Niall Benvie. Paul Harcourt Davies. Andrew Parkinson.

I genuinely don’t know where I’d be without it. Taking mediocre robin images in overcast light might be a fair response so let me put all joking and false modesty aside for a moment and regale you all with tales of how this picture really came to fruition. 

I had been photographing these robins for several hours, days even, when I observed out of the corner of my eye that another robin was displaying, imperceptibly to the normal human eye, the subtlest micro-gestures of being uneasy. In an instant using multiple physics calculations I predicted not only his departure time but using my unrivalled knowledge of robin behavior I also factored in his likely flight path which I subsequently cross referenced with wind direction and speed. At that precise moment, knowing exactly where and when the robin would pass by, taking into account the fractional shutter lag time of my particular camera, D300 as opposed to the D3, I fired this single image to place him exactly where I wanted him in the frame. Damn I’m good!  

Not convinced. What if I told you about the advanced frostbite that rampaging up my blue-ing arms. No! Onset of hypothermia maybe? Pack of wolves anyone?

OK so I drove about 10 miles on snow-free roads, walked a couple of hundred yards along a footpath to a place where I could stand below some steps and photograph, from  a tripod, birds at ground level. As I was photographing one robin another that I hadn’t even noticed flew past in the background. As luck would have it that’s when I pressed the shutter!!

I really don’t want this blog to become the nature photography equivalent of  The News of the World but…I received an email recently from Wild Wonders of Europe photographer, Milan Radisics, reminding me that scandals in the nature photography world were rife before Fairy Tail (sic) Wolf. And to his credit, at least Mr Rodriguez used a live animal in his disqualified WPOTY photo. The NG story on the mayflies of the River Tisza in Hungary, in contrast, featured a stuffed kingfisher. Probably. Don’t believe me? Well, have a look at the evidence… And make sure you check out the full acount in the links at the bottom of the piece. Sorry, but a staged picture of a wolf looks pretty tame in comparison to this.

Now we have some interest going in Meet Your Neighbours, Clay Bolt and I have two documents available for anyone wanting participate in the project.

The first should be used to introduce the project to potential NGO partners while the second details what is in the project for you the photographer and the technical information about the field studio work and what we need form you.

The deadline for the first round of applications is 30th April so go and get talking to your local conservation group and strike a deal!

All photos in this post © Erwin Christis 2010

As a photographer, as a creative being in general, it is sometimes good - even necessary - to poke the Muses so they don’t fall asleep. A good method for this is to explore new creative horizons, to take pictures of subjects you normally would avoid, to use techniques you normally wouldn’t use.

After years in search for maximum sharpness in my images, I’ve noticed a shift in my creative process lately: from completely sharp images over images with a very shallow depth of field to images that have no sharpness whatsoever. You could argue that my eyesight is deteriorating or that I’m getting lazy after years of abuse by autofocus and image stabilized lenses. But nothing could be further from the truth. I think these images reduce the visual content to its essence: shapes and colours.

Inspired by the work of William Neill, Ted Leeming, Freeman Patterson and by extension impressionist painters, I experiment nowadays with impressions of light as William Neil calls them:

‘My goal is to remove context within a landscape, distilling down to it’s essence, in order to convey the energy of a subject or scene in a fresh way, much as snow simplifies the land.

For me these images deflect the mind’s tendency to dwell on the concrete issues of place and name when viewing a subject. The spirit of a place or an object can be more strongly conveyed.’

This kind of photography allows you to add a personal interpretation to a landscape or subject.

You add, as in black and white photography, something personal to the interpretation of a landscape or a scene. You are in search for the Inner Sense of a landscape, to use the words of Ted Leeming.

‘By muting recognisable forms with movement, I blur the boundaries of perception, fade the obvious conclusions and allows the imagination of the viewer to take over. This is where the ‘inner sense’ of a scene is revealed’ he explains in Amateur Photographer. ‘His images are like paintings. ‘It’s not instantly obvious what they are, so it’s up to you and your imagination, really, to decide what emotion it gives you as a viewer and what it means. The colours will play a part in that, along with the shapes and composition’

By bringing movement in landscape images, you not only create surreal images and moods, it also visualizes the constant movement in landscapes.

‘What appears solid and unchanging is in reality a story of movement and evolution. Nothing remains constant. This planet and all upon it is in a state of continuous transition, both seasonally and over the eons of time.’ (Ted Leeming)

It is a work in progress and a process that forces me to forget about all those learned skills, to let go all the old dogmas like using a tripod for a landscape image.

