One day I was out in nature and saw a butterfly. Nothing special, just a Red Admiral (Vanessa atalanta), a species which even I have photographed many times. But I could not resist taking some photos of this one. At first nothing special.
But then I decided to get creative. There is not much to be creative about when photographing a butterfly. I don’t know. I set the camera on manual focus and just tried some things. I sort of liked one of these photos, desaturated it a bit and uploaded it to a upload-your-photos-and-comment-on-other-photos site. That was last June. Nothing special happened then. One person said he liked it, another wondered why the focus was so weird. As I am not very active commenting photos of others, I don’t get many comments in return. That is only fair.
And then some months later the photo gets some more comments (wel actually only 2). That is as such a bit remarkable, because comments are usually written on recently uploaded photos. The interesting thing about these comments is that it seems as if the commenter has been made angry by this photo. One commenter suggested that I made this photo without looking through the lens, that I was trying to annoy people with uploading that photo. Another suggested that I should have thrown the photo away, as anyone would have done. Both could have easily ignored the photo (which is what people usually do when they don’t like it).
What is it that makes people angry about a photo of a butterfly?
Just to show to the world some of the Damselfly photos I made this year. If you are really impressed: click on the photo and order a print. But it is fine with me if you just enjoy looking at them here.
Female Red-eyed Damselfly (Erythromma najas). The rain left some drops on her wings.
Female Green Emerald Damselfly (Lestes viridis). The sunlight shines on the grass from behind.
Male Emerald Damselfly (Lestes sponsa). Holding on to grass on a very windy day.
Female Common Winter Damselfly (Sympecma fusca). A new generation has emerged. Winter Damselflies get through the winter as an adult, reproduce early in spring. The last of them can be seen until half June. Then the new generation emerges halfway July – this is one of them.
The Robin is a curious bird. I only found out since the time I usually carry around a camera on my walks.
Currently I am more into dragonflies than into birds. Mainly because dragonflies are easier to photograph, but also because there are fewer species of them which makes them usually easier to identify. But because the dragonfly forum which I frequent, is on the same site as a bird forum, I sometimes read go to read that bird forum. Especially in the winter when there is not much to do at the dragonfly forum.
That bird forum is interesting. When I was young I had some interest in birds and bought a quality bird guide (from my own hard-earned money) in order to identify the species I saw. I still have that guide, but it is totally out of date. It seems that every species in that guide now has been split into several species or subspecies. Of course that is mostly done to satisfy the need of the bird watchers. They love to have a check behind as many species as possible. Did you know that there is a special word for this kind of people? They are called “twitchers” and it is not easy to become a fully accepted twitcher. There is a long trajectory, in which you first see only common species, then find out that there are rare species too – which you apparently start seeing everywhere until you realize that you are just fooling yourself (and others) and return to seeing common species everywhere with only very occasionally a rare species (after which that sometimes gets eaten).
An essential part of bird watching is bird listening. I remember reading a story on mentioned forum about someone who though he had seen an extremely rare species (at least for the Netherlands). Because many bird species migrate between their summer and winter residence, bird listeners spend a small capital on microphones and spend days and nights on locations where these migrating birds fly over and occasionally come to the ground to feed. With these microphones they try to identify migrating birds by their sound. I don’t know how hard that is. I have trained myself to recognize about 10 or 20 bird species by their sound. It always makes me happy to hear the first Chiffchaff again in spring – and it can surprise me sometimes that others don’t notice. But the real twitchers take that to another dimension with their microphones. So this person wrote on the forum about a sound he heard, which was familiar, but then he swa the bird and it did not look like the species it sounded like. Then he remembered that there was this species which sounds like the familiar one, looks a bit like another (also familiar) species, but is very, very rare. Did he see that very very rare species? He could not be sure, because he heard nor saw it again. But he wrote a long story on the forum with remarkable details such as how many meters away he saw the bird (he measured it very precise, something like 84.5 metres), wrote about the sound he heard and what he thought about it at that moment and then what he thought when he saw the bird and if he could be sure if the bird he saw was the same one as the bird that made the sound. I was impressed. True, not everybody on the forum was as impressed as I was.
Anyway, these kind of stories are what keeps me interested in the bird forum. People want so much to see some rare species and at the same time are aware that they are probably mistaken when they think to have seen one. This tension between desire and self-control and an effort to be ’scientific’ gives many contributions on this forum a great suspense.
