Author: David Jenkins

Spilling over the horizon first thing in the morning, the sun makes its presence felt in the way that it send shadows scurrying, highlighting details and bringing tone and form to the previous dark shapes.

It also creates a variety of moods and colours as it marches its inevitable track to the other horizon, to then slip silently, but forcefully over the horizon and leave behind a soft mellow afterglow that drapes and melds over the landscape and our subjects.

Mid-morning to mid-afternoon provide sunlight that brings  qualities of contrast, detail, and colour.  On a cloudy day, the harsh shadows are suppressed bringing another mood into play.

Working with terns is one of those times where getting the light right is as much a challenge as filling the viewfinder with the bird.

When I first started bird-photography, the people I travelled with called id on what appeared to be two seperate species. “Whiskered Terns” and “Marsh Terns.” For many months, I ticked off both on my list thinking I was seeing two distinct species and not seeing, ‘whiskers’ on any of them, I wondered what I was missing.
One particular evening I spoke to my mentor at the time and asked how to tell the difference.  “Oh,” she replied,  “they are the same bird they just have had a name change and some of us oldies still refer to them as Marsh.
Defeated by nomenclature!

When it comes to working with these birds, my dear old Mum’s “Keep the Sun over your Left Shoulder, Dear” when using the family box-camera still holds good.  Thanks Mum.

Early morn, or late afternoon works well for me, as it gives angular light under the wings.  The only challenge to all that is the bird will have its wing in the wrong place and I’ll have the face in shadow. And as they change direction so quickly, it’s not always apparent until I get to view the shot as to how successful it was.

They also smack the water so fast that as I follow them down its hard to keep up with the sudden stop of the bird and keep panning down into just open water.
Missing the impact completely.

Like all thing photographic, some practice is the order of the day.
Meanwhile a pocketful of luck doesn’t hurt either.

As we begin our next trip around the sun, I hope that 2022 brings you some relief from the trauma of the past year and some excellent opportunities for fine images of our birds.

“You can do all sorts of things that are fiendishly clever, then fall in love with them because they’re fiendishly clever, while overlooking the fact that they take a great deal more work to obtain results that stupid people get in half the time. As someone who has created a lot of fiendishly clever but ultimately useless techniques in his day, I’d say this sounds like an example.”

—Bruce Fraser

I published a similar photo on Flickr the other day, and of the same pair.

What is interesting is that they resting between remaking a nest and laying eggs.

Unless my calculations are off, this will be her ninth nesting in the past two years.  I think she changed mate, about 6 nests back. Perhaps they fell out, or perhaps he met with an accident.  The next male was probably a younger bird as he was much smaller than she, but over the past 18 months or so, he has bulked up and is now much better proportioned.
I think she is the largest across-the-chest Black-shouldered Kite we’ve worked with. When she stretches for take off it’s quite noticeable.

They are an interesting pair in that they have remained faithful to the little area that was once a main road, but now lies abandoned as the traffic rushes by on the new road about 500 metres away.  Yet the paddocks are essentially untouched and provide a ready source of food for these excellent hunters.

As Bruce Fraser pointed out, the basics just work.
Many will know of Bruce as the genius behind some very clever digital photography Sharpening techniques.  Adobe hired Bruce to work on the multi-pass sharpening techniques used in Adobe Camera Raw (ACR). Unfortunately we lost Bruce long before he had a chance to complete  his work.
Those new to digital photography may not have heard of him, but each time they open Photoshop and work the Sharpening Slider, they are benefiting from Bruce’s dedication.

And his point remains valid.
A quick search of most hard drives will reveal megabytes of downloaded Photoshop actions or Presets to make this or that change. Sunset glows, or Mountain mists or Ancient-Bygone-Era feels.  Dark Moody Street, or the Glow of a New Bride.
We’ve downloaded them, paid for some of them, and after a few clicks, …. well it didn’t turn the proverbial sow’s ear into the prize winner we’d hoped for.

As the year draws to a close, I’ve been looking back at the few “Five Star” images in my library for this year, and wondering was the fiendishly clever technique worth all the effort.
Also beginning to spend a bit of time on some of the all time classic images from the world’s great photographers.   No no, not the one’s currently gleaning ‘Likes’ on Instagram.  But the truly great ones.

How about Frank Hurley’s famous “Endurance Trapped In Ice.”

or Imogene Cunningham  Portrait

Dorothea Lange, The Photographer of People

Eric Hosking, Heraldic barn owl

Or Dr. Julian Smith You Called Me Dog   and Micawber

But,  I’m sure you’ll have your own list.   What to put in, what to leave out.

I wonder what fiendishly clever technique I’ll fall in love with in 2022?

