In the darkroom, you see by hearing

In the past few weeks, PJ and I decided to step up the pace and go for nightwork. The plan was to photograph bats in France. We knew a good but very small cave where brandt's bats Myotis brandtii swarm. Photographing bats is teamwork: lots of driving, little sleep, lots and lots of gear to transport... so lots of helping each other.

Our man cave: nothing but a shady hole in the ground. Underneath is something to be described as a largely empty cave where a few dozens of bat winter.

But in August and September, this cave is like... well the word that comes to mind is a sex club, where horny bats swing by to get lucky. Then they leave again, sometimes to come back just moments later. They both listen and talk, and try to score.

A darkroom, as such. Where PJ and I were the illuminati, shedding flashes on their hedonistic nocturnal caprioles.

As always, the day started less sexual and included many hours of preparing the camera systems.

We first checked into our hotel:

Here some results of the nightwork:

I think this summons the atmosphere quite correctly: <a href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ss1SDvFVgis\">Click here

 

For this type of photography, having lots of megapixels is good. You don't know exactly where the bat will pass the barrier. Hence you can crop it. Also, when you get it right, the images are super sharp. Eg. a crop of this brandt's bat from the 36MP D800E original:

Many people think we just photoshop these bats into good scenic pictures. Which indeed would be easy to do. As proof however following images show one and the same Geoffroy's bat photographed at one moment, by two cameras.