comfort from the ridiculousnes of my predicament. Utterly alone, exhausted, wet through, crawling through intestines and still half an hour from the base of the 90m cliffs that I had to clamber up. And I’m a f***ing vegetarian! 

It was this and other experiences, getting back to the original title of this Jackanory blog post (Jackanory reference used to denote the storytelling style of this post, not it’s honesty), that has motivated me to invest in a HD camcorder for this relatively brief trip so that I can record a video diary. It’s not usually something that I’d entertain but for this trip at least I believe that there is an interesting story to be told.

PS Reason for shag image – I passed this shag’s nest every day in the boulder field and watched this little fella from when he was an egg!

It is a good job that nature photographers are such patient people: I can now,  two and a half months late, offer my new book and DVD together. If you haven’t already given up in despair, you can order here for GBP 15.99  which includes UK p&p. Overseas orders: please email me – books@niallbenvie.com  for a shipping quote. It’s dearer than Amazon (who sell the book at the same price I buy it from my publisher) but you can’t get the DVD with it from them. If you are interested in my field studio work and processing in Lightroom – the subject of the DVD – it’s probably worth the extra money. Yes, definitely!

On the 4th and 5th September  the 20th Scottish Nature Photography Fair will be held at Scottish Natural Heritage’s communications HQ at Battleby, Perth (Scotland, not Western Aus.) It seems a lifetime since I organised the first one in my second year at uni. at the Steps Film Theatre in Dundee with the local council’s support. After another 4 years of running it at the Royal College of Physicians hall in Edinburgh with Colin Baxter’s sponsorship, I handed the reins over to SNH and under the direction of Lorne Gill the event has grown from strength to strength ever since. Here are the main atttractions:

If you can’t make it to Wild Photos in London  the SNPF is a great alternative with a real buzz  for a fraction of the price. Beyond the Frame will look at my evolution as a photographer from Neanderthal to, well, something where the eyebrows no longer meet.

An aspect of our Italian life is that one never quite knows what a day might entail. This can be a good thing or a not-so-good-thing: this is about one of those good days a day to delight any orchid aficionado.

It started with a short email two days ago from my friend and fellow photographer Pier Luigi Pacetti regarding a rendezvous near his home and then a trip into the beechwoods on Mt Amiata with fellow ‘orchidiot’ Mauro Contorni.

Mauro knows those montane woods like no-one else and had been visiting old sites where the Ghost Orchid (Epipogium aphyllum) had been recorded over the years: he had found some flowering stems. We were off…..READ MORE HERE

All ‘macro’ shots were taken with the Sigma 150mm f/2.8 EX  macro lens and the wide-angle shots with the Sigma 15mm f/2.8 rectangular fish-eye, both of which are getting used a great deal as a ‘pair’ this year for the contrasting views they permit. The links will take you to a more detailed assessment of both lenses.

This is in response to an email from Bruce Terrill – I have added it as a separate post to get a table in:

My close-up photography in the field is often done by “feel” though a lot more thought might have been put in beforehand to get a shot. Here I have set out what (I think) might have been the thought processes… I did my first teaching, a long time ago, as a research student with undergraduates and had to explain how I was solving mathematical problems. It was a salutary experience because I didn’t really know…I just sort of looked at things and knew what to do (or not). I think it’s the same for many of us with things with which we have familiarity where problems get dealt with at a subliminal level.

As many will know, with a focal plane (FP) shutter the synch speed is limited because the flash has to fire when both shutter curtains are wide open. It is a mechanical nightmare and the reason that shutter synch speeds are usually around 1/250^th at their fastest. If you try to use a higher speed you just get a strip illuminated as the curtains chase one another. The copal-type shutter used in rangefinder cameras (and Zeiss lenses for the Hasselblad gives a much faster synch speed.