A lot of people won’t like these images, but for me it just feels right in times where everybody is screaming for more and faster to take some distance of all the technical aspects surrounding photography and to nourish the creative soul.

It never ceases to amaze and surprise me just how much the play of light can affect how we perceive things. On Sunday I awakened again to the delightful site of a landscape covered in snow, most pleasing because it was a completely unexpected surprise. As is the norm after heavy snowfall our village, which sits on top of a hill, had temporarily impassable roads and so I was able to enjoy, guilt free, the time to walk our dogs whilst quietly obsessing about where I was going to go and what I was going to try and photograph.

Having recently enjoyed working with some particularly confiding pied wagtails at a local tourist attraction I decided to return, hoping as last time that the ‘attraction’ had succumbed to the inclement weather and was closed to visitors. It had and I was able to enjoy the rest of the day in relative seclusion with a variety of species to keep me company. House sparrows, song thrush (its limp fully healed and in excellent health!), blackbirds, robins and of course the feisty wagtails all visited for breakfast, occasionally came to blows and then left as I enjoyed another wonderful day incongruously surrounded by concrete and wildlife.

Of course it could be said that I was simply repeating myself and going over old ground but I’m not really sure that such a thing exists within wildlife photography. The play of light is always different, the behaviour always varied and there is always a new way of working, of looking at a subject and trying to work out how one might interpret it.

I hope that these two images illustrate this point as they were taken just minutes apart, the first in direct sunlight, the second in shade with the background still sunlit. I like both images and whilst the square crop treatment might not be to everyones taste I’ll always leave it in situations where I am undecided as I feel it allows greater flexibility for designers. Both images were taken in exactly the same spot as my recent blackbird post and it is experiences, and results such as these that give me the timely reminder that there is genuine merit in returning time and again to familiar locations. It doesn’t have to breed contempt, it can sometimes inspire creativity.

As a teenager in the sixties, for whom rock was a religion, I was astonished to discover that the words to the Byrd’s song “Turn, Turn, Turn” were neither theirs nor Bob Dylan’s. “To every thing (turn, turn, turn) there is a season (turn, turn, turn) and a time for every purpose under heaven” were words from the book of Ecclesiastes written some time previously…

Brave snowdrops flowering in bitterly cold weather - for me the best sign of spring

One thing that Italy still offers to the country dweller is a rhythm in life, an ebb and flow with its peaks and cadences as we experience the joys and hardships of real seasons. I am convinced that mankind has evolved with the rhythms of change in seasons and the sight of the stars overhead. We now have both and I think we abandon such things at the peril of a deep, personal well-being.

Spring is out there evidenced by snowdrops, crocuses, both the green and stinking hellebores and squills that we found in full flower. Today, a howling 50km/ h wind from the south is out to convince us otherwise and as I write, hiding from the elements, that gale has forced rainwater through any previously unnoticed gap beneath doors and windows downstairs and my ‘paranoia’ makes me take this personally since I did the work.

four years ago I moved some crocus bulbs (Crocus biflorus) from a collapsed bank...year after year they have increased beneath one of our ancient oaks

With spring comes that stirring and awakening that is captured by the haunting bassoon notes of the opening bars of Igor Stravinsky’s ‘Rite of Spring’ (see, not just a rocker!). New energies must be harnessed and efforts made to catapult embryonic projects into a state of reality – books, articles and other things such as changes in technique and approach. Much of what we set out to do here on the physical side of creating a home and work place is done.

Niall wrote recently about ‘following the heart‘, but also of having a plan, ‘cunning’ or otherwise. He mentioned the speech by Steve Jobs at Harvard and I watched it again, having forgotten how much in agreement I had been at the time. I would add a caveat: be prepared to recognise opportunity and to change that plan yet keeping the goals clearly defined (if flexible positioned…)

nowhere does bluebell displays like Britain - here we have plants of the related Scilla bifolia but never those wonderful scented drifts of bluebells

I know from my emails that there are folk out there who want to write, many for the same reasons I do/did in that they love books and think it’s worthwhile. The past couple of weeks I have been thinking hard (again) about books and publishing and, at last, there are projects afoot (more anon). What follows is a personal take on writing and experiences of being an author in a changing world. An Italian Tale 2 - to everything turn, turn, turn…

Sometimes we need to move back a little from the screen to see the picture more clearly.

