Owls, Foxes, Badgers and Stoats at The British Wildlife Centre with Andy Rouse
Well this is my third post here! I'm doing well so far!
A day with work was organised for us to go to The British Wildlife Centre www.britishwildlifecentre.co.uk for a day with Andy Rouse www.andyrouse.co.uk and to use Canons latest kit.
Once we got there we had a quick intro from Andy and looked at some of his work. He told us a bit about the kit we would be using and why he uses it. He shoots with Canon because of the better Auto Focus. I have never used Canon before so don't know any difference. You always get the ignorant people who say Nikon is better or Canon is better. I never jumped on that wagon due to not knowing anything about the subject.
The Canon rep gave us a 1DX each and our choice of lenses-
EF 200-400mm f/4L IS USM Extender 1.4x
I picked up the 200-400. It had a built in converter so at the flick of a switch you could get an extra 1.4x zoom on your focal length.
We then set off into the woods with a van full of Owls.
Andy gave us some tips on how to best capture the animals. Things like positions, exposure compensation to bring out the owls eyes and how to use the light around you.
Here are a few of my shots from the first Owl.
We then moved onto Owls in flight. I struggled with this one I just couldn't get the hang of it. I did come out with this shot though.
We then had a short break for lunch and got straight back into it. We had two shoots set up one in the Fox pen and another with some Otters.
We had a task to do with the Otters, Andy had taken a picture previously of a Otter running at speed towards him. He asked us to try and emulate the image. It was really hard and I struggled. I kept getting the Otters shoulder in focus and not his face. I did get a good image of one of them eating though.
The other part was Foxes. This was brill, the Fox was like a dog. It saw us all come in and came up to us with its tail wagging wanting the food from the wildlife keeper who was with us. We spent a while in there watching the foxes and watching them eat. Here are my favourite shots from that part of the day.
Once we had finished there we went to look at what other animals we could find in the centre.
The last part of the day was to capture another Owl in flight and a few shots of him on a post 'posing'
The owl was backlit this time from the late evening sun so the wings had a lovely glow to them when he came gliding back to the keeper.
We finished off the day with a bit of a competition to see who could get a image of the same Owl with one Talon on the post while taking off to fly.
I didn't get one at all!
The whole day was great and I really enjoyed it. It was great using different cameras than usual. The results were brilliant. Im not sure if I will move to Canon now as work provide me with Nikon camera systems. I think that you should get equipment that is fit for task. For instance the set up we used on this day was perfect for wildlife photography. It may not be suitable for day to day use or for street photography.
Thanks to all those who organised the day.
Tim.
