My Favourite Images of 2021 - Behind The Photos (Part 1)
This past year has had its challenges. I didn’t get to do all the projects I wanted to, and not all of them turned out how I had planned, but at the end of the year, it’s really nice to look back over the year and have a sort of review. For this post, I’ve selected a few of my favourite images, and here I’ll explain the story behind the image - a bit more about what went into the image, why I took them, how I took them, and why I like them.
Welcome to my round up of my favourite images from 2021 part 1 January - April!
And if you prefer video to reading - you can see the video below!
Coal Tit in Snow - January 2021
So in early 2021 we were really lucky to get some snow in Perth. I was new to the area, we’d just moved in, and I was starting to explore when the snowstorms hit and we got snowed in. With the cold weather, we also got more feeders in the garden and this was a great opportunity to focus on those birds for a while.
Initially my placement of the feeders wasn’t ideal so I wasn’t getting the images I wanted. Then I noticed this non-native tree outside the garden - like a larch, but unlike our native larch this one kept it’s needles over winter. So on a frosty morning, the needles would stay slightly coated in frost. I wanted to experiment with this, so I took one of the garden feeders and moved it onto the tree. This turned out really quite nicely for attracting the birds, and bit by bit, I was able to get closer and closer. It was also good to experiment with angles, and try to blur out parts of the tree to focus on the bird. It took a while to find the perfect twig and the perfect angle, and it was a challenge in terms of timing to be there at the right time.
In the end, I got some images that I liked, and in particular, this Coal Tit image coming to land really stood out because of the light, bright colours and the textures of the background. I also really liked that the needles of the tree were slightly out of focus which helps to draw the eye to the bird, while also still giving the feel of the habitat and the context of winter.
Coal Tit in Snow - January 23rd Perthshire, Scotland - EM1X, 300mm, f/4, 1/250s, ISO 1000
I was using my Olympus EM1X with the 300 mm f4 lens which is equivalent to a 600mm on a full frame camera. So it allowed me to stand back a little bit but still have a fairly big portion of the frame filling the bird.
The relatively slow shutter speed of 1/250s means that every now and then if the bird moves I might get a little bit of a blurry image, but it helps keep my ISO down so I get an even better quality image.
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Duck Dash - February 2021
Working with backlight is something I definitely want to practice, and this experience really gave me a taste for it.
For this image, I was lying down on a local loch shore photographing whatever passed by in the golden light of the morning.
In the beginning it was very dark, though I could hear mallards around. As the morning wore on, the sun just got high enough to clear the forest and at that point, I could really see that there was a potential here for a backlit image of those mallards.
In the background I had a forest, which gave me a nice dark background for a backlit image. Unfortunately the ducks were a little bit far away from me, but I thought it was worth trying anyway because I just really wanted this type of image. I dialed in my settings with my first few images, and I really had to underexpose the image so as not to burn out my highlights from the direct sunlight.
Nothing was really happening, and then all of a sudden I heard the ducks as they were taking off - that telltale, intense flapping sound that you hear over water and I managed to quickly get my focus in and I fired off a burst of frames as they flew past. Of all the images that I took, this one was one of my favourites.
There was a beautiful trail of water behind the ducks as they took off, and I was able to capture it all in the frame. I also had a few bokeh, like splashes of light, and I thought that really helped with the atmosphere of the image.
It's a very simple image and there's not much to it, but I really enjoy that early morning mood to it and it makes me think of that morning by the loch.
Duck Dash - February 22nd Perthshire, Scotland - EM1X, 40-150mm, 1.4x, 210mm, f/4, 1/32000s, ISO 200
For this image, I was using my EM1X and I had my zoom lens 40-150mm. I was also using the 1.4 teleconverter that gave me a range of 210mm which would then be 420mm equivalent with a full frame. My shutter speed was extremely high at 1/32000s (electronic shutter). I had an f-stop of f/4 and I used ISO 200. I had to brighten the image a bit in post, and I also brighten a little bit more of the of the splashes and the wings of the mallards so it would stand out a bit more.
Tawny Owl Sunburst - April 2021
On a lovely warm day in April, I’d been in the garden and was chilling out reading a book - not doing any photography, for a change. But I began to hear this call, over and over.
I wasn't 100% sure what the call was, although I had a hunch. That’s one of the good things about knowing bird songs and calls - I can exclude a lot of other birds that I know that it's not. And that's a really good tip if you want to photograph birds: try to learn bird songs and calls because it can really give you that edge when it comes to finding birds that you're looking for.
So by knowing a lot of the common calls, you know what it's not and you can start to think about what it actually could be. Check out my post on learning bird songs here!
So I had a hunch it was an owl - calling in the middle of the day. Putting down my book, I grabbed my binoculars and camera, put my teleconverter 1.4x in my pocket., and I headed out to try and find it.
They are so well camouflaged, so I couldn’t find it right away. I started to circle some of the trees where I heard the call the strongest and after a while I started noticing white stains on one particular tree, and sure enough it was whitewash - the equivalent of urine for owls. So at some point the owl had sat above there and done his business down the tree.
Because they are creatures of habit, I started searching a bit more through binoculars and finally, I made out what looked like the shape of an owl through a cluster of branches. I didn't have a good view from where I was so I walked around this area of woodland so that I came up to the other side and I started searching again.
Then I got a really good look at it: a tawny owl.
I was absolutely ecstatic about this because this is the first tawny owl I'd seen out in daylight - in good light so that I can actually take photos of it as well.
After focusing on this bird for quite a while, I then noticed there was a second owl just a little bit below it. I almost couldn’t believe it. It was such an incredible experience to see these birds just sitting there calmly in the daylight, but it was another thing to try and get the image.
I really didn’t want to photograph from directly below, so I needed to move a little bit further back so I could have a better angle. This is difficult in woodland! Ideally I would have been on a level with them, but they were really high in the tree - it just wasn’t possible.
From a distance, I put on my extenders so that I got the reach. But I knew I wasn’t going to get a good image of both owls. I made peace with that and just tried to enjoy the experience, but then all of a sudden the sun peeked behind the cloud. And I had this idea to try and get a sunburst into my frame.
Again, it took a little bit of moving around to get the angle, and then I managed to compose it with the sun just over the owl’s head. It was quite an enchanting experience, and so unexpected in broad daylight.
To be perfectly honest, the branch in the frame coming across the front of the bird bothers me. I don’t love that. But the fact that I got the sunburst and it was my first time photographing an owl like this in daylight - it doesn’t matter. I absolutely loved the experience and that is why I made it to my top images of 2021.
Tawny Owl Sunburst - April 14th Perthshire, Scotland - EM1X, 300mm, 1.4x, 420mm, f/5.6, 1/250s, ISO 200
Using the teleconverter I had 420mm which equivalent to 840mm, I was then shooting wide open at f/5.6 with a shutter speed of 1/250s. Sometimes when you want to get a sunburst in your frame, it might be an idea to try and increase the f-stop even more. But in this case, I was happy with what I got. So I kept it at f/5.6.
So there you have it - the story behind some of my favourite images of 2021. As always, I really appreciate the support from my community, and I’m always blown away hearing your thoughts and comments, so leave a comment and let me know what's your favourite image story.
I hope you’ve enjoyed this, and best of luck for wildlife photography in 2022.
Until next time,
Espen