Trial and error

The level of ignorance exhibited by some enthusiats in most hobbies manifests itself on the internet. On a photography forum some goon asked where the skill was in taking lots of shots in the hope one will work well. Henri Cartier-Bresson, no mug with a Leica, reckoned he took one good photo a year if he was lucky. I bet he didn't take just the one. In fact when you read up on him and see the shots he took before and after one of his iconic images you'll see some pretty ordinary stuff. Photography is, and always has been, about making selections. from selecting what to shoot to the final crop. Selecting one frame from many is one of the steps along the way.

If you don't take lots of shots, trying lots of different approaches to the various elements - framing, point of view, exposure and so forth - you will keep on taking the same old photos time and again. Tom Hogan extols the benefits of 'playing' on his site today. A telling phrase being to "Examine the results and see if there isn't something potentially useful in what you just discovered." Making selections again.

Making rubbish images, or images that nearly work, is all part of the creative process. Painters do it all the time. If they aren't making preparatory sketches they are scraping paint off canvas and starting again. No image emerges fully formed and perfect without a few mishaps along the way. Omlettes and eggs spring to mind.

And so it is that I'm trying to pull off a couple of images that satisfy me about the winter migrants that have moved in locally. I don't want the pin sharp close up, I want to give some feeling of place and time of year setting the birds in context and, if I'm lucky, creating an atmosphere. So far all I have managed are what I think of as photographic sketches. I don't have particular images in mind that I am trying to capture, but I know what elements will be involved.

The two species are pink-footed geese and whooper swans. With the geese I want to put across the huge flocks that fill the skies, the watchfulness of the birds on the ground, the openness of the landscape and the chill of the air. For the swans I have a more specific image in mind, a group flying to roost against a setting wintry sun.

These are two of my better sketches so far.

Having too many distant birds in the sky adds clutter and they become cyphers. Too few and they don't put across the sheer number of birds. Getting flocks in the frame with no birds chopped in two is a major problem!

When dealing with smaller groups of birds in flight you still have problems with composition. Each one needs space around it. Each one must be in an pose expressing motion. And you don't want stray birds of other species in the shot either, unless they add something to the overall image. The sky has to make a complimentary background too. When making images with paint you can move elements around to suit. When working with a camera you have to wait for things to move into place of their own accord. Sure is tricky - and frustrating!

Luckily the swans are flying to roost at an easily accessible spot a few minutes from home at the moment, so an hour at dusk when the sky might be suitable is an easy option. If I take enough shots one might turn out well enough eventually.

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