Matt's Posts

India is an incredible country – a vibrant, bustling place that overwhelms the senses. There’s nothing that quite prepares you for the noise, dust and heat that assaults you upon arrival and I came back from this trip more worn down than when I had departed. Having said that, India is a great place for photography. It may be one of the most densely populated countries in the world, but in terms of wildlife diversity it is also one of the richest.

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One of the most important things that we have learnt as wildlife photographers is to try and tell a story with our images.  This means getting out of the mindset of taking a random selection of good pictures and instead aiming to link photos together with a common theme. A set of images that describe an environment or a particular animal can often be much more valuable than a single “winning shot”.

On our recent trip to the Falkland Islands, we tried to document the sea birds that nest along the rugged coastline. We aimed to capture a variety of images, using focal lengths ranging from 14mm to 600mm, that showed the birds’ behaviour and habitat.

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Deep in the heart of Africa lies the small, landlocked nation of Rwanda. Known locally as “The Land of a Thousand Hills”, the entire country is covered with deep valleys and steep volcanic foothills. The Volcanoes National Park, in the north of the country, is home to an estimated 250 of the world’s 700 remaining mountain gorillas, and is part of a larger volcanic region known as the Virunga Massif. Since no mountain gorilla has ever survived in captivity (unlike lowland gorillas), the World’s entire population can be found at the convergence of three countries; Rwanda, Uganda and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

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In 2004, we travelled to a remote region of Tanzania – the Mahale Mountains National Park. Sandwiched between the shores of Lake Tanganyika and the 2,000m high peaks of the Mahale Mountains, the park is known as one of the few places where it is possible to see chimpanzees in the wild. It is difficult to describe the sense of mystery and excitement that we felt upon arriving at the Park as the hoots and screams of chimpanzees and other primates echoed through the dark forest. We had an incredible experience watching and photographing the chimps in their natural environment. Some of our photographs from this first expedition proved to be very successful, one of them even earning me a win in Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2005. As a result, Mahale has always been a special place for us and we have wanted to return ever since.

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Every now and then it’s good to step outside your photographic comfort zone. This is what I tried to do last week when I started a project to photograph flowers. The initial idea was to produce huge prints that had a studio-like quality about them. The key things that I really wanted to get right were composition and lighting. Although the concept of photographing a beautiful flower on a black background is a bit of a cliché, there is a reason why it is so popular – the results can be really striking.

In order to create a series of massive prints, I needed to take very high resolution images. The problem with making big prints from 35mm DSLR files is that they often require interpolation to get the required dimensions at an output resolution of 300dpi. The only way of avoiding this is to use a camera that already has a high native resolution, i.e. lots of megapixels! I’ve always wondered about the quality that digital medium format systems could offer and since I was recently given the opportunity to borrow one, I thought this project would be the perfect chance to try it out and see for myself what all the fuss was about!

The camera that I used was the Hasselblad H3DII-39, a 39mp beast with a 48×36mm sensor (approximately double the size of a 35mm frame). The huge sensor size results in astounding detail, low noise levels and subtle tonal gradations. The 16 bit files at ISO 50 have amazing vibrancy and dynamic range.

After getting my hands on the camera and spending a bit of time figuring out how to use it, I started to set up my first shot. I was using a 120mm f/4.0 macro lens. The close working distance coupled with the large sensor meant that typical apertures necessary for a decent depth of field and sharpness were around f/16 to f/32.

Photographing the flowers against a black background often meant the Hasselblad’s metering system wasn’t able to provide accurate results. Each photograph would have different amounts of the frame filled with the flower, meaning that most of the metering modes (centre-weighted and averaged) were fooled. To get reliable exposures I used a Sekonic light meter and I reduced the contrast by using a reflector to shade the flowers.

Due to the small apertures and working distances, a tripod was essential to prevent camera shake. Using mirror lock-up and a shutter delay of between 5-10 seconds allowed the camera vibrations to dampen before the image was recorded. This is very important, since the high resolution of the Hasseblad’s sensor makes poor focus and camera movements immediately obvious, especially when blown up to 100%. However, if everything remains sharp then the level of detail captured by the 39 megapixel sensor is just astounding.

Apart from enjoying something a bit different, I have learnt that branching out and diversifying your subjects can really improve other aspects of your photography, both technically and creatively.

While Will was exploring the historic sights of Rome, I was the other side of the world experiencing the incredible natural beauty of New Zealand.

I’ve just returned to the UK… I’m exhausted from the jet lag and the 24 hour journey but somehow I’m still finding the energy to write this post. The trip was a milestone for me (though not a very significant one) in that it was the first time that I have managed to fill an 80gb portable hard drive! The main reason for this is that I was shooting almost exclusively with the Canon 1Ds MK III. The 21 megapixel files from this camera munch through megabytes at a disturbing rate!

