Despite often dreaming of far away destinations, I always liked garden photography. Also when giving lectures, it is the part “shot in the garden” that makes people wonder and smile, I guess since these images are quite accessible and recognizable.
A while ago I made this image from the permanent hide in my parents garden. It shows a roe deer (successfully) fleeing from hunters.
and recently I experimented with flashed mushrooms, behind an autumn leaf
Last week I tried to photograph short-eared owls at the famous location in Uitkerke at the Belgian coast. Thousands of people come here every winter to observe the owls hunting at dusk. If lucky, they start foraging before sunset. Which, again, wasn’t the case when I was there. Very pretty, nevertheless.
“Aint had no peace in the farm yard Since my little red roosters been gone”
Yes, this really is the famous Belgian Ramsar site for pink-footed geese
Stoat hunting voles
Sunset… Time for owls?
This is the best I could do… meaning I will have to go back and finally get them in good light conditions.
Foxes are eating common sea-buckthorn (duindoorn) berries, but do not seem capable of digesting them properly
Huge rope washed ashore
Sanderlings
Winds were sand blasting both photographer and his topic. Nice how they really shut their eyes.
Dunlin amongst the sanderlings
Finally a close sanderling at 5m
A scenic image of our garden feeder(s)… This was a one off effort (putting all feeders in one tree), trying to make the ultimate bird feeder picture…
This week I spent several days at sea testing new fishing gear.
We did some testing around the winmill parks, where around a dozen ships were working.
Clearly separated water layers at a coastal front
Busy days for offshore wind farmers… Autumn is indeed a good time for harvesting wind (energy).
Kittiwakes
Do you know these pelagic fish?
After counting and measuring all fish, we got the chance to take some pictures of herring and lesser black-backed gulls attracted to our discards.
Gulls always care for each other don’t they
It brings a lot of satisfaction I reckon, to photograph topics or subjects that remain rarely seen.
Maybe that is why I like to picture smaller mammals such as bats and mice. Unseen by most people, yet they occur in and around every house.
Pieter-Jan and I have been working on incorporating Infrared technology into mouse photography. The best of both worlds we think…
As such we tried to photograph jumping mice. The mouse must jump from one branch to another (convincing the mouse often takes a while!), thereby triggering the laser system, connected to a master flash which triggers all slave flashes.
The camera is operated in bulb mode.
Here are two images PJ and I made last weekend, showing a Wood mouse Apodemus sylvaticus.
Fly my pretty
Jumping sequence “strobelighted”
What me and Pieter-Jan love doing most, is high-speed photography on bats.
This takes time, skill, lots of gear and quite some practice, but after several years and many tips from René, we finally start getting decent flying bat images.
Some of these I wanted to share with you.
The principle of bat photography is to make an infrared system which triggers a master flash, subsequently triggering many slave flashes. Your camera is in bulb mode and is operated manually. Always beter to use as much cameras as possible, to increase the chance of getting a fullframe image.
Testing the gear
First bats arriving whilst testing
Brown long-eared bat Plecotus auritus
Brandt’s bat Myotis brandtii
Bechstein’s bat Myotis bechsteinii
Bechstein’s bats tend to inhabit older forest
Whiskered bat Myotis mystacinus hunting insects
Self portret. PJ, thanks for everything.
Last weekend I visited my friend Jean-Marie who lives in the Lorraine (France).
His specialty is the European wild cat. You can see he knows his area just by listening to him talk. “Là dans ce secteur il y du chat. C’est un male qui se trouve souvent dans le fossé dans ce champ”. He knows the whereabouts of at least five cats…
Together with Pieter-Jan and Frans we set out to track this wild cat. Yet it seemed very shy and always ran off. We saw it six times in three days but only on the last day we found him amongst the cows and were able to track him down.
Finally a picture of a wild cat…
Now the time has come to try and make a good picture of this pussy. Which we will be trying in the next weeks.
We started the weekend by looking for red deer at night. I experimented a little bit with long exposures on the stag…
There he was!
We got up to 30m I reckon. Marvelous experience
This week I got Lucky. I had always hoped to photograph a fox near human surroundings or in a henhouse. Because this is how foxes are often portrayed by us, humans: A narly bunch of scum entering our properties during the night and steeling our chickens. Whilst walking in Brussel this weekend, I heard something moving in the park. I considered it to be a bird so I was surprised when I suddenly noticed a fox popping its head out the bushes. At first she was very wary (20m) and reluctant to approach, but one hour later I was able to get her closer (also taping the squealing rabbit sound that works well on martens). Finally she sat before me at 1m. It was a mega…
Foxy lady appeared
For some reason I think these pics are maybe even better in black-and-white as they are in colour. See for yourself and tell me what you think…
getting even closer…
heart rate still going up
That’s what makes nature photography cool. Unexpected things happen. This means, alas, that you always should drag all your gear along. Yet, this female fox was photographed with a 150mm macro objective on a fullframe body. No need for longer lenses.
