Up close
It takes some patience but in the end these Scottish highlanders will allow you to come close.
It takes some patience but in the end these Scottish highlanders will allow you to come close.
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Apr, 2016Views
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Awards
2020 Choice Award
Absolute Masterpiece
Superb Composition
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Behind The Lens
Location
This photo was taken in a national park of Zuid Kennemerland in the Noord Holland region, a place with unique landscape resembling the coast of mediterranean sea.Time
It was an afternoon of a great warm spring day (which are quite scarce here in Netherlands), a day perfect for a bike ride out of the busy city. The sun was hiding behind fast moving clouds that gave the photos a nice background texture.Lighting
The sky was getting grey with clouds moving in fast which created a beautiful soft lighting hitting the fuzzy looking grasslands around. The clouds also took a lot of contrast from the scene and allowed me to capture the whole dynamic range with one exposure only - I chose to overexpose a bit to get some more detail on the fur of this magnificent scottish highlander since I was not interested in detail on the sky.Equipment
I always have my small Sony NEX 5T on me - it's a very convenient camera that performs great in moderate to good light conditions such as these. The pixel count is on the lower side and with less light a lot of noise and a strong green tint is introduced so for days of dedicated shooting I usually use something more powerful. The camera is equipped with a default lens (16-50mm) - I never invested nor time nor money to explore other possible replacements for the body but I believe there are many better lens out there. For this photo I went fully open with aperture set to 3.5 to bring not only the animal as a whole to the front, I wanted to enhance the feeling of depth on the animal itself, to get this nice focused facial features that stand out from the furry mass.Inspiration
After I moved to the Netherlands I was stunned by the variety of landscapes one can find here. I started biking around the countryside a lot and at one point I found a herd of these formidable looking balls of fur grazing the dry sandy dunes of northern Holland. I felt like I am on a completely different continent - after biking just a couple dozen kilometers from the busy city of Amsterdam you suddenly find yourself in a pine forest with herds of wild horses, highlanders and ponies moving freely between the urban areas and the coast. This particular shot features an outcast of the herd, an individual with damaged horn that was living on the outskirts of their territory with couple of animals like him. I was completely taken away by the way it was one with the surroundings, as if the furry mass was just an extension of soft green grassy landscape surrounding it.Editing
I used to shoot a lot of film, I was particularly keen on using these B quality films you can buy in some convenient stores around here. After switching to digital I missed the colour distortion they were introducing to my shots so I replicated this by creating a custom Lightroom preset that emulates the film look I wanted. With this particular shot I pushed the exposure a bit higher to reveal the details on the hair that were hiding in the shadows since that was what I wanted to emphasise.In my camera bag
When going shooting I cling to my Nikon D5500 mounted with simple yet versatile 18-55 VR Mark II lens - this lens produces great results and it's so cheap that if you break it (since I usually shoot in places that are not easily accessible and require durable and fall-proof gear) you can just buy a new one without having to sell your house! Also the VR feature on this lens is awesome, I can easily shoot on 1/10s from hand. For nature photography I always pack Nikon 50-200 VR Mark II, again, very affordable lens with great results. On a normal day I usually have my Sony NEX 5T on me. It's very small and allows me to snap a street scene whenever I want to, it has amazing live view features and the overall ease of use is on a much higher level that aforementioned Nikon. For nostalgic reasons I also bring an old soviet FED5 analog camera that brought me to photography couple years ago. It has fixed 35mm lens and it is almost indestructible! I only use it for portraits in good light conditions though.Feedback
In general it's important to know what the animal is up to - they can easily weigh half a tonne and although generally friendly and calm their mood can change dramatically. A shot like this does require a lot of patience and slow movement - I did not use any zoom lens to enhance the perspective so I needed to get really close to the animal without scaring it or making it angry. Then it's all about getting the light right and that's where luck comes in - it's a low angle shot with sky in the background so if the sky was clear I would need to go for HDR but that, as you can imagine, can be very tricky with a handheld shot very close to the subject that is covered with super fine hair. The focusing technique is also important, it is good to set the focus point rather than locking it and moving the camera afterwards since with smaller subject distance this can yield a shot with focal plane somewhere in the middle of the subject which is very confusing for the eye and generally misguides the attention of the viewer.
