all creatures great and small
A trip on the wild side
Since I got back into photography in 2007 I spent most years shooting whatever my heart desired whenever the mood struck me and the free time availed itself. But in some of those years I had a definite agenda in mind and spent the majority of whichever years they were pursuing it. This year was another one of them, and my resolution this time was to take far more interesting nature photo's than I have in the past. To do so I could no longer be satisfied just taking pictures of animals that let me photograph them while I was standing out in the open (though I did get several magnificent ones doing that as long as I was willing to sit still like a statue for hours on end till the animals finally ignored me). Nor while only standing on dry ground.
If I was ever going to get photo's of animals in the wild that were as eye catching as the ones I got of animals at the zoo, I was going to have get down dirty and wild with them - and or hide some way so they couldn't see me. Now this was hardly an idea that just occurred to me. But for years the equipment I owned while great for capturing static objects, or slow moving easy to approach subjects like people, was simply inadequate for capturing highly detailed shots of quickly moving animals from a distance. As most wild animals don't let you get within 20 yards of them, my gear was almost always incapable of capturing my subjects even in ideal circumstances, when they were far away and constantly moving.
But over the last 3 years I slowly acquired several pieces of equipment that allowed me to capture fairly sharp photo's of quick moving animals from a distance. Now this gear is still nowhere near as good as the equipment used by professional nature photographers, but still they're vastly superior to what I had been working with up to this point. So now each occasion when I stood at waters edge and saw a subject I knew my upgraded gear could actually capture this time if only I could get in closer to it, or spotted an animal running away from me that I knew I could have photographed if only it hadn't seen me coming first, I started to get annoyed, until finally I decided to do something about it.
I was going to have to start doing what practically all the other serious nature photographers did. I was going to have to find a way to camouflage myself, or for aquatic subjects, like fishermen have for eons, I was going to have find a way to get in the water with them.
I figured I might as well go all out, after all 90 percent of the reason I chose to stay here in Staten island and buy a home 20 years ago rather than move to Brooklyn like my best friend Scott, or to Queens to be closer to my godson's, was because I loved all the wild animals I could find at the many lakes and ponds here. So it wasn't making sense to watch the majority of them stay out of reach of my camera because of obstacles that many companies have made ways for me to get around.
Now for water bound animals it was going to be fairly straightforward. I needed knee high boots, hip waders, and chest waders. Easy enough to get in fishing stores. The camouflage gear was going to be a bit trickier as what kind you need differs quite a bit, depending on where you and your subject are, and what kind of animal it is your trying to photograph. So I brought the works. Everything from simple netting I could throw over myself and my gear, camouflage clothing I could wear to blend in with convenient shrubs and bushes all around me. Right up to 3 different types of hides, which were the best way to stay hidden from creatures with keen eyesight.
I tried all these things out in my backyard before taking them out in the field. (This most certainly left many of my neighbors scratching their heads, wondering what on earth I was doing). But if the first time you try something out, especially a hide that has many parts, is in the field you are setting yourself up for plenty of grief. For one you need to be wherever it is you plan on hiding out in, long before the animals get there, because if they see you go into the hide or bushes in your camogear, contrary to popular belief, animals are not stupid, and will totally avoid you because they know your in there somewhere even if they can no longer see you.
So you probably need to get there by dawn at the latest, and if whatever you've brought with you requires some kind of assembly in order to use it, then you better pretty much have the technical skill to put it together down to a science if your going to have to do that in the near darkness that accompanies the sun not being up yet. So I practiced both assembling and using them all in my backyard first. Then I tested their effectiveness on the birds that came to my feeders next.
A couple of years ago I had set up 5 different bird feeders in the backyard to test my new equipment on, as well as to sharpen my techniques. When your out in the wild the animals will not wait around for you to find the right button to press, or the ideal combination of settings to adjust. You have to find them on your camera in an instant, or otherwise kiss your photo opp goodbye. So all those wonderful backyard shots you see in this nature gallery, were taken for a specific purpose and not just so I could have a nice collection of backyard photos ( though it certainly was fun), and now I used my backyard visitors to see what different types of camouflage worked best on them.
After trying my new gear out at home, my next successful tests were at the small marsh at Snug Harbor a 5 minute cab ride from my house. The animal life there is infrequent and mostly kind of dull, so I had plenty of time to experiment in-between animal sightings to find the best and most comfortable setups. After that I was ready to try my stuff out for real at the many ponds and lakes that dot the island.
My favorite lake is Clove. Three large lakes connected by waterfalls and brooks, it is a wonderful place to just walk and enjoy, and chocked full of animals as well. Last week I tried out one of my small portable hides that fits around myself and my camera on a tripod here at a spot isolated from people. It worked fabulously, and got me all those shots of the great blue herons, including the ones where they practically landed right on top of me, totally unaware I was under my hide.