…some ancient urge disturbs us so that we find ourselves shedding shoes and garments or scavenging among seaweed and whitened timbers like the homesick refugees of a long war. ~ Loren Eiseley
During the past week I never lost sight of the Sea, which is a good thing.
Here you’ll find some images shot along the way during a sampling campaign as well as in the port of Rotterdam, where I took an offshore training course together with my colleague Jan.
During the ILVO fishing campaign we measured horizontal and vertical trawl opening with these high-tech Scanmar devices.
The net fished allright. But only jellyfish were brought to the surface.
The weather was good, which allowed three of us to be the first to swim from the Simon Stevin. Diving into the high seas in your boxers… What a kick it was indeed.
Afterwards the crew performed abandon ship training in survival suits. Notice the C power windmills (on the nearby Thornton bank) in the background.
Following, we moved to the port of Rotterdam for a training course.
At first, we only noticed the heavy metal that was around us. Impressive none the less! Always nice to photograph big subjects standing still.
Pano of 15 images producing very good resolutions…
All sorts of metal were to be found
But then we started noticing all the ecological compensation the Dutch have undertaken whilst building their Maasvlakte 2 (creating completely new land by sand nourishment). There really was beauty amongst these metallic beasts.
30 000 gulls nest in the port.
Jan studying plants in the harbor…
Beautiful patches among the industry
Ow yes LORD, I have seen the LIGHT!
Love is in the air
The previous week five of us (Iwan, Frans, Pieter, Kurt, Karl; aka “Team obvious”) went on a trip to the Balkan mountain range.
We mainly looked for large carnivores, in Slovenia and Croatia. These trips usually are great fun, but are not that good (in fact they are bad) for taking decent pictures. Many nights were spent shining, leading to sleepy mornings, therefore missing out on good light conditions.
Needless to say I did not take that many pictures, but during nightly activities we managed to see two beautiful wolves. Frans also saw a bear. All of this in addition to many butterflies and the most venomous species in Europe: the Horned viper…
Much frustration got into the car when we spotlighted an animal that could have been our first Eurasian Lynx on the shining list. Five more seconds would have made the difference… Better luck next time, people said. Very frustrating, but providing goose bumps at the same time
The five boys with their new best friend.
Banded general Stratiomys potamida
We spent a day looking for the elusive Siberian bluet / Siberische waterjuffer / Coenagrion hylas. A damselfly that can only be found near a few lakes in Austria. But we assume they are late this year and weren’t flying yet.
Mating caddisflies
Do you know the Secretary Bird?
Just insanse, the densities of edible dormice in the Balkan countries. Every tree had its own residents. We were not planning mouse photography during this trip but I brought some Sherman traps. After only one hour of trying I caught my first Glis glis. The only thing we could do was release it in our tent and try (without completely succeeding) to photograph it there.
Edible dormouse
Trying other than usual stuff. Feel free to comment
Huge grasshoppers present everywhere: Polysarcus denticauda
High Balkan hut with great view
New dawn fades.
I like how the current fullframe bodies let you go higher in the ISO ranges and still take decent pics:
Leisler’s bat (with minor wing damage) Nyctalus leisleri hunting insects.
Tawny owl Strix aluco sitting still. I liked the atmosphere here in this old quarry.
White wagtail feeding its young with big grasshoppers and crickets
Wolf scat (notice the wild boar hairs) attracting variety of “sucklings”
Crazy grasshopper without pigment, found near a cave. Specialists have been mailed about this and say that it is a Troglophilus species. Comments on ID welcome.
Nine-spotted moth / Phegeavlinder / Amata phegea
Cool details on the head of a ground beetle.
Kurt had assumed that Croatia lies above the arctic circle.
We first saw a common European viper (Vipera berus), but in these regions this species occurs in beech forests as well. Strange scenery…
But then we found what we had been looking for since a very long time. A horned viper (Vipera ammodytes). Epic snake species and the most venomous animal in Europe…
Horned viper
Frenchie taking care of the locals. Or vice versa…