New Zealand is an amazingly diverse country, famous for its stunning landscapes and unusual wildlife. High levels of rainfall across the whole country lead to a land of verdant hills, snow capped mountains and glaciers that stretch down into temperate rainforest. The downside of this is that when the weather turns nasty, your camera can be rendered unusable. I discovered this during a 3 day spell in which I only managed to take about 20 photos! On the whole, however, the weather was good during my trip and it didn’t hinder me too much. I managed to explore both the North and South Islands and visited a variety of locations that gave me a good flavour of the country. Amongst my favourites from the trip were White Island, the gannet colony at Cape Kidnappers and the Franz Josef glacier.

White Island is recognised as New Zealand’s most active volcano and is located within the Bay of Plenty. People can reach the island either by boat or helicopter. I left from the mainland at sunrise which ensured that I could explore the island without any large groups of people getting in my photographs. The hour long boat journey was choppy, but I was filled with anticipation and suspense. We made landfall on the island at an abandoned sulphur mining factory. The buildings had been destroyed in an eruption in 1914 that killed all 10 of its workers.

Shortly after landing at the dock, a helicopter arrived to take me up and get some unique perspectives of the island’s features. The pilot was absolutely brilliant and he was more than willing to let me have the door taken off to improve my mobility and the quality of my images. Leaning out of a helicopter at 5000 feet with nothing but a harness holding me in was definitely one of the most exhilarating experiences of my life!

Since the only native mammals of New Zealand are a few bat and seal species, most wildlife photographers tend to focus on the country’s birdlife. One of the best parts of my trip was photographing the Australasian gannet colony at Cape Kidnappers. Unfortunately most of the birds had left either for Tasmania (the adults) or the Great Barrier Reef (the chicks) but luckily a few stragglers were left behind for me to photograph. It was great being able to crawl up close to these beautiful birds, despite having to lie down in all the excrement and cemented feathers!

My final stop in NZ was the Franz Josef glacier in the Westland. From here I did another scenic helicopter flight into Mt. Cook (Aoraki) National Park. Just after the sun had risen up above the peaks, we soared along the Franz Josef glacier and into the midst of the highest mountains in the Southern Alps, including the likes of Mt. Tasman and Mt. Cook. Once again I had the door of the chopper removed, but this time the 13,000 foot altitude took its toll on my fingertips – they got so cold that I couldn’t feel the shutter button on my camera. In the end I resorted to deftly forcing my frozen index finger onto the top of my camera in the hope of hitting the right button. This was probably my most painful, but also one of my best photographic experiences to date!

I hope you enjoyed looking at some of my photographs. Will also visited New Zealand a couple of years ago and has a few pictures on his photoblog.

Will and I have been thinking about writing a series of blog posts on some of our favourite images and how they were taken. The aim is to provide a little more explanation behind some of the techniques that we use and to highlight the most important things to consider when you’re taking wildlife photos.

So, I’m kicking off with my mosquito emerging series of photos. As is the case with most of my macro photos, the inspiration behind these shots came from getting outside and actively searching for subjects – you can’t always expect to come up with good ideas whilst sitting on your backside!

I noticed the larvae of these mosquitoes living in a stagnant pot of water in my garden. I did a bit of research into their development and discovered that it takes about 1-2 weeks (depending on the temperature) for them to develop into the adult form that we all know and love! This was perfect, since it gave me a good amount of time to try and come up with a set up to photograph them as they emerged.

Over the course of about 14 days, I maintained a keen eye on their development. I kept the larvae in a glass of distilled water in my room, covering the glass with perforated cling film – I didn’t want my face to suffer any consequences during the night! Once the larvae had turned into pupae, I knew they were close to hatching. As soon as I saw one that had straightened out (normally they are curled up a bit like cooked shrimp), I knew it was about 5 minutes until go-time.

I transferred the mosquito into a custom made pot of water and made final adjustments to the setup. I was using a Canon EOS 5D with an MP-E 65mm macro lens. For the lighting, I had three flash units – a macro ring lite and two supplementary strobes. Additionally, I had two desktop lamps (one 20 Watt and another 40 Watt) to illuminate the green background. Working at such large magnifications meant that I needed plenty of light to keep the ISO low, the aperture small and shutter speed high.

In order to obtain a strong reflection, I had to get an extremely shallow angle with the surface of the water. This effect is known as Total Internal Reflection. An aperture of around f/16 provided a sufficient depth of field, however, using a magnification of around 4x meant that I encountered some softness in my images due to small aperture diffraction.

After the mosquito had fully emerged from the pupal case, it rested on the surface of the water for a few minutes whilst it pumped fluid into its wings to harden them. I took as many photos as I could, but I was limited by how long it took the flashes to recharge to full power. In total the whole process from start to finish took no more than 5 minutes.

It really was an amazing process to observe through my lens and it actually gave me genuine respect for these insects. Of course, if you have any questions about the set up or anything else then leave a comment below.