But my camera didn't have a large range of motion in this hide as it grips around the front of your lens, and moves the whole hide if you swing too far to one side or the other. I got around this shortcoming nicely by unzipping the giant zipper that cuts across the top of the hide and wearing a camouflage hood and gloves photographing the animals off to the side with a second camera sitting on my lap or at my feet. It wasn't perfect but compared to the hunters hides nature photographers use to be forced to put up with, or even the cheap ones designed (inadequately in my experience) specifically for nature photographers, it was a joy.
But today I was even more excited than I had been any other day during my whole 10 day vacation, which I took specifically to test out all this new equipment. For I was finally going to try out my new deluxe hide by the company Tragopan. A French company, all they make is camouflage gear for photographers. And this V6 hide was their crowning achievement.
At a lake as filled with people coming and going from dawn to dusk like Clove lake, a hide would be useless, as all the people around you will keep the animals away anyhow. But at this one spot under the shade of a couple of trees located on an island of mud (really there's no grass, and the mud is so thick it will practically pull the sneakers right off your feet. Not surprisingly almost no one ever comes here because of it, and conversely truckloads of animals do.
To deal with the mud all around me in my portable hide the other day, I laid my convertible nylon camping mat at my feet and put my second camera and other telephoto zoom on it, as well as my lunch. But it was pretty cramped in there and easy to knock something off into the mud.
This V6 hide had a optional floor attachment I purchased, which will allow you to sit right on the ground if you wish in perfect comfort, totally protected from damp or muddy ground. This attachment also comes with a large extra back space for storing all your gear. So you never have to leave the hide. Plus the large front window with camouflage netting allows for huge range of motion. Add the changeable netted window coverings on either side which allows for easy photographing on your right and left. And if that wasn't enough it has zippered openings on all sides at the bottom to allow you to photograph animals at ground level. Air ventilation's at the top, optional extra coverings to keep it water tight in pouring rain, and an isothermic layer built in to keep you about 10 degrees cooler inside than out. If most better photographer's hides are like staying at a Motel 6, this was like staying at the Four Seasons. I was in heaven. This was my dream photo hide.
This was also a very big hide and naturally as such attracts a huge amount of attention even with its camouflage paint job. Now most people jogging by didn't even notice me on this isolated mud island, but still quite a few did. Taking pictures of the hide with their cellphones. I had fun with the whole thing and whenever there were no animals around I stuck my head out for the would be Instagramers with their camera phones and posed for them.
But most of the time I couldn't because I would give away my position to the animals I was hoping to photograph. Now you'd think the giant telephoto lens sticking out the front of the hide would have giving everyone a clue as to what I was there for, but surprisingly many people just saw a tent on this lonely little island and thought I was some homeless person camping out there and radioed in to have someone check it out.
How, if I was homeless, I could afford such an obviously expensive and unusual tent, and why on earth would I choose to pitch on the most inhospitable place in the entire park (there are much more dry isolated spots to pitch a tent at Clove lakes than here), are questions for wiser men than me to ponder. But the call went out and somebody had to respond to it.
Around one or two in the afternoon I heard a pleasant voice coming from behind the hide. Sticking my head out I saw someone who I could tell obviously worked for the park in heavy boots made for this kind of muck, walking towards me. After greeting me and telling me his name was David, he explained how he got a call to come check me out, but before I could even explain myself, he took one look at the expensive camera I had sticking out the front of my hide, and he apologized, and started to turn to leave, realizing what this was and why I was here. But as he had come all this way a mile from the parks office to see what the heck I was doing, I figured I owed him more than just polite nod and wave.
I gave him a quick detailing of the very best of the hides features, then showed him some of the pictures I've taken here at Clove lakes over the years, as I had my tablet with me so I could do some reading while I waited during the many down times when no animals were in sight. David loved the photo's, wished me well in my pursuit of interesting animals to capture and headed back to the office.
Unlike yesterday so far today all I had captured were ducks and geese, and it had been about 5 hours since I had put the hide up. But patience is a virtue and an absolute necessity for nature photographers, and mine was about to be rewarded.
Not more than 20 minutes tops after my conversation with the lakes head supervisor ended, I spotted a small bird hunting in the shadows among the ducks and geese. It was too big to be a plover or sand piper, and even under the murky shadows of the trees I could tell it was too colorful to be a plover or piper as they are both sandy brown. Then he turned his head to one side and I saw the long curved beak and I knew it was an ibis. A crimson one in fact, awesome! The last time I spotted one of these reclusive birds it was at Snug Harbor over 10 years ago.
One of the many people curious of my hide (he was a bird watcher) had a conversation with me during one of my many down times, and mentioned that there were a pair of crimson ibis here at the lake, but that they are very wary of people and incredibly hard to spot. Not surprising they'd choose this location to hunt for food in, as it is one of the least accessible spots in the whole park for people, so they know they can feed here it complete peace and safety. Mark one for my Tragopan hide! Without it I never would have gotten these shots of the ibis.
He hunted all around the mud island for over an hour, and I got tons of shots of him. And if that wasn't enough the one time I saw him actually catch something, it was right in front of my hide. He was in the shadows, but I still managed to capture some real nice shots of him with his seafood supper. Not a bad day at all for my hides first trip into the "wild".
