What’s missing?

Back last week I was invited by two friends (and fairly regular photography buddies) to head on over to a location they’ve been visiting and photographing at for well over a year. Naturally, I jumped at the chance to go to a ‘well developed’ site with a guaranteed sighting of a species I’ve never photographed but have seen a few times.

On Saturday afternoon I packed up the car and setup off. It’s not a long drive, maybe 45-50minutes and I was full of excitement for the evening ahead, constantly running over how I was going to shoot this subject.

Well, we arrived and began setting up. There were two locations known to be in use – in use in that food put out the night before had been snaffled up completely, even those bits hidden in holes and hollows. the signs were looking good. With two locations, we each  had to choose one to shoot at. I looked at the more guaranteed area and decided while I wanted to get shots of this species, I’d try something a bit harder and go for the second location that was obviously on the run, but maybe not quite so well used. However, it made for a much more photogenic location. Graham choose the main location and Calum decided to come with me and head into the woods for a different shot.

Half an hour before dusk we were all setup and took our places to wait. And wait. And wait.

Looking to our left, Graham was waving at us frantically – he had them and his lights were firing quite happily. He was getting shots. We quietly moved from our location knowing if they were up at the main place we’d see them move down towards our location and have time to get back to our observation spots.

This went on for ages. The subjects would pop their heads out, Graham would take some shots, they’d play, he take more shots and after a while they’d head back in. A little while later the process would repeat itself.

By 11:30pm the temperature had dropped and Calum and I had had none of our subject appear down at our setup. We decided to call it a night and set about packing up. With the car loaded Calum set off past the main location and what did he see? The subjects we’d been waiting for. They’d gone back in for what we thought was the night but were now out again. He called us over and we then spent half and hour watch three very young badger cubs playing outside their sett, snuffling up the remains of the food we’d put down and generally paying no attention to the three photographers standing 6 meters away, jaws agape watching them.

We watched for about 30 minutes and once they’d gone back inside we quietly made our away off ready to head home. Graham was happy because he had some shots, but Calum and I were equally happy despite not getting any shots at all. And that’s the moral of this story. If you are going to photograph wildlife, you need to accept that sometimes it doesn’t play ball. Yes, I’d love to have some beautiful badger shots to show you now, but I’ll be going back again soon and hopefully having more luck. In the meantime I can bask in the memory of having seen 7 badgers, of which 3 were cute cubs – not something most people ever get to see. And all done without disturbing them in any way.

They say don’t work with children or animals. But if you’re really into your wildlife, ‘working’ with animals is not that frustrating. Simply re-base your aims – go out to see the wildlife first and photograph it second. You’ll be less stressed, and crucially you’ll be more likely to put the welfare of the animal ahead of your desire to get the picture.