The Robin is a curious bird. I only found out since the time I usually carry around a camera on my walks. First time was when I took the photo displayed at the top. Walking in the dunes I noticed a Robin. I prepared my camera in a reflex, but mosty expecting that the bird would have flown far away by the time I had it in focus. To my surprise it did not fly away, but kept sitting there, seemingly watching me.
Last week I must have remembered that moment, when I was in a city park which has some pretentions to be natural, and saw another Robin no too far away. The thought came to me that I should just stay there with my camera ready until the bird would come to watch me from a bit closer. Half to my surprise that was exactly what happened. The bird came to me to have a closer look. And this was the result.
You will understand that I want to be mentioned there too one day. So I looked at the winning photos closely. One thing was interesting: many winning bird photos were long exposure photos, but taken in daylight. Moving birds, a blurred image. I am not sure if I can explain it well, it is the best you will just look at it. Check out this photo, and this and also this one, and you understand what I mean.
This is inspiring photography. This is something to try myself. I took my camera, set it on ’shutter priority’ at 1/5 or 1/20 seconds and went to the nearest park in my city. There are no rare birds over there, just some gulls and pigeons, ducks and such. You can imagine. That does not matter, this is not about the species, this is about the revolution in bird photography. A revolution I did not start, but of which I certainly want to be part of.
And here are my results:
What do you think? Am I going to be the next winner of this contest?
(Additionally, I did some more of this and some results aren’t that bad: see here)
Again there is lots of talk in the Netherlands about misbehaving nature photographers. This time a fox has been shot by a nature conservation organization, because it had been tamed by nature photographers. The reasoning behind shooting the fox was that it could get dangerous for children, because it lost all fear for humans. Of course there is lots of discussion about the need to shoot the fox.
Earlier in 2007 there was a scandal about some nature photographers spraying tree frogs with some substance (possible liquid nitrogen) in order to make a nice photo.
In the age of digital photography, it shows that the Dutch have a disturbed relation with nature. Nature in the Netherlands is perceived as a free Zoo.
Nature in the Netherlands
Here in the Netherlands we have replaced our nature long ago with parks. Some are called a National Park, giving the suggestion that it is wild nature. But it isn’t. Potentially dangerous animals have been killed long ago. All original forests have been cut, the last was the Beekbergerwoud (sorry, I could not find a link in English), destroyed in 1871.
Of course there are several organizations in the Netherlands that work on nature conservancy. Their work probably looks a bit different from the work of nature conservancy in other countries. Their work in the Netherlands is not nature conservancy, but natuurontwikkeling (= nature development, the Dutch wikipedia is the only one to have an article about this). It means in short that nature is being created. The big example for nature development is the Oostvaardersplassen, a wetland created in what was formerly a sea, but has been turned into land by dikes, pumps and mills. To make this area more natural, the nature conservancy organizations have released some big half-wild animals in there such as Konik horses and Heck cattle. And now this area is the Dutch pride of nature.
Not only is it the Dutch pride, it also serves as an example for management of other “natural” areas. That means that in areas that are called nature, projects have been done that include digging of lakes, releasing cattle, cutting of mono cultures of trees, releasing of beavers etc, all in an effort to create nature. At the same time the latest more or less natural area of the Netherlands, the Wadden Sea, is more and more being exploited for economic purposes.
You might understand that the Dutch have a very interesting relation with “nature”. Nature isn’t wild and dangerous. Our nature is a garden. We are building things like a “fauna passage” under highways to connect one area to another (see photo). In this case on one side of the highway there is a city park and on the other side there is agricultural land.
It is not that such areas are totally uninteresting. Last year (2007) I photographed over 20 species of dragonflies in the city park (see here). But it is just a park. We, the Dutch, have not much better left when it comes to nature.
It might come as a surprise, but actually the Dutch approach to nature conservation serves as an international example. More and more countries loose their natural nature. The pressure of the ever-growing number of people and their ever-growing economic activities pushes nature back everywhere. And because here in the Netherlands we have nothing left to loose when it comes to nature, we are in fact the front runners of nature conservation. The current situation here might be the future for all countries. So people come here from abroad to see how the Dutch recreate nature. How the nature conservancy organization try to raise interest in nature and how they use iconic species as representatives for ecosystems.
