Hidebound

It's funny how things you detest can be fascinating. I loathe sitting in wooden hides peering at distant wildlife. Yet the hides and the people in them can be interesting. That's the main reason I go to nature reserves. The wildlife I enjoy looking at is the stuff in the trees and bushes between the hides.

Hides, by their design, are dark places, which presents technical photographic challenges. Not least because of the dramatic contrast between the light levels inside and outside the hides. Sometimes that can be a benefit, such as when a shaft of sunlight comes through a window.

An alternative strategy is to shoot reflections.

Some 'wildlife' photographers behave like sheep. Every time the barn owl they were looking for showed up it sounded like a machine gun nest had opened fire on the advancing enemy!

Given how far away the owl was I doubt there'd have been a decent picture amongst the hundreds taken in the short time before I got bored and left. The sad thing being that none of the other hide visitors could get a decent view of the bird because of the hide-hoggers taking up two places each with their cameras, bags and flasks.

Meanwhile, elsewhere on the reserve there was a foraging redwing which was unconcerned by people passing by just a few feet from it. A little more wary of a fool with a camera, but even so there was no need for a 6000mm lens to get a snap or two of it. It is only a snap, but I find more enjoyable to be close to a bird with no window or wall between me and it than sat in a wooden hut watching something you can only see the feathers on thanks to high magnification lenses. But then I'm no wildlife photographer.

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