All the best for the season, hope that 2022 brings some cheer

Last week I explored the magic of light.
In my early years, the local photographer handled everything from weddings, debs, insurance claims, business portraits and some commercial products.
They were all shot in studio.  With a few props that seemed to be included in the photo as mandatory.  A young lass could have the mirror, and sideboard in both her deb shots and then again in her wedding shots.  As the work was hand-coloured the wall was toned to match the necessary colour scheme needed for the client’s satisfaction.

I’ve written before of the new wedding photographer who stated up, not using studio, but rather outdoor environmental portrait setting.  It was a change that suited the era.  It set the bench mark and the old studio would eventually fade away.

Needless to say as a young photographer, the magic of working in the outdoors and following overseas styles I quickly accepted the use of light and outdoor settings and was constantly on the lookout for the right place to work.  Now I have to say that all this was before massive council restrictions, safety requirements and exorbitant insurance policies.

But light knows nothing of such things and still wraps me in its enchanting grasp.

So it’s not surprising as we were working with the young Hobbys the other day that the light through the watering of the gardens in the park should catch my attention.
Add to that the mystery of the shapes of the old ‘art in the park’ pieces and I was suddenly transported back so many years, and wishing I had at my disposal  a much shorter focal length lens.  The long lens just wouldn’t give me the angle of view that I might have explored.
Still.
The magic showed and I was drawn to press the shutter.

Light does that to me.

Light and Lighting has always fascinated me.

There is something primitive or primordial about sitting on the beach quietly watching the sun rise over the horizon. Some mornings it’s cold and misty, others warm and dusty. Sunsets have always posed a photo challenge that I’ve been ready to accept.
I once nearly fell of a bridge on to a railway line (as the train passed underneath, to add bonus points), just to get the right viewpoint of the sun setting behind a greater bridge—fortunately I had the sense of balance to save the long lens that I’d borrowed and instead of going over the railing, I managed to fall back on to the road behind.  No damage to the lens fortunately, and only a small dent in my pride.
Needess to say I didn’t make the image and contented myself with the safer option of photographing both bridge and sun separately and them combining the in a multi-slide montage. (This was way before the concept of digital photography was even dreamed of)

Over the centuries our theories of light have changed dramatically. Often shrouded in myth and legend, guess work and hypotheses, what light was and how it emanated.  Ibn al-Haytham in Arabia, around 950AD, to described the model of how light reflects from objects and it is recieved by the human eye.  At about the same time the Arab scientists invented the ‘pin-hole camera’.

Yet despite our basic understandings we tend to take light for granted.
However as photographers we need to do more than take it for granted. We have to perceive the many nuances of light.  More than just the rising and setting of the sun, the quality, the colour and the mood all play an important element of our work as photographers.

In all its incredible, complex and subtle variations.

Not only does it control shape, tone, texture, contrast and depth, it does, by its very gracing of our subject, add its own special Quality.

A quality that transcends the subject alone and has its own impact on the story-telling ability of the photograph.

Hard to describe in words, yet wonderful to behold when in a moment of sheer magic it happens.

That, I guess is what continues to fascinate me.
Studio controlled light has  its own special feel, as my early tutor said, “We keep on adding light until we’ve taken away all the shadow we need to.  Then we stop.”
Working outdoors, the universe sneaks up on me providing its own spectacular light-show. So much so that sometimes I’m so overawed that I forget to press the shutter.
A condition for which I’m confident there is no cure.  Each time brings its own magic

I have of recent days been ‘repairing’ some damage that I inflicted upon my photo library.

Now before we all spring to ‘backups’ and backup strategy, and ‘don’t leave home without it’, the backup actually eventually became part of the problem as it literally was a copy of the error in thinking I’d made some weeks earlier.

However all was not lost, as I had an off-site copy of the original files, so it was simply a matter of reclaiming them.  But then the work of getting them back into order, curated, and settled became the marathon journey.

Of course the good side of that was I have been forced to revisit the photos of 2019 and 2020, and relive some of the outings we had enjoyed in what seems post lockdown, so, so long ago.

Those that follow along on Flickr will have seen some of those being posted more regularly as they emerge from their cocoon on the master drive(s)

None more so than the time we spent with Cassia, of Cinnamon and her two young. So instead of a disaster, it has turned into a rather pleasing journey.

Sitting with a very relaxed Brown Falcon, reminded me of some words from Henry Thoreau.

The old naturalists were so sensitive and sympathetic to nature that they were not surprised by the ordinary events of life. It was an incessant miracle to them, and therefore gorgeous gorgons and flying dragons were not incredible to them. The greatest and saddest defect is not incredulity, but our habitual forgetfulness that our science is ignorance.
March 8, 1860 Journal Entry.

One of the amazing things with this bird was her lack of concern about my presence.
I could sit by one of the trees or perches she regularly used, and just wait until her arrival.  I am convinced they know where they are going to land before they leave the perch, and will follow a course that takes them to that spot. (Not necessarily directly). I  can’t recall her shying away because I was near the landing spot. So much so, that it was no longer incredible to me, more an endless miracle.