Hanging with the night birds

Nov 14, 2014

There's nothing quite like falling into cold, smelly marsh water up to your neck in the middle of the night to make you question whether it's time to put the cameras away and go back home. But when the photographic opportunities are as good as this, you can put up with the occasional mouth full of water weed. Earlier this year I got the chance  to test a new hide for uber-wildlife photographer Bence Mate. Set at water level  in the marshes of Kiskunsagi National Park, Hungary,  the hide had  halogen lamps on the roof to illuminate a reed-bed pool at night. I spent three fascinating  nights photographing the after-dark activities of  herons,  egrets... and a few rather unexpected visitors. 

(Image: Black-crowned Night Herons stand motionless waiting for fish to swim within striking distance. Canon EOS 1DX, EF70-200mm f/2.8L IS II, 1/800 sec @ f/4, ISO 2500, tripod, hide)

Black-crowned Night Herons are very much the stars of this watery stage. I've always liked their roly-poly looks,  outrageously long head feathers and the weird poses that they strike. At night they were more active than I'd ever seen them before.  Every night groups of them congregated in the shallow water, sometimes motionless for minutes at a time before lunging for a fish. Occasionally a territorial squabble would break out - they seemed to get especially annoyed at the presence of Little Egrets. There were bizarre scenes in which thin, fragile egrets and short dumpy herons would face each other, feathers puffed up, seemingly trading insults across the pond before one or other would huffily stalk off into the night.

(Image: A Little Egret and a Night Heron having a dispute about who's pool it is. Canon EOS 1DX, EF70-200mm f/2.8L IS II, 1/160 sec @ f/5, ISO 2000, tripod, hide)

At twilight, when there was still faint light in the sky, some striking colour effects were possible. Halogen lights produce an orange - yellow glow which can be compensated for by setting the camera's white balance to a low setting (typically 2500 - 2800 K). This white balance adjustment ensures that the birds illuminated by the lights come out the right colour. However, the setting also changes the appearance of residual natural light in the sky, shifting it to the blue end of the spectrum. I quite like the overall effect, but I guess it may be a love-hate sort of thing.

(Image: Great Egret catching a fish. Canon EOS 1DX, EF70-200mm f/2.8L IS II, 1/1000 sec @ f/4, ISO 1250, tripod, hide)

(Image: Night Heron holding its prize at nightfall. Canon EOS 1DX, EF70-200mm f/2.8L IS II, 1/1000 sec @ f/4, ISO 2000, tripod, hide)

Shooting at night is not without its pitfalls. One night, at about 3am, I decided to stretch my legs for a bit. Turning off the lights so that I wouldn't be seen leaving the hide I made my way back along the path through the reed beds. Unfortunately, in the dark I slipped and fell into the marsh. I squelched back to Bence's farmhouse, showered and changed and returned. The next morning Bence and his team found my mud and weed covered clothes on the line outside. I think they believed that I'd decided to go for an evening swim...

On the second night, I was amazed to see an otter. It appeared at the edge of the pool and then dived in and began catching fish. To be honest, I struggled to get a high enough shutter speed to avoid motion blur - otters move quite quickly, and 2000W of halogen light isn't that bright over a wide area. . I managed a few more successful shots of the otter while it was eating some of the fish that it caught.  I'm returning to the hide in a couple of months and I'll be taking along a couple of powerful Profoto B1 flashes which should enable me to freeze the otters this time. Watch this space...

(Image: A surprise visit from a European River Otter. Canon EOS 5D Mark III, EF 300mm f/2.8L IS, 1/200th sec @ f/2.8, ISO 3200, tripod, hide)

(Image: A Night Heron wrestling with a fish. Canon EOS 1DX, EF70-200mm f/2.8L IS II, 1/500 sec @ f/2.8, ISO 1600, tripod, hide)

(Image: A solitary Night Heron just before dawn. Canon EOS 5D Mark III, EF300mm f/2.8L IS, 1/320 sec @ f/3.5, ISO 1250, tripod, hide)

A day out with Canon Professional Services

Canon Professional Services (CPS) is the photographic equivalent of an airline  Frequent Flyer Programme - a frequent Canon buyer programme, if you will. (Nikon have a similar scheme). If you own the requisite number of qualifying Canon lenses and bodies (mainly pro cameras and L-series lenses) then Canon will give you priority repair treatment and loan you equipment while your own is out of action. And that was pretty much it. Until recently when Canon introduced CPS+. CPS+ is a programme of photography events at which  members of CPS are invited to spend a day photographing, listening to talks by Canon-sponsored pro-photographers and trying out new equipment. All free of charge. Last week I went along to a CPS+ wildlife photography day to see what it was all about.

My invitation included a 'plus guest', so I took along the depressingly talented John Devries (of www.ophrysphotography.co.uk), a long time co-conspirator. When I pulled into the car park at the British Wildlife Centre in Surrey, which Canon had taken over for the day, my heart sank at the number of other cars already there. I needn't have worried. Although there were well over 50 guests, Canon had arranged for us to be split into 6 separate groups for the activities, so overcrowding during the shooting sessions wasn't  a problem. Danny Green and Mark Sisson were the two wildlife photographers fronting the event. Both gave excellent talks about their work during the day and could be seen wandering around dispensing advice during the practical sessions. I was left marveling at how Danny could still talk happily about puffins even after taking 1.2 million photographs of them for a National Geographic assignment.

In the morning we all attended four shooting sessions back-to-back: otters, red squirrels, wild cats and foxes. The British Wildlife Centre staff accompanied us into the enclosures with the animals and lured them into the open with fish/nuts/chicken pieces as appropriate. I was glad I'd packed a set of waterproof trousers for crawling through the wet grass (even more so when I crawled through a pile of wildcat droppings while trying to get a shot - I guess that's suffering for your art).

Canon had bought along plenty of lenses  and bodies for people to borrow during the shooting sessions. Dozens and dozens of big white super-telephotos, (including many copies of the the latest 500, 600 and 200-400mm L-series monsters), pro cameras bodies and even monopods for people who had managed to leave their tripods at home. True to form, I managed to request the only lens that they hadn't bought along - a 200mm f/2, but, to be fair, it's not what most people would think of as a wildlife lens (I like to be different). I was also slightly disappointed  that they didn't have any copies of the new 7D Mark II, which starts shipping this week - it would have been nice to see how it performed, and I'd have thought that a lot of the people at the event were potential buyers of the product. That said, there were several hundred thousand pounds worth of shiny toys to borrow, so you couldn't accuse Canon of being mean.

After lunch we got to photograph four different kinds of owl in natural settings, and then one session of flight shots with a barn owl. All good fun.

The thing that surprised me most about the day was the lack of hard sell - I'd expected talks about Canon equipment, sales offers etc. In fact, Danny and Mark briefly mentioned that the 1DX was quite good, and that was it. All in all, a nice day out, well organised by Canon. If you get an invitation to attend a CPS+ event, I'd definitely recommend going along.