The Tree Frog and the King Fisher have gotten an almost holy status. The side effect is however that every nature photographer needs to make a photo of these species. I have read questions on forums from people who wanted to photograph a king fisher, even though they had never seen one in their life. There are currently ab0ut 450 King Fishers in the Netherlands. Each of them must have been photographed hundreds of times. There are special excursions organized for nature photographers to areas where Tree Frogs can be found. People pick them up to put them on blackberries and other spots that will make a good photo. Others don’t, but their photos are considered suspicious anyway.
Photography nature reserves
Maybe the best is to create special semi-natural areas for nature photographers. A bit like a zoo, but it should look a bit more natural. Next to it an animal nursery where iconic species are bred and released into the area. Photographers pay an entrance fee and can walk around and photograph the animals. If they happen to harm some individuals, it does not matter that much.
It is 2007. There is the internet. Everyone seems able to get rich. Except me.
I have been wondering how to get some money from selling my photos. My photos aren’t that bad, although they probably aren’t that good either – still improving I hope. But on the other hand, who would not want to buy a print of this incredible photo.
The problem is twofold: how to make photos that people will buy and how to advertise those photos (how to find the people that will buy). I have been focusing on making photos that I like. I am not sure that I want to focus on making photos that others like or on marketing my stuff. Making “friends” all over internet to in the hopes that they will become my “friend” but in the meantime just hoping that they will buy my stuff somehow is not what I like to do. Yet I have made some marketing steps, and to be honest I have actually sold one single print so far, which gave me the mere sum of $1,29. If you are interested, check out my Nature photography on Imagekind. I have tried to increase traffic to that page, in different ways, but not with great success and also with increasing inner resistance. There are so many blogs, so many people on flickr, so many photosites. Some people seem to be able to make their weblogs into a success. Not me.
Maybe I should try to join an agency that will take care of selling my photos. But then again I am not sure if my photos are good enough. Gotta try that some day though. And then there is stock photography, but do I really think that my photos are worth $0,20 each?
As a boy I always wanted to be a bird photographer. I borrowed an old camera from my father and walked around or found a hiding place with a view on birds possibly passing by. Still I have a couple of these photos in a box, and when I joined flickr I scanned in one of those old photos and posted it. It became an instant hit on flickr and still today it is my most viewed photo there. It helped probably that I explained my childhood passion, and yes, I made the circle to indicate where the bird is at that time. I do not remember exactly when the photo was taken, but it must have been in the early seventies.
About two years ago I started with a digital compact camera, then after a years a DSLR – because I loved it so much. I bought a macro lens, mainly for dragonfly photography, but never forgot about the birds.
Last winter I spend lots of hours on my toilet, peeping through the small toilet window into my garden. Because that – I had decided – was the best place to make photos of birds. I had placed some food in my garden to attract birds and kept track of the species I saw. As I live in a city and my garden is tiny, there are not really exciting species to be expected. The macro lens has 100mm focal length, which is nice for dragonflies. But birds are different, they won’t let me get so close. All shots I took had to be cropped. Still it would turn out to be a large improvement over my earlier work, although it was never more remarkable then the shot of the encircled bird.
Blue tit and Greenfinch, last winter, in my garden
So now I bought a new lens. A 70-200mm zoom. Also in the hopes that I can get the birds in my garden a bit closer this winter. I know, 200mm is not the best focal length for bird photography, I’ll need more, 400mm at least I think. Someday, when I’ll be rich….
What was it that I wanted to tell? Something about this lens. Yes, that it is so different from the 100mm macro. And about the birds that really don’t like to be photographed. As I did with dragonfly photography I took my bike and went out of the city. I did not make it hard for myself, just shooting a common duck would be fine. But these birds always see me before I see them, and after I have parked my bike and readied my camera there are no more birds in range. Dragonflies are so much easier.
There I was. Seriously trying to make photos of dragonflies. There were lots of them. Mainly Hawkers (Aeshna) and Meadowhawks (Sympetrum). I was especially interested in the Brown Hawker (Aeshna grandis), the species that I find so hard to photograph. At this spot I counted at least six of them. While walking around, sometimes one of them would fly up from its hiding place unexpectedly. Each time that happened I told myself again that I should look better and try to see them before they escaped from my camera.
There were also many individuals of the Migrant Hawker (Aeshna mixta) . In Dutch this species is called Paardenbijter, which translates to Horse Biter. You can fantasize why it got that name. I don’t know it for certain.
