Garden Nature Photography in Lockdown | Grey Squirrels
Opportunities close to home …..
Professional or amateur, lockdown has obliterated much of what we do for our living or our enjoyment. But finding opportunities to dust off our cameras needn’t be as hard as we think
Squirrels aside for a moment, this is perhaps a more personal blog post than most. I think the reasons for that will be familiar to so many of you. We’ve been embroiled in a global pandemic for the last 11 months. We started this year on a grim note and we face considerable uncertainty going forward. I’m not going to say what I think here (a science degree and a prior career in the pharmaceutical industry will make me more vocal than most) but it’s fair to say that the vast majority of us are having a rotten time.
As someone accustomed to working on her own (running a photography business is a lonesome occupation) I must admit that I almost enjoyed the first few months of lockdown. I was able to shut myself away and tackle a vast admin backlog which had been weighing on my mind for a couple of years. No area of the business escaped scrutiny - it was a fantastic feeling to finally clear most of my ‘to do’ list. And in September 2020 I was finally able to present a second successful Fellowship panel to the British Institute of Professional Photography. Amidst the strain of almost no income and fearing for friends and loved ones, there were at least some good things.
In the autumn of 2020 the easing of lockdown restrictions enabled non-essential businesses like mine to reopen, albeit briefly. It was an amazing feeling to take my first client for several months, before once again being forced to close as infection rates again escalated. Like millions of small businesses (particularly in the arts) we don’t benefit from government support. It was November 2020 when I started to feel pangs of stress giving way to misery. Whilst many rely on it, I’ve never enjoyed social media (believing that far from encouraging valuable human interaction it simply magnifies the negatives). Nor am I a fan of the festive season - rather than bringing people together I think it highlights too many of our irreconcilable differences. I entered the New Year feeling thoroughly depressed and thoroughly disappointed in human nature.
As faith in humans has dipped to an all-time low, I think it’s true to say that the value of animals has never been more apparent. In the last year there has been a huge reliance on the extraordinary and wonderful relationships people have with creatures both domestic and wild. There has been an upsurge in pet ownership and indeed pets have become very much more involved in their owners’ everyday lives. Due to homeworking or more time in the garden, birds and squirrels have grown more accustomed to humans and many have bonded with us. This is known to boost our mental well-being. And if you happen to be a photographer as well, there is the additional benefit of photo opportunities!
I’m very aware that not everybody has a garden or patio - or pets. Over the years I’ve met some very sociable birds and squirrels in local parks. Assuming we don’t pause for too long, the current lockdown rules shouldn’t restrict us from taking a few snaps on our daily walk. If animals don’t materialize, then trees are terrific natural photographic subjects (I’ll write a blog post on those soon).
Our big bold female squirrel (who was already quite tame) produced three healthy babies. Because of their regular curiosity visits to the doorway or the windowsill, I took to leaving a camera on the dining room table. One of us could then grab it if a photo materialised. In fact all of the pictures you’re seeing here have been taken from the dining room, through my slightly grubby window. The babies from last summer are now fully grown and looking fabulous.
I’m always thankful for the Pana Leica 100-400 lens, mounted on my Panasonic GX8. As many of you will know the GX8 is a Micro 4/3 body, and despite being a few years old it remains highly desirable for both its looks and performance. The lens affords an incredible 800 mm field of view in 35mm terms. We could sit in the warmth and comfort of the dining room and snap away, often aiming the lens high into the trees. Because winters tend to be so dark here in the UK, these photographs were all taken at around ISO 1600.
today’s tip:
Think like a portrait photographer. My job involves creating natural images of humans and pets on location. This means capturing the personalities of my subjects, and a variety of photographs for them to choose. I’ll take head shots, full body shots, sitting down shots, and activity shots. We can create story boards and lots of fun memories by shooting in this way
I used my run and gun poor light technique of setting my exposure manually and letting auto ISO do the heavy lifting. Had I tried to take these photographs in Aperture priority mode it’s likely I would have lost most of them to slow shutter speeds. Incidentally I use back button focus for my animal and wildlife photography because it takes so much of the exertion out of constantly refocusing every time my subject moves.
The squirrels have been great company at times and their antics never fail to make me smile. If you have a garden, and if you have the time, you might be surprised at how easily you can make friends with the inhabitants. If you happen to be a photographer, the benefits of doing this are obvious. Whilst we’ve been restricted from client work for many months, we still need to get a bit of practice. You would think my squirrels had been trained to pose, and in fact they do have a fantastic repertoire of body positions. They’re photogenic from pretty much any angle, which helps. As they explore the garden compositional opportunities will then unfold. All of this is fantastic for honing your spatial awareness and your use of background. Give it a go, set yourself a garden or local park project - you might be surprised by what you can achieve.
You don’t need a lens with the magnification of the Pana Leica 100-400 to take photographs like these. In fact a 300 mm lens on any sensor format would be quite adequate, assuming your subjects aren’t more than 30 feet away. If you want to photograph your small garden birds then you’ll certainly need as much magnification as you can get. But for squirrels, no. You won’t need an expensive fast aperture lens either. Instead, don’t be scared to crank up your ISO values. There’s nothing worse than being precious about that kind of thing - if you want to photograph wildlife then high sensitivities are a fact of life much of the time. There are some really good ways of minimising the effects of noise during postproduction, which I teach as part of my Adobe Lightroom courses - I should hopefully be resuming these in the next few months (as online training).