Blog Post

How not to use my hides.....a professional guide to avoid my idiocy

philipvprice • December 16, 2020

A how not to guide to using our new and improved Lochside Hide

I spent an incredible day in my hide which is the first time it has been used since I dug it in to improve the photography angle and to stop it getting destroyed by every storm. Usually this is where I would then say 'to get great images you need to do this and that etc' which is what most photographers write about. I have decided to take a different approach mainly due to my slight (to great) incompetence on the day. Rather than hide my head in shame, I decided to do a 'how NOT TO guide' to wildlife photography in our loch side hide.

Lesson One

Don't get up really early and make a massive effort to turn up under the cover of darkness, forget a crucial piece of equipment go home and on the way back to the hide see one otter, one eagle, three buzzards and numerous crows all disappear into the distance from where you should have been all along! Luckily most of them did come back by some miracle, except the eagle.

Lesson Two

Don't fall asleep, really don't fall asleep, in fact just stay awake, otherwise the above otter may have finished feeding by the time you start taking its picture. Thank goodness I still got 20 minutes with it but I had not idea how long it had been there for.

Lesson Three

Don't forget to charge battery, or more importantly don't think that it probably will be a pretty sparse day so you don't need a full battery and thus at the end watch what would have been the very best picture of a buzzard backlit in sparkly light 6m from hide and not be able to take the picture. Your penance is to sit with the battery under your armpit to warm it up so you can at least get some images for the 4 hours in the hide you had to spend there.

Lesson Four

Don't forget to pee before entering hide. Otherwise you will have to perform some funky ninja, yoga cross manoeuvre to avoid peeing on the hide, the camera equipment and not get seen by the buzzards 10metres away. All done by the way!

Lesson Five

Don't forget you have kids and have to pick them up, but not wanting to scare the birds away from the hide, you will have to use your lunch box as a flying decoy flung from the back of the hide. All ended well as back in time!

Even having made all these gaffs I had a total blast and I am loving the images I managed to get in just one morning, showcased above. To be fair this is 3 years, 2 storms and 2 rebuilds down the line but definitely worth it.

I hope your adventures in the coming 2021 will be slightly better organised and less stressful than this was but equally as fulfilling.

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GOOD NEWS IN 2021...AT LAST!

January 13, 2021

I have just processed pics I took the last time I was out with our Otters, which was a few days before Christmas...oh yeah and Happy New Year everyone! What a terrible start. Anyway having just gone through the images I am pretty sure this Otter above , who is called Éowyn, is pregnant. Look at her belly in all these images and there is a definite bulge. This is incredible news and means we should have a family in our main territory again in the next 3 or 4 months, just in time for nice warm spring and summer days!!

Otters Otters Otters

November 30, 2020

As some of you have read before if you follow anything I do, one of my main ambitions over the last year with my business is to try and incorporate effective and useful citizen science into our photography workshops. It means when you come along, not only do you get to take amazing photos (hopefully) but you will be contributing to the protection of that animal or the enhancement of it's environment. Due to Covid a lot of my ideas did not happen this year. However our Otter project did kick off and I have absolutely loved it!!

Common animals can sometimes make the very best photographic subjects

Don't forget what is all around us

By philipvprice • December 4, 2019

Common animals are all around us. And generally let us get very close to them which makes them ideal subjects for wildlife photography.

November 2019 - And we are back!

By Philip Price • November 14, 2019

This newsletter I am so so excited to say for the very first time I can combine my environmental work with delivering new workshops. Here's how it works. For most of my tours and some of my workshops next year, not only will you be able to get some incredible images and experience some world class moments you also get to genuinely help the animals or their habitat that feature on the tour or workshop. Here is a flavour of what we are doing: Red Squirrels Hours of incredible photography combined with tree planting to create more habitat for these amazing wizards of the forests. Beavers Great photography combined with helping the Argyll Beaver Centre with their camera trapping monitoring program. This is vital work for the national re-population of beavers in Scotland.