The first reflections on my day at Bempton

Well it has been 24 hours and I have just culled a 1000 images from the 1275 I took yesterday at Bempton.  This sounds like a disaster.  What went wrong?   This was indeed my feelings last night as I had a quick run through the images whilst they were being uploaded to Lightroom.  So many duds - what went wrong?   Luckily I was so tired last night after being up for nearly 24 hours I didn't have time to reflect on this problem as I fell asleep.  A new day and a fresh perspective and suddenly things are not as bad as they first seemed.  Indeed I am now feeling very satisfied with my days work.  So why the change?

I think the answer lies in the conditions you work in at Bempton.  On a bright day you tend to get incredible changes in light, from bright reflected sunshine over the sea to dark shadows near to the cliff face.  You are also trying to capture fast moving birds at really close range.  These birds also tend to be predominantly white which does play havoc with any metering you might do.  The cumulative effect of these problems is that an awful lot of images are, well there is no other word for it, crap.

However, when you start to work with the images you find that amongst the dross there are some real gems.  In fact given the challenging conditions, the only way to really guarantee any chance of capturing something good is to blast away.  It is not pretty, and if I was shooting film hugely expensive, but is works.  

An example of this is the photograph of the Fulmar above.   Now I have a love hate relationship with this bird.  When you are shooting at a cliff face you can almost be sure that there will be a Fulmar darting around, usually just above your head, you can almost imagine they are taunting you to try and capture a photograph.   Despite this they are a wonderfully graceful bird, almost making no effort to fly past you at great speed, using the updrafts from the cliffs to propel them along.  So to capture an image of this bird I have to take an awful lot of photographs.   It could be argued that I need to rethink my approach but there really is nothing more to do than blast away at every opportunity.  When it works it is great, but it doesn't work very often and can be very frustrating.  In short, as with most other wildlife photography, you have to put the hours in to get the shot you want, this is so true at Bempton as well.

So I will plough through the remaining images to see which can be turned into worthwhile photographs.  Looks like it will be an interesting few days.