Anyway. I thought that it might be easier to get close to the Brown Hawker if I would follow a flying one until it sat down and then carefully approach that spot. So I did. I had followed one with my eyes and saw it disappear in the vegetation. With my eyes fixed on that spot I carefully stepped closer. At that point a bunch of females and girls came riding by on horses. I am not sure what the fun of riding horses is, but it has to do something with something that girls like. There were about 20 horses stepping slowly in a long row and the girls seemed happy sitting on top of them.
The girls wondered what a lonely man was doing walking around in the grass. One of them must have seen my camera. “Oh, he’s photographing grass” she said so loud that I could hear it. Problem solved. Lonely man classified as weird but harmless. And on they went.
At that time I thought it best to say nothing. Only later I realized I should have told her that there were many Horse Biters around.
(Both photos were taken at the afternoon this happened. I still need a better photo of the Brown Hawker)
The Brown Hawker (Aeshna grandis) is a dragonfly that is hard to miss when present. It is big, brown and flies around all the time.That, at the same time, is the trouble when you want to take a photo of it. To be honest I should say that it does sometimes rest and that at such moments it is possible to shoot it. There are plenty such photos and I even did one or two myself. Anyway, I have been trying to shoot it in flight. Shooting dragonflies in flight is something that I find very hard. I have seen photos of others which seem just perfect, and they are sometimes presented as if it had cost no effort to do. I am not one of those.
This is how I do it. First find a place where the dragonfly regularly flies along. They patrol their territory, so it is not hard to find such a place. Then set my camera to manual focus, and focus it to a distance at which the dragonfly approximately passes by. Then wait until it flies along. There is no time to refocus, because it moves too quickly and changes course very often. It is a matter of pointing the camera in the right direction and click, hoping that the dragonfly is in the frame and that the focus distance was right. Of course that usually goes wrong. But once in so many times it goes more or less right. I am sure that others have found better techniques (judging from their photos). Please let me know.
One of the photos that completely missed the dragonfly was actually quite nice. It showed some totally out-of-focus vegetation that was growing on the other side of the water. I put it through some processing with photomatix (which is mostly used to create dreadful-looking HDR photos, but it can be used to proces single RAW photo files too) and created some extra grain by sharpening it.
I liked it. And at the same time I thought I could try to make such photos on purpose. All I had to do was to find a nice piece a vegetation, with some structure and some colors, set my camera to manual focus and make sure that the vegetation is quite out of focus.
Yes, I know. Maybe others have done this before. I haven’t seen it, but that means nothing. It is ok if you tell me who did this before. But this was my accident, not somebody else’s.
Anyway. I went for it. While hunting for dragonflies with my camera (which I do all the time these days), I sometimes took the time to look around for some vegetation that I could shoot out-of-focus. Coming home I’d process them as described and post them to my flickr account. Nothing special happened, a few views, a scarce comment.
In just a few days I created a dozen of such photos, and already now I am bored of it. Not because it is not nice, or that I don’t like it. But because it is too easy. Almost anywhere I stand in low vegetation I can see something that would produce a result like this. Or maybe I just lack the education (in arts) to define an idiom for this, some way to make it harder.
Maybe one day I’ll come back to this, or find a way to use it a bit differently. But for now you can look at the dozen Vegetation Impressions. And I’ll go back to pure dragonfly hunting.
It’s true, I am into dragonfly photography. It must have started last summer, when I discovered a population of Banded Demoiselles (Calopteryx splendens) quite close where I live. Amazingly that is in the middle of a city. At least I think it is amazing. Such pretty blue-winged damselflies are supposed to live in far-away countries or areas that can only be accesed with great difficulty. Now I just come home after work, take my camera and after a short walk over paved streets they are there.
That was last summer. This year they were back. The damselflies I mean. Last summer I made hundreds of photos (most of them not worth keeping). This year I found another spot close by with dragonflies, with other species. So I have divided my attention, resulting in a lot less photos of the Banded Demoiselles. I know that the year is not over yet, but the Banded Demoiselles have had their peak, now there are only a few of them, sometimes.
On one of the days that I visited “my” population, I saw a male Banded Demoiselle sitting in the sun on a leaf. As I approached with my camera it tried to hide, but then it probably made up its mind and decided that I was harmless. It just sat there and it let me photograph it.
After I was finished taking photos, I looked at the damselfy still sitting there, and I said aloud “thank you”. Then I realized it was stupid to say that to an insect. But I meant it anyway.
