Off to China

It has been pretty busy for me in the last 4 weeks and I haven't managed to go seriously photographing the last weeks. Saturday will be my last day in the Netherlands and after 2 years living and photographing in the Netherlands time has come to move on.
On Sunday I will leave for a 2 week trip to China to visit Shanghai, Beijing and HongKong. Of course I will take my camera with mye, but my Sigma 500/4.5 will stay at home, as I am not planning to do serious wildlife photography. Maybe I will get some changes to photograph urban wildlife.
After my China trip I will directly go further for 4 weeks to the south of France to see my girlfriend. She lives close to the Camargue and maybe if I find time I will go there again and photograph some birds there.

Sebastian Erras
Wildlife Photography - Sebastian Erras

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Pirmasenser Fototage 2009

This I had the chance to show some of my work at the Pirmasenser Fototage in Germany togehter with some other wildlife photographers. In the city of Pirmasens images of several photographers from all kind of genres are displayed at different locations throughout the city.
The nature images are displayed at the Dynamikum in Pirmasens and can still be seen there until the 20th of June.

Unfortunately I wasn't able to go to there myself, as it is quite far away from Amsterdam. However I received some images of the exhibiton from friends who visited it and photographers who also showed some of their work there.

Here are some impressions of the exhibiton at the Dynamikum:

Thanks to Thomas Block for letting me show the images here.

If you have time thsi weekend and live close to Pirmasens than I would recommend you to see the images. Note that also the images of last year's European Wildlife Photographer of the Year are shown at the Dynamikum. I have seen these images last year in Lünen at the International Naturfotofestival of the GDT and the images are stunning!

Sebastian Erras
Wildlife Photography - Sebastian Erras
www.naturfoto-erras.de

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Marsh Harriers

Now the second part of my long weekend. At the Arkemheen Polder I was not only able to photograph Black-tailed Godwits, but also a pair of Marsh Harriers. In late April I visited this spot for the first time to photograph the pair of Marsh Harriers. Back then they were busy getting nesting material. This weekend I photographed them with prey and even with nesting material, which I found a little strange. I expected that the chicks already had hatched and the reason why the parents were bringing food their chicks is to feed them. So I'm not really sure why the Marsh Harriers both the female and the male brought small branches to their site.

In situations like this, where you want to get flight shots and images of landing birds, the direction of the wind is a very important aspect. The key here is, that birds will always land against the wind. So if you wanna photograph landing birds make sure that you position yourself with the wind coming from your back. Then the birds will land towards you and you will get nice flight shots with the birds facing to you. Sidewinds can also be nice. Then the bird will land sidewards. However the worst conditions for flight photography is headwind. With headwind the bird will always land facing away from you and the only thing you will get see is its back and that is propably not your main target.
So before I go out to shot birds in flight I always check the wind conditions at the location I want to photograph. On the internet you will find numerous websites where you retrive information about wind conditions.

Then there is the other thing when photographing birds in flight: light. Wind and the light direction might not always be the same. The perfect conditions are when you have the light and the wind coming from your back. If that is not the case then you have to pick one. Either you prefer to have bird in perfect light but with not so good wind conditions or the other way round.
This can be a though decisions sometimes. I had this situation the last 2 days when photographing the Marsh Harriers. Wind came from the north-east and evenign late came from north-west. As you can see on the images above I chose the the better wind conditon over the light. My goal was to get the Harriers with fully spread wings right before they landed and that's the reason I chose for the better wind condition.

Photographing nesting birds can be very critical, as being close to the nesting area can cause disturbance and may abort the offspring. Therefor photographers should be very carefully when considering photographing nesting birds. The location the Marsh Harriers chose to nest is located near a street and very frequented cycling path. This allows photographers to photograh from the car and minimize disturbance.

Sebastian Erras
Wildlife Photography - Sebastian Erras
www.naturfoto-erras.de

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Black-tailed Godwits

The weather is very nice again here in the Netherlands and with the long weekend I had to go and shot some picture. As it turned out it has been a little more than "some" in the last 2 days I shot about 2000 pictures and a lot of them were taken of Black-tailed Godwits.

Photographing Black-tailed Godwits here in the Netherlands is not such a difficult task. The Netherlands are the msot important country in Europe for Black-tailed Godwits. The major european population is located in the Netherlands. They can easily be found all around the polders within the Netherlands. They can be very noisy so it is quite is to find them and they have the habit to rest on poles, which it makes it easy for the photographer to capture an image. So I went to the Arkemheen Polder this weekend to photograph these birds. After arriving at the destination it didn't take more than a minute and the black-tailed Godwits were already ready for the shooting.

The birds were very tame and I could approach them easily with my car. This was since a long time that I was able to use nealry my whole euipment available. I used my new 50/1.8 lens to get some more environmental shots and also my 100-300/4 which I haven't really used lately. I even used my Sigma 500/4.5 EX HSM with the 1.4x and the 1.7x converter attached at the same time to get some special portraits. The light was beautiful the last days and I had a lot of fun with the Godwits.

There was one image which I wanted to take really badly of this bird. I got inspired by Miguel Lasa's backlight shot of a polar bear and I wanted to try something similiar with the Godwits, but my first attempt failed. The Godwits where there, the light was perfect for this kind of backlight shot, but the Godwits were sitting all the time on the wronf side of the road, in beautiful evening light. So I tried it again this morning, but this time with the sun rising and hopefully the Godwits sitting on the right side. I got up really early to be there before the sun rises and find a good spot with a Godwit. I found it :-) not the perfect spot but very good one.
The Godwit was als overy cooperative and I was able to get some really nice backlight portraits.

