Why do photographers take photos of wildlife? Well, there are a lot of reasons why, but I'd make a very large bet that pretty high up on their top ten reasons list is that they loved being outside watching wildlife and one way or another this lead to them taking photos of the wildlife. Whether the photos are for themselves as a reminder of, or to show other people of, what they saw, is up to the individual and only they will know the reason. I'm a bit of a geek, I am fascinated with camera equipment, how it works and all the gadgets that go with it but I also love watching wildlife, the things they do and get up to can keep me amused for hours, and wildlife photography combines the two. During the hours of waiting prior to the wildlife appearing I look and see what the landscape has to offer and it is amazing what you can see when you actually look. This is a bit of an odd statement to make but it's true as most people look but they don't see. Think about it, you've been to a certain places a few times and then turned around and said "oh look at "That", I've never noticed "That" before" or words along that line, when "That" has been there all the time. Another example is when you go to the supermarket and you want a tin of something, you stare at the shelves and can't see it but all of a sudden you notice it and it has been right in front of you all the time. The TV companies even invented part of a game with this in mind, "The Generation game", you had just seen a lot of items go by on a conveyer belt but could you remember them all apart from the cuddly toy? There are a few reasons for this including: - other things on your mind, tiredness, pressure from home and at work, stress etc. But learning to relax helps you learn to see what you are looking at and is one of the reasons I go and set myself up a few hours before the sun rises and the wildlife gets there. Watching the wildlife helps me learn to anticipate for an action shot which I am learning all the time. In the days of film it was great when you took a good photograph of a wildlife subject standing still or a "bird on a stick" type photo and it came back from the labs perfectly focused and the exposure and composition were spot on. Before I move on I just want to state that I hate the term "bird on a stick" as it seems to belittle the amount of work the photographer actually has to do to achieve the photo but lots of people know it as that type of photo so I'll stick with it. Now we are in the digital age of photography where once you have bought the camera equipment it is a relatively cheap hobby as you can take and delete as many photos as you want also a lot of wildlife photographers have given their little secrets away so the mystery of how to take this type of photo has disappeared. We used to marvel at these photos, don't get me wrong we still do, but now we are looking for something extra and an action shot provides this extra. But to know when a certain bit of action is going to happen so that you can photograph it you have to know what the wildlife does just before and watching wildlife gives you this information. An example of this is that you want to take a photo of a bird taking off from a branch; most birds will empty their bowels just before they take-off. Armed with this information, gained by watching wildlife, as soon as the bird empties its bowels you could start pressing the shutter release and go home with a take-off sequence on your card. Once again it means more work for the photographer to achieve his/her photo but the end result benefits this extra work.
 

Last weekend I was carrying out more reconnaissance for wildlife photography along the river Tamar but this time I also included the river Tavy which is closer to my home address. These two are big rivers and it is amazing how there are so few places for the general public to get near the river's edge and level with the water. I do not like looking down on wildlife or the photos that are produced like this. The other problem I have encountered is the amount of trees on the banks of these two rivers which make the area of the river very dark and hard to get a fast shutter speed for wildlife photography. I think I will have to give these two rivers a bit of time and return to them later when the leaves are off the trees and see what the light is like then. There are some wonderful areas on these rivers and the wildlife I have seen include: - Robins, Dippers, Grey Wagtails, Cormorants, Black Headed Gulls, Kingfishers, Blackbirds, Blue Tits, Great Tits, Long-tailed Tits, Jays, Crows, Mallards, Red-breasted Mergansers, Mute Swans, Herons, Little Egrets, Grey Squirrels and Fallow Deer amongst other things but no Otters as yet. One of the reasons I believe that I have not seen any otters is that the water level is quite low in most parts of the rivers. Since the beginning of September we have not had a lot of rain, having said that before September we never had anything but rain. The last two days the rain has come back so I am hoping for a bit more luck on the Otter front the next time I visit these rivers. The other thing I have noticed whilst doing this reconnaissance is that there are some fantastic hidden gems in the shape of stone bridges over these rivers most of which I have never seen a photograph of. I have my moments and "dabble" with landscape photography, as you can see on my website, but this type of photography does not excite me as much as wildlife photography does. Please don't get me wrong I love looking at a great landscape photograph and really admire photographers like David Noton but, if you haven't got the enthusiasm for something you will not put 100% effort into it.