I’m lighting up badger setts with a two flash setup – the key light on a lighting stand or bolted to a tree to splash light from the side, and a flash on the camera to put detail in the shadows. However, to get a nighttime look, perhaps it’s better to just use the one key light as above, leaving the shadows black and featureless.
I could do with more cooperation from the badgers.
One of the projects that I am working on at the moment is to produce images of woodland, countryside and wildlife at night. I have spent such a lot of time over the years photographing our nocturnal wildlife, but looking at the resulting images, you wouldn’t know that they were taken in twilight, or even darkness.
I am hoping that a light modifier on the flash on my camera so that it produces a narrow beam of light – like most torches – will enable images which are obviously taken at night. So I am putting the finishing touches to a gridded snoot, assembled from a section of drainpipe, a box of black drinking straws, a beercan cooler and superglue.
If it helps me to get some good results, it may merit an item on the website.
Walking back through the dark wood after watching badgers, I shone my torch on the path ahead and lit up the silver birch ahead of me.The next time I visited the badgers, I took an appropriate lens with me, and on the way back, I took this photograph – camera on a tripod, long exposure, painted the foreground with light from my torch.
The next day, I went back and took this photograph with daylight.
Walking along the river this afternoon, I came across a group of six cygnets, busily feeding with no adults in sight.
A number of cormorants make a living on the River Weaver, roosting on tall trees near Vale Royal Locks when they are not fishing. I have lost count of the number of fishermen who have complained to me about them and the number of fish they eat.
Usually, they are very circumspect, as if they sense the animosity of many of the humans on the riverbank, but this fellow seems much more tolerant (and maybe foolhardy) than the others.