I wasn't able to get the shot I wanted due to a metal pole right next to the Godwits head, but I think I made the best out of this situation. For those shots I used the Simga 500/4.5 EX HSM with a Kenko 1.4x and Soligor 1.7x converter on a beanbag from my car. Autofocus still works with this combination, but in this situtation it was better to manually focus the lens.

I was also able to get some nice shot of Marsh Harriers and I hope to get some more this evening. I will show some of those images later.

Sebastian Erras
Wildlife Photography - Sebastian Erras
www.naturfoto-erras.de

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Purple Herons

Last weekend I finally made it to the purple herons early in the morning. I arrived there shortly before 6am and had a great scene there. The sun was just rising and there was fog in between the reeds. In such a sitiuation with backlight you have an amazing golden light, but it only last about 30-40 Min.

With such light it is important that you find a location where you are directly or withing a range of 10-20 degree facing the sun. Then dial around -1 EV to enhance the golden look of the light and switch to Manual exposure. I strongly recommend manual exposure with flight shots and changing background if you want to have consistent results.
My goal was to get a flight image, where the purple heron is landing towards me with open wings in this beautiful light. I think this will need a lot more attempts considering that you only have about an hour to shoot in this condition. Then the wind also plays an important role in this. To create my desired image the wind has to blow from behind me, then the heron will land towards me. Birds always land against the wind, this is very important to know if you want to photograph birds in flight.
Later in the afternoon I returned to the purple herons but the wind came from the east. The herons were landing with their back to me, which is the worst condition for flight images.

I hope the weather will be good the next weeks so that I can try again to get "the image"

Sebastian Erras
Wildlife-Photography Sebastian Erras
www.naturfoto-erras.de

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Zouwenboezem

Last weekend I went with Heike Odermatt and Marcel Schäfer to the Zouwenboezem to photograph some warblers and purple herons. The day started with rain but luckily it stopped quite soon. In the morning we decided to go first to the Zouwenboezem to see what we could find there. It was the first time for to go to this spot, even though it is just a few minutes from the purple herons away. We have seen black terns, bluethroat and warblers in that area and I must admit that this area is pretty cool to photograph warblers. There is a small, it was just wide enough to spread my Gitzo tripod safely on it, path leading through reed fields and from a small "dijk" next to some reed fields you can also photograph warblers very good. As the weather was pretty cloudy and grey in the morning I tried my flash set-up with the BetterBeamer Flash Extender. The results get better now, but I still have to learn a lot on how to use the flash properly.

Left: Reed Bunting - Rohrammer - emberiza schoeniclus
Right: Sedge Warbler - Schilfrohrsänger - acrocephalus schoenobaenus

While exploring the area, we also met some Highland cattles. They look pretty impressive with their big horns and I prefer to keep a safe distance to them :-).
Then in the afternoon after a little lunch in a small town close by we went to the Zouwendijk to photograph the purple herons. In the beginning it was cloudy but then right on them it cleared up and we had some nice afternoon light. Wind was nearly too perfect as it came from south west and the herons where flying right towards us, but I the herons look quite strange when they fly right towards you as they are pretty skinny. At this location I prefer when the herons land a little sidewards. This time again the herons were not coming too close and even with the 1.7x teleconverter on my Sigma 500 and the 1DIIn I have to crop about 40% to get them good in the frame. So i stacked the 1.4x and the 1.7x converter together and tested the combination. The focal lenght would be perfect for this location then, but my results where not that good. I had to use high ISO (640-1000) to get a fast enough shutter speed to capture the purple herons in flight. With the stacked converters you will also have a lack of sharpness at far distances. I had some great action and scened, but due to the lack of sharpness and detail, I can't use most of the images from that day for larger prints. For internet presesntation it works fine but everything bigger than 20x30cm will look not that good anymore. I have seen some images from Heike and Marcel, who used a 2x converter with their 500/4 and the results were much better than with the combination of the stacked converters.

Purple heron - Purpurreiher - ardea purpurea

Photoraphing Purple Herons together with Marcel

If the weather forecast for next week is nice then I might go to Texel for 2 days and I definetly want to go to the purple herons in the early morning to get some backlight images.

Sebastian Erras
Wildlife Photography - Sebastian Erras
www.naturfoto-erras.de

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Purple Herons

Last weekend I went to the Purple Herons for the first time this year. They are back since about 2 weeks and they are starting to build there nest in the next weeks.
Compared to last year I found the conditions this year a little more difficult. The trees in front of the reed field have become really big and there are only 2-3 good spots left to photograph them. As it they just arrived and some are still arriving in this area they were not that active, but I'm sure that is gonna change in the next weeks.

Even with my 500mm + 1.4x and 1D MarkIIn I was still too far away. I only good 2 or 3 really good chances, where the herons came quite close. I also tried th 1.7x but the Autofocus had some difficulities.
In the end, when the light got a little less, I tried the combination of my Sigma 500/4.5 the 1.4x and the 1.7x Converter to great some flight shots with slow shutter speeds. As sharpness doesn't really matter with this kind of shots, i tried to get as close as I could and with the 1.4x and the 1.7x I got the Herons good in the frame. Surprisingly the Autofocus worked really well and I had no big problems following the birds in flight. I will definelty use this combination more often for this kind of shots.

I have planned to go there again this weekend I hope that the weather will stay as nice as it has been here in the Netherlands the las 2 weeks. :-)

Sebastian Erras
Wildlife Photography Sebastian Erras
www.naturfoto-erras.de

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