Why so many images?

Waterfall - Lathkildale

Having spent the day culling over 2000 images from the weekend shoot I am still trying to answer why I shot so many images.  For this shoot I think the answer can be broken down into the following reasons:

Subject Matter:  The main subject was wildlife, in particular migrating birds.   Because of this you have to shoot a large number of shots to get the image you are looking for.    If you are trying to capture an image of a goose landing then you need to shoot the whole landing and then perhaps choose one or two;

Experimentation:  I was also trying out new approaches and techniques.   This will always be a hit and miss affair and so will lead to a large number of discarded images.  This I guess is the cost of experimentation.

Of course the beauty and perhaps the curse of digital is that you can shoot as many images as you wish.   The real cost of digital is at the start - once you have bought the hardware then the costs are almost negligible.    This reminds me of the old joke about the cost of anew drug. The first tablet costs £700m whilst the second one only costs a penny.  So it is with digital.    Of course it is not that simple but certain types of images generate far more than others.   I would be very surprised if I generated this number of images if I were shooting a landscape - in fact I wouldn't.   Still I think I still need to monitor what I am shooting and why.

Exhausting Work

Horse running along the beach in the evening

I mentioned previously that I took over 3000 images on my recent shoot at Hunstanton and surrounding areas.   Well I just gone through two days worth and have reduced this figure to 1613.   I've only one more day to go which should reduce this again by a half.  So will mean I will have deleted over half of the images I took.    I am wondering why I take so many.   After my next stint at weeding through the images I might return to this theme.

Knott at Snettisham

This is just a very small part of the huge numbers of wading birds - in this case Knot - that congregate at Snettisham.

Geese at Dawn - Snettisham

Just to give you an idea of the number of geese that flew over at dawn.

The Mystery Wind Boarder

This should be the mystery wind boarder I mentioned earlier

Finished Uploading Images

This is a very sad blog...Just uploaded the 3355 images I've just taken over the last 3 days!   This is even more depressing when out of a shoot I only produce 12 - 24 images that I like.  I think there may be a moral there somewhere.

Wind Boarding

Having spent an enjoyable evening and afternoon watching this incredible sport I'm hooked.  Not to take part you understand but to take pictures of the boarders as the skim and slice their way across the surface of the water.   There a friendly bunch too and only too happy to indulge a photographer trying to capture that essential image.

If you the young wind boarder I spoke to and gave my web address to I hope you contact me.  I think I may have some god shots of you.   However, like the dunda head that I am I forgot to get you email details.  What an idiot I am at times! 

Snettisham 17th October 2008

What a wonderful place Snettisham is.   Well, the reserve is a bit of a dump but the birds more than make up for this.   We got there as dawn broke and the sky was a beautiful orange.   The sky was covered with geese leaving their roosts and making their way to nearby fields to feed.   No picture can ever do this justice but I tried anyway.

The RSPB have finally made an effort to make the mile walk from the car park to the reserve passable.  This is important as the average bird watcher/photographer carries a huge amount of kit and walking along a rough path doesn't make things easy.

Once at the reserve there is not a great deal to see.   It is made up of two elements.   Two fresh water lagoons - these were old gravel quarries - and miles of mudflats that are covered by the Wash at High Tide.   At very high spring tides the mudflats disappear under 7+ metres of water.  This means the waders that feed on the mudflats have nowhere to go and so leave the sea and settle by the lagoons.   The number of waders is countless and so they arrive in dense clouds of swirling bobbing bodies.  How they avoid crashing into one another is unknown but they do.   The sight of these cloud moving is stunning and the reason to come the reserve.

Around about an hour after high tide something makes the waders take off and return to the mudflats.   You are the treated to one of the best wild life shows in the Britain as the sky becomes a constellation of birds rushing from the lagoons to return to the mudflats.  The clouds again swirl and gyrate to form intricate shapes and patterns.   To add to the show the plumage of the birds is highlighted by the sun to produce  a mosaic of colours to go with the mystical geometric shapes.   As if to accompany this display the flapping of the wings and the muted call of the birds makes a fantastic orchestral noise that enhances the pleasure.   No one who has witnessed this can help but be dump struck by its brilliance.

This show only last for about ten minutes and the clouds of birds disappear across the sea. Occasional  flurries of birds then sweep across the emerging mudflats but these do not compare with the performance you had just seen.

I hope the images I have captured do justice to this natural spectacle.

Hunstanton

We've just got back from a two day shot at Hunstanton.  It should of been three days but the stay at the Le Strange Hotel was so stressful that we called it a day after two days.   However, the two days were simply brilliant for photographs.  ( I say this when I haven't even started to process the images captured so I may find myself posting another blog retracting all of this.)

The main reason for the visit was to watch and capture the awesome display of birds at Snettisham. (More on this in a subsequent blog).   This didn't disappoint.

The Start of something New?

Well, I've finally done it!  I've joined the blog world (Sphere I think).   The plan is that this blog should act as a diary outlining the work that I am doing etc.   I am sure this is what a lot of people say so nothing original here then.

The blog will no doubt cover my Masters course in photography and all the trials and tribulations involved in that!

Anyway I'm starting to bore myself so I'll just sign off now and hope that should anyone actually read this blog they find it interesting.