Our NZ Photography Workshops Wildlife Masterclass in May was yet another example of the fact that you don’t always get what you want. Fortunately though, with wildlife photography you usually get something. The first day of the workshop is always a bit challenging with an early start, tight flight connections exacerbated by weather, meeting all the participants and getting loaded into the van to head out to the Otago Peninsula. This time we arrived into rain and to make matters worse my checked bag hadn’t made the transfer in Wellington so didn’t arrive in Dunedin. Result being, I had no change of clothes or waterproof leggings. During our stop for snacks I grabbed some spare clothing and after checking in and our intro session were were down at the beach in the wind and episodic mild rain.
The hope is always for Sealions but in the wind and rain they were few, tucked up and not photogenic. To be fair they were better than a year previously when we had seen only one looking just like a log in a sand drift. I got hopeful when I saw a decent male haul out down the beach. Unfortunately, as shown in the top photo, he headed straight up and out of the wind to collapse in the vegetation on the dunes.
Fortunately birds are happy with moving air so we had opportunities to explore with Variable Oystercatchers/Torea pango.
Heading back down the beach we saw another Sealion heading toward the beach in the surf which got our hopes up again.
I was hoping it would see the group of crouching photographers as interesting and come ashore but it just cruised along the beach without offering any decent photography opportunities. Heading further down we spent a bit of time exploring the textures of a resting Sealion.
By this stage we had been dealing with wind, cold, some rain and a lot of windblown sand. Not a hugely successful session but it wasn’t finished yet. Dashing about on the beach in the wind and flying sand was a NZ Pipit which made an interesting subject.
It was running about looking for food items amongst the beach debris. Getting low on the beach on the seaward side allowed a low angle provided you kept a wary eye for approaching waves. Tracking the darting bird with the camera held low and using the angled LCD was a challenge in the wind. Low light and high ISO was an added complication but some decent images were possible.
In the end I had a collection of low light, low contrast files to choose a few from to process. This provided a useful illustration of a processing workflow to accentuate the subject by pulling it forward in the frame with selective masked contrast and colour temperature adjustments, while pushing the background away with opposite adjustments. This was one of the processing techniques I had wanted to illustrate during the workshop and had selected a few images from my archive to demonstrate it, but it was so much nicer to have an image shot on a difficult day during the workshop to use for an example.
At the end of the day it was largely a bust with respect to Sealions but a great success for a Pipit as this is one of the best images I have of one. A short drive had us warming up with good food at the Portobello pub and just after getting back to Larnach Castle I had a call and had my errant luggage delivered!
Photos with Nikon Z9 and Nikkor Z 400mm f4.5 VR S with Nikkor Z 1.4x teleconverter.
