Wedge-tailed Eagle

Wedge-tailed Eagle (captive animal)

Wedge-tailed Eagle - Aquila audax, is the largest raptor in Australia. What a majestic animal!

Yesterday, we went to Lone Pine Sanctuary in Brisbane. This photographic wildlife eldorado could not be more different to where I normally capture animals, namely in the wild.

In such a beautiful wildlife park, every unique photo opportunity comes like chips at McDonalds. You can order or help yourself to more at any time, repeat encounters with normally shy and rare animals. You can even plan the lighting and background with a bit of patience. You are seduced by cuteness and uniqueness in a multipack.



To me, it feels a bit like cheating wildlife photography. Seeing flocks of tourists taking phone selfies with birds, marsupials and other animals feels weird. Seeing people poke, chase and otherwise harass the 'faunal objects' even frustrates a bit.

Does the existence of places like this depreciate the value of wildlife photos in nature? Surely, it clarifies the context on which my wildlife photos are judged by the public. Seeing the many baby Koalas at close and eye-level distance with natural looking background and perfect light convinces me that photos taken in the wild should not even try to compete.

Koala baby (captive animal)

It somehow becomes archaic and irrelevant when hard work and luck competes with paying an entrance fee or a ticket. In many parks, you can and even should attempt to make staged and arranged photos look like wild ones. Vice versa, it is highly uneconomical and often impossible to make natural wildlife photos look like perfect studio shots.

Let's not pour more fuel into many examples of cheating and even fraud in wildlife photography. Just bear in mind: if some photos seem too beautiful to be true, unfortunately, we might (wrongly but often rightly) assume that this is what they are. In the end, what works and what evokes emotions has justification. But we should not fall for populism in photography even if that is exactly what all of us wildlife photographers are guilty of when we try to please anyone.



Does such a wildlife park replace the appreciation of real natural habitats in general or complement it? Does the modern alienation of nature combined with a narcissistic culture pose a threat or quite the contrary? Will we soon only have wildlife 'ghettos' in a rapidly developing cosmopolitan city and society? Will the public have a distorted understanding and little care of natural habitats and ecosystems?

Lone Pine is mainly a rehabilitation centre for injured animals and has also an educational function with respect to native fauna and heritage. They are doing a great job. It is so good, that I would recommend to spend a day there, preferably not around school holidays or on weekends. Maybe even take a picnic and commute there with a direct bus from the CBD to take advantage of lounge chairs at the bus stop. How innovative!

One of the Wedge-tailed Eagles, came to the park as a shooting victim. It is a bit ironic that real bullets have now been replaced with photos for the shoots. The eagle in the daily scheduled raptor show certainly don't seem to mind that much. This guy got a mouse for lunch as you might see in a few photos presented on my webpage.

Wedge-tailed Eagle (captive animal)

Photographically, my choice of a long zoom lens was an unnecessary choice out habit. It was a compromise that saved me changing lenses all the time. Quite contrary to a photo shoot in the wild, a professional would prefer a shorter, good quality prime lens under such controlled conditions.

A wildlife photographer in the bush would rather worry about how to collect stardust on mars than about too much or the wrong reflection in a wild eagle's eyes. It amuses me somehow that the result I got doesn't satisfy me from a technical point of view. And yet, it is another good example to show that context matters in photography. This was almost a studio shot and needs to be regarded and judged as such.

Do I really want to see a reflection of myself and my background in the pupils of an eagle picture? My answer is clearly 'no'. How could I plan that better next time? Many photographers would simply argue that photography skills start with Photoshop and don't end there. I disagree. Frankly, I am still short of an alternative option. A reflection board (let alone a flashlight) might distract or freak out the animal and would certainly need permission and thorough consideration to be used.



This picture is still artistically pleasing to me because the busy background is eliminated with a soft, creamy contrast to the dark animal. The portrait makes me wonder what the eagle is reflecting on and where it is focussing its thoughts. Is it happy or is its life too artificial and too close to human cameras?

Enjoy!

Australian Pelican

Australian Pelican with inside-out pouch put over its body

Australian Pelicans - they are so common and big that they may have exhausted to get much of my photographic attention. I often only check if they are fine and free from fishing line entanglement and other damage. There is hardly any picture that I have not attempted or one that has not been pixelated yet.

Last week, this guy distracted me a bit while I was witnessing some beautiful Darter family action nearby (will write a blog post later). What looked horribly wrong to me, may have been a witness account of some value.