Another week and I’m still scratching around in the ‘cold spell’ drawer, this time it is a friendly neighbourhood song thrush (with a limp!), that dropped in for a bit of free food. My excuse however for this barely topical image is that I have just returned from a lovely, if all too brief, trip up to the Isle of Mull and as well as a couple of half decent otter images, a hint of great northern diver and a smattering of grey heron  the only other thing that I have returned with is a bit of a cold (man flu as my wife so affectionately calls it!), probably exacerbated by some rather frosty nights in my campervan (for campervan read van with no fridge, no cooker and no bed!).

Having also recently updated my camera, prior to my trip north, I now have a bit of an unforeseen equipment update issue that I need to resolve before I can process my tantalising thumbnail RAW files into fully fledged, and hopefully useable images, hence the trawl through the ‘to do’ pile. Those images I am hoping will be posted over the coming weeks.

During my time on Mull I was fortunate to bump into some old friends in the shape of Brian and Joy (get well soon Joy!) as well as Charles, proprietor of the Kinloch Hotel and arguably one of the nicest people I’ve ever met. I also had the opportunity to meet some particularly discerning and refined individuals (Bob and Bert) who follow this blog, a meeting that was particularly rewarding given that our happy collaboration was reviewed so favourably and so I would like to thank Bob especially for his kind words and comments.

In the meantime I’m off to try and rally against what is undoubtedly the most brutal and fiendish strain of swine flu ever to hit these shores, like the brave little soldier that I am!

Tradition has it that on Saint Valentine’s day birds cavort and form their trysts for the coming season. The morning of February 14th I awoke to songs of robin, blackcap and irascible wren with a flurry of goldfinches and bramblings as I opened the door. St Valentine lived in nearby Terni not one of Italy’s finest cities (And yea, the good Lord wished to give the world an enema and unto Terni he went and placed the pipe … )

Niall has written about his great venture “The Re-Wilding of Childhood” and I am also a firm believer that  contact with nature must begin when we are young. However, I find I sometimes need to “re-child my wildhood”, as it were.

I have never grown up, never intend to and the day I lose my sense of delight/excitement over the smallest things in nature please, please let me “shuffle off my mortal coils. One thing I did as a child growing up in Wales was to be out every millisecond that I could and thus be immersed in ‘nature’ in the widest (and occasionally wildest) sense. This meant that I knew every pond/stream/ hedge within walking distance and I still want to even if getting through hedges is harder and I creak a bit. Perhaps it is because there are other pressing things to do (like building a house) but I find that, after five years, we are still discovering things a miles or so from home that, as children, we would have long known about. Part of me is delighted but we (Lois and I) also harbour a sense of guilt for we are not idle ’stay at homes’.

A hidden waterfall some 20 tall with the canyon it has carved - captured her through the gathering power of a Sigma 10mm f/2.8 rectangular fisheye

Just last week we noticed an inviting hole in a hedge not far from home that led to an old path and the discovery that ‘our’ torrent eventually plunges over a cliff to Orvieto. Then, we went out with close friend Pier Luigi Pacetti (who will soon be a ‘guest’photographer on this blog)  scrambled into a hidden gorge, to witness a superb waterfall and a cascade of pools. A bump on some lichen on a nearby tree metamorphosed into a spider I had never seen camouflaged on Lichen…

Philodromus margaritatus - a lichen spider a little more evident than it was in the field since I had only a large flash with diffuser with me and that created slight shadows beneath the legs.

Niall mused on the business of early influences – I am so utterly grateful for mine. The fact we derive so much pleasure from simple things makes ambition that much more easily attainable and life less costly. A love of what is around means you do not have to spend money (you do not have) to create the illusion of happiness…well, maybe just a DSLR, lenses and stuff…but you know what I mean !

I think all of us wish for our photographs to be admired and the ability to get ourselves into the right place praised. This is perhaps why time after time I see pictures in print from well-known locations where the photographer has failed to acknowledge the real architect of the shot, be it the guide, the guy who established the bait site or the ship’s captain. It doesn’t quite have the same kudos when you have to explain that there were another dozen photographers by your side or that you simply paid for access to a hide while others did the ground work.

To my mind, it is both ungracious and disrespectful to the provider of the opportunity to fail to mention this. Payment shouldn’t negate this obligation. My colleague Pete Cairns of Northshots, for example, has “facilitated” two major competition wins in recent months without any public credit from the paying guests. Now, I know he doesn’t have a problem with this but I can’t helping thinking that the whole story should be disclosed and due credit given when pictures are  publicly lauded.

And the reedmace photo here? Well, this shot from Estonia started off not in my mind but on the cover of Jan Töve’s, Beyond Order. And my friend Jaanus Järva drove me to the spot. Perhaps I’ve put my own spin on it but original it is not.