Burrard-Lucas Blog - Wildlife & Travel Photography

Wildlife photography interview on deviantART

Posted on April 14, 2009 at 6:30 am

I have recently been interviewed by John De Bord for deviantART, a popular online art community. John asked a series of great questions and I provided some fairly in-depth responses.

Here are some of the topics that were covered in the interview:

• How I got started in photography
• What gear I use
• How Matthew and I work to together as a team
• My wildlife photography tips
• Wildlife photography destinations
• Some of the ways I market my work
• And much more!

I also included a few photographs in the interview which I have not previously displayed online.

Read the full interview here.

If the interview prompts any further questions then feel free to leave a comment on the interview page or on this blog post.

Behind the shot: Celestial Storks

Posted on April 3, 2009 at 12:31 pm

Matthew and I took this photograph last year in the Pantanal, Brazil. It shows two Jabiru Storks sleeping in their nest while the stars rotate overhead. The camera was positioned so that the southern celestial pole was behind the nest and an exposure time of 40 minutes was used to capture the star trails. The tree was illuminated by a single lamp placed about 100m away.

The southern celestial pole can be located by identifying the Southern Cross constellation and following it down about four and a half cross-lengths. In the Northern Hemisphere, you can find the north celestial pole by pointing your camera at the North Star. You can find out more about locating the celestial poles here.

This is photograph is one of our all-time favourites – it looks fantastic when printed large. If you are interested in buying a print then please get in touch.

Meerkats of the Kalahari

Posted on March 31, 2009 at 7:30 am

Matthew and I have recently added a gallery of Meerkat photos to Burrard-Lucas.com. The photographs were taken in the Kalahari Desert (Botswana) over the course of two days last year.

The temptation would have been for us to both use telephoto lenses but we wanted to try and get a fresh perspective by showing the Meerkats in their environment. We therefore worked as a team with one person using a long lens to capture portraits while the other scrambled around on the floor with a wide angle lens!

We have split our photographs into two galleries: Meerkat Portraits and Meerkat Groups.

Here are a few of our favorite photographs:

More photos: Meerkats of the Kalahari

Finland Bears

Posted on March 9, 2009 at 1:00 pm

Last summer we ventured to an area on the Finland-Russia border in search of European brown bears. These bears are mainly active at night and are much shyer than their North American counterparts. As a result, we slept during the day and spent five consecutive nights sitting in a hide, never speaking louder than a whisper.

This video was shot on our first night in Finland. We give you a tour of our hide and talk a bit about our equipment set-up.

View the video here: Finland Bears

On subsequent nights we tried out some other hides positioned on the edge of a small lake. Sitting in a hide for five consecutive 14-hour nights with only our cameras, the bears and each other for company was a wonderful escape from our frantic lives back in the UK. We left Finland feeling recharged, and already planning our next visit to these bear-filled forests of the North.

You can see another clip from our time in Finland here: In the Hide.

Behind the shot: Caiman Under Stars

Posted on February 23, 2009 at 9:00 am

Our Caiman Under Stars set of photos was shot over the course of three nights last summer. We were in the Pantanal – a massive wetland region of Brazil, over 10 times the size of the Florida Everglades.

Usually we aren’t content with just taking photos during the day so we often go out in search of nocturnal wildlife. On one of our night walks we came across a swampy area where caimans were lying in a channel waiting for fish to swim past. It was a very dark night with no moon but plenty of stars overhead. I’m not sure where the inspiration came from but we decided to try and photograph a caiman with star trails in the sky above.

It would have been easy to get the shot by first photographing the caiman and then compositing a second shot of the stars. However, we wanted to achieve the effect in a single exposure (so that it would be eligible for competitions amongst other things).

Composing the shot by the light of a headtorch was the first challenge. We were using a 16mm lens on a full-frame Canon 1Ds Mk III so the second challenge was getting close enough to the caiman!

We knew from experience that we could get a suitable star trail image using a shutter speed of 40 minutes, aperture of f/4.5 and ISO of 200. Based on these settings, we manually controlled the output of an off-camera speedlite flash to correctly expose the caiman in the foreground. This produced a single flash at the start of the exposure which froze the caiman’s initial position on the sensor. For the remainder of the exposure the caiman could thrash around chasing fish as much as it liked without ghosting the image (of course this only worked because the foreground was completely dark – if there had been a moon or stray torch beams then there would have been ghosting).

One last detail – at f/4.5 it would have been impossible to have both the stars and the foreground in focus. To get over this we first focused on the head of the caiman, started the exposure, triggered the flash and then shifted the focus to infinity as quickly as possible!

Once we set the camera off we had to wait for 40 minutes with our flash-lights dimmed, swatting mosquitos and keeping an eye out for jaguars before we could move on to the next shot. We would take around 4 or 5 shots before midnight then flop into our beds with our alarms set for pre-sunrise so that we could enjoy the good morning light. Needless to say, we left the Pantanal exhausted!

Behind the shot: Mosquitoes Emerging

Posted on February 14, 2009 at 12:00 pm

Over this past month, 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. I took them back in the summer of 2007. 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.

Snow in London

Posted on February 2, 2009 at 4:23 pm

Wow… I woke up this morning to find London snowier than I have seen it in years. I couldn’t resist the opportunity to pop out during my lunch break and take a few photos.

I wasn’t expecting to be taking photos any time soon so the only camera gear I have up in London with me is my old 1D Mark II and a 45mm tilt-shift lens… an unusual choice of lens but it did the trick!

Here are just a few pictures to give you an idea of what London looks like at the moment.