This Pelican obviously turned its pouch inside out, leaned its neck back and put the pouch over its body. Try that! Once I was pretty confident that this was real and the animal was fine, I saw the funny side of it. How cool is that? You can clearly see the veins on the pouch skin, too.

I had assumed that the Pelican was having the sun rid him of a few parasites or some bad, fishy breath. Maybe the drying air or sun was helping with healing a wound. A QuestaGame expert pointed out that the role of their gular pouches to help in cooling is known. Maybe it was reverse engineering and the Pelican was trying to warm up. We have cold nights in Brisbane at the moment and I couldn't blame the Pelican for not caring about its silly 'pouched-over' looks.

This is certainly a photo that deserves to be on my website, maybe not for photographic quality (it was quite far away) but documentation of a rarely documented behaviour.

Hopefully, you'll enjoy.

Crimson Rosella

• Photo Discussion Friday

Crimson Rosella

PDF Week 19/2016: Canon 7D, 400mm (on 100-400mm lens), 1/400, f5.6, ISO 2500.

Crimson Rosella come in a variety of colours. Juveniles and adolescents sometimes resemble other species and even other bird groups, such as Lorikeets, Parots, even Cockatoos etc. While there are a few colour morphs and even a few different races, Crimson Rosellas can normally be recognised from their blue patch on their chin.

We just enjoyed some days out in the bush and were spoiled to witness these majestic animals in the wild. Despite their colourful presence they can be amazingly well camouflaged. Often only their loud screeching voices high in the tree canopy give away their whereabouts. I can not remember ever having spotted a solitary Crimson Rosella. Neither was this individual alone but had a mate nearby.



These animals are wary of humans but not shy. Some are even tame especially when they are fed by humans. For us, it was great to meet a pair roaming a green bush for its orange fruit. They seem like sloppy eaters seemingly dropping half the food. The light was poor but I love the authenticity of the picture. It shows the bush and wildlife we came to see.

Crested Tern

• Photo Discussion Friday
  

Daughter and mum

PDF Week 13/2016: Canon 7D, 400mm, 1/800, f7.1, ISO 100.

Last week, we had one of those rare days out - a day where I dared to take the camera with me. At the moment, my heart is out there in the ocean flatlands. It is time for migrating birds to think of heading North. It is autumn.

As you may know from David Attenborough movies, the tidal changes are a driving force for life forms and exciting stories that many of us know little about. Rockpools and shallow water are not always the barren uninhabited ecosystem that they appear to be. We might not see microorganisms, tiny plants and animals, but more visible crustaceans, molluscs, fish and other animals are witnessing their presence and a huge abundance of nutrients.

Birds belong to that ecological system. The find of the day was certainly the Blue-striped Octopus - a small animal with a deadly venomous bite. It doesn't seem an animal that many of my friends can or want to associate with. In one of the pools an Australian endemic nudibranch species, Goniobranchus daphne, moved around, unimpressed by the receding tide, the warming and drying pool. I wish I had my friend with me who - on all her exciting travels into exotic oceanic locations with professional guides and world leading photographers - has hardly seen any nudibranchs or - I assume - Blue striped Octopuses.

The picture I chose to present shows a juvenile Crested Tern working her mum to share some food. It was a cute scene. The juvenile had mixed with a flock of resting Silver Gulls, begging them discreetly for food. The mother joined quickly but moved on to a close-by rock. Obviously, it didn't take much convincing for the baby to follow. Everything happened just a few meters away from us. It was quite an intimate moment with the birds finding each other and showing that special maternal bond.

I love the photo because the beaks of the two are facing each other, building a connection. The mother is elevated on a pedestal and the juvenile sitting in the water. There was no harassing, only a silent begging and an alertness on what was going on around them. The two birds watch the camera and I am not sure if in this case I would have preferred for them to be focused and looking at each other in a less concealed way.

As always, I was tempted to crop the picture and to zoom in more. But somehow, I wanted to give the context of the rockpool with oyster covered boulders, the shallow pool and environment. My camera lens left a nasty glare in one important spot and professional equipment would also certainly have left a nicer bokeh. Does it matter or bother?

This short rockpool session produced so many memorable moments that it is impossible to share them all. I can certainly recommend exploring, taking some time and not expecting too much. Just be surprised when becoming a part of nature opens up stories and images that might follow you for a long time. A little bit of awareness and connection with nature will ensure for you to even enjoy and be excited about Blue-striped Octopuses.

Stay safe and enjoy!