What it seems Nikon have done with the Auto FP system (FP = focal plane) is effectively ‘lengthen’ the flash pulse so that the subject is then illuminated for the full time that the shutter curtains are travelling across the sensor. It is not a single long flash but a series of extremely rapid, sequential pulses. To achieve this the flash output power is reduced: Nikon do not just stop at a minimum synch speed of 1/320^th (the default when Auto FP is set) sec you can work up to 1/8000^th sec…

For anyone with a Nikon system who wants to read more there is a very useful article here by Russ MacDonald

I have long use auto flash guns on manual and then adjusted the power control to can get some very fast flash times. The flash duration is shortened  (and power reduced) by diverting some of the electrical energy provided by the capacitor to create the discharge into a ‘quench’ tube.  I used this technique to get the shots of the Convolvulus Hawks in flight in an earlier post. This was in low light when the flash took care of all exposure and so there was no need to worry about ambient light. With Auto FP the Nikon metering system takes care of ambient light, too when the “TTL. BL” (balanced TTL) option is used. It is ingenious, to say the least and a feature not trumpeted loudly.

For info, here is a table that gives the pulse durations at reduced power for a Nikon SB900 – data for other guns times will be similar since the trigger/quench circuitry used will not differ much – just component values in terms of capacitor size and so on.

Choice of flash – the SB200’s will work admirably with a reduced pulse I just went for the bigger gun to get more output overall to light a background just that bit further away. With an insect on a flower/taking off from a flower I would be happy with the SB200 guns in the R1C1 set-up.

The blog entry by Niall on his forthcoming workshops certainly prompted a certain amount of interesting follow up.

Tom Wylie of  UKNP (UK Nature Photography)   has kindly sent some thoughts he had penned a few months ago (June 2010) after a good friend had fallen victim to false claims. Those who run courses and care both about what they set out to teach and about their clients will find much with which they are in accord. Those on the look out for worthwhile courses may well gain food for thought.

You can read more here.

In Tom’s words “…This ‘rant’ was born from an educated friend, a budding enthusiastic photographer, returning from an expensive foreign workshop more confused than when they went!…”

There is so much advertised and sorting the wheat from the chaff is never easy. There are some out there who have a brazen cheek to be offering any form of course or workshop – whether because of lack of knowledge, limited experience or simply that as teachers/instructors they are more concerned with getting the shots they want (or with letting you know just how wonderful they are…) And what a privilege it is for you to be the recipient of their pearls of wisdom – culled from someone else’s book or the course they themselves attended the year before…

It is your money: make sure you are not paying for someone else’s holiday and their stock shots: Caveat Emptor – buyer beware

Perhaps I was a little hard on Buddleja in my comments about its ubiquity in butterfly shots. The truth is that there is nothing to compare with it as a nectar source for butterflies and other insects in high summer.

In fact, for the past two days I have been working directly below a Buddleja bush that has, effectively, been carrying out a census of the butterfly population in the garden. The list is definitely ‘not UK’ with both scarce and ‘common’ swallowtails, large and small tortoiseshells, peacock, red admiral, southern white admiral, southern comma, five species of fritillary (including Queen of Spain and silver-washed) and both the brimstone and its even lovelier southern cousin – the Cleopatra with several ‘whites’, blues, skippers, walls, meadow brown: well over two dozen species, in fact.

The work ‘in progress’ has been the unblocking of a cess pit (no, not some thinly disguised metaphor for dealings with an incubus on the blog). At this time of year everything (literally) in Italy runs more slowly – even stops – in anticipation of the August holidays and it is understandably hard to find anyone to do the work for after all, it is hot and malodorous. So, it had to be DIY- we shared the duties and, when effected, there was a primal satisfaction that surprised us!

mastery of flight - these insects literally 'row' their way through the air

Hummingbird Hawks (Macroglossum stellaturum) have been working that bush constantly with anything up to a dozen of them at a time … my mind inevitably wandered to working out how best to photograph them. I have real affection for these beautiful little insects and their mastery of flight since, years ago, I saw in Cyprus how they would visit an outdoor restaurant table to probe at the sugar incrustation left on the rim of a glass of brandy sour. I have seen them flying close to sunny, warm cliff faces at altitudes of 2000m and more in mountains, rising on thermals.

Setting up the photo trap was a possibility  but I did not want to leave the camera unattended in the hot sun. The Nikon D300 is one of those cameras that allows the possibility of using a flash synch speed of 1/320^th and higher (up to 1/8000^th sec) with guns such as the SB 900, 800 and 600 which can fire shortened pulses in a burst when set to Auto FP.

The total flash output is reduced (for close-up this is fine) and pulse length shortened...at 1/16th power pulse duration is 1/10,000th sec which will freeze action leaving wing tips nicely blurred for that sense of motion.

I am sure that other camera makes might allow similar facilities.

I set the camera on manual exposure – I normally do this to get the background illumination right and integrate flash and ambient light seamlessly. The background beneath the Buddleja was in shade so the flash provided the illumination. Camera plus flash was set on a tripod so I could tilt to alter field of view and focus manually – the Nikon 105mm f/2.8 VR macro is fast to focus  with AF but still hunts slightly. The trick is to wait aiming at a suitable flower and watch what comes along. The hit rate was a good 50%. The technique is easy and effective and others can modify to suit. It is surprising how many overlook this hidden high-speed synch capability tucked away in the camera menu…I did.

you never quite know the view you will get - where you will capture the wings... and that is all part of the fun

Partly this exercise was an excuse to use a real bit of ‘British quality’ (remember the days when that was not an oxymoron?) after a ten year absence my Baby Benbo, the old version, has appeared again. I had left it in Italy a decade ago but the person I left it with moved several times and it seemed to have gone the way of the wicked until it was recently re-discovered in an attic.

I must admit that the last few weeks, photographically at least, have been a bit of a washout. The weather here in Derbyshire has been intermittently decent in the daytime but dawn and dusk, more often than not, have been a masterclass in cloudiness. It’s not been a bad thing as for the first time in years I’ve actually been able to take a bit of time off in preparation for what will be a busy few months ahead.

At the end of August, in readiness for the September gales that roll in off the Atlantic, I shall be returning north to the Shetland Islands for as long as I can manage, probably between 3-5 weeks. It is my nostalgia for these northern islands that has prompted me to post some golden plover images that I captured up there last year, on one of the rare evenings that the sun made a brief appearance.

My time in the Shetland Islands will be spent almost exclusively at Hermaness, a National Nature Reserve on the northernmost island of Unst and though it is undoubtedly a spectacular place it is also among the most challenging environments within the UK in which to work.  Last year, having had a number of tents destroyed by ferocious winds I was forced, for the last month of my visit, to work out of my van, something that I will have to do again this year. With no cooker, fridge or comfy bed however it is hardly the most homely of places. There will then be the daily, arduous 6 mile round trip, this time lugging my weighty 600mm F4 lens as opposed to my petite 200-400mm, along with all the food and drink that I’ll need for a potential 14 hour stint. Add in an occasional 90m abseil down broken cliffs, an overwhelming sense of isolation and vulnerability, a feeling which frequently progresses to genuine fear and panic and I’d say that pretty much sums the experience up.

With no phone signal at the base of the cliffs where I will be working I have little option but to ring my wife before every abseil and agree a time when I should be back up. If that time passes my wifes next call has to be to the coastguard giving them accurate GPS co-ordinates for where I’m supposed to be. I’m actually beginning to feel a bit stressed about it already!

As it is so difficult, even on a regular blog, to give people an accurate idea of the full gamut of work that a wildlife photographer produces I have, for those who might be interested in having a look, just had another 200+ images uploaded onto www.rspb-images.com If you search on “Andrew Parkinson”, speech marks necessary, then that will bring up some of the material that I’ve produced over the previous winter months. Of course I could update my own website with these images and information but that is clearly asking a little too much of someone with my organisational skills!