At one point in Peter Cairns thread “Only a chaffinch... “ it looked like it was being hijacked with a discussion about Bence Máté’s set-up in Hungary.
So I thought I would explain a little about what was behind my comments to Nick, in the thread.
Bence Máté’s set-up is effectively a 4 metre long, 2 metre wide and 1 meter deep, concrete lined trench. These dimensions aren’t accurate, but they will give you the general idea, and I won’t argue the odd centimetre or two, but they are in the right ball park. At one end there is a sunken hide, where the lens ports are level with the waters surface once the trench is filled. This hide, even has a waterproofed slated roof, and you shoot through one way glass, I believe.
A rather sophisticated set-up, but he does open it up for a small consideration, which is, I believe, at least £200 per day, not sure, but that might even be per person, and the hide takes approx. four photographers at a time.
He has a number of other hides overlooking different habitats, so there are plenty of opportunities. The range of species which he has coming in is quite phenomenal.
Personally I much prefer to do it myself. The thought of turning up at a hide, being told where to put my tripod, then where to point my lens, with the only input from me, re the final image, is when the button is pushed, doesn’t exactly fill me with enthusiasm, but I know that for many it does. I have much better things to do with my money and time. Besides, I also think it is a good idea to be able to at least move your shooting position, re the “kill zone”, if not both in relation to each other.
You can make your technique as basic or as sophisticated as you want, it just depends on what your end target is.
No problem Ray - although I've never been (nor am likely too), I'm well aware of some of his setup's. Yes, you shoot through mirrored glass. A quick google will pull you up his site & hide info .
Posted by Tim Gregory on April 20, 2009 at 1:15 PM
I think Bence Mate's setup is excellent, and the images he took for WLPOTY among others were very very nice. Trouble is, since he's opened it up to the public its been done to death and god knows how many other images i've seen that are all blatant ripoffs of his images.
Sure he gets good money for it, but as a photographer myself it would seem a bit strange to go and get carbon copies of someone elses shots, especially when they're so obviously setup and repeatable.
If I was going to go somewhere and pay money, i'd at least want something that would be more "mine"
Posted by Liam Pauling on April 20, 2009 at 2:43 PM
I think this might help:
http://hidephotography.com/
I agree with Tim, who wants to do something that loads of other people have all ready done
I happen to have some images of Bence Máté’s set-up which aren’t on his site which show a lot more, for example another drinking station, but before the concrete is poured.
I find such information/images fascinating, as it shows how different people come up with answers to the same problem. From experience, I’ve found that some little thing, which you see or hear, can often be the catalyst for you to advance.
Tim, I couldn’t agree more. Bence Máté’s set-up to me is the equivalent of “Silver Service”, in other words, you open your wallet, push a button and you get the product, which as you say are all much of a sameness. If you go to Bence’s site, you will see a “fire tower” which overlooks a Roller breeding colony, now there is only a limited number of perches which the Rollers use, which are open to photography, so everyone’s images are all quite literally the same..
Now do you think that Bence actually uses the same set-ups that his punters do, I wouldn’t, and I’m sure neither does he.
Liam saw the site, as I said, “Silver Service”, all you need is the “Maitre D’” to complete the scene.
If you glean a bit of information here and there, put it all together, then you have the potential for a very versatile set-up, where you can not only use long lenses but wide angle, get drinking, bathing behaviour and perching up, all with various backdrops, within reason.
Which is why I’m so keen to set up a new station, so that I can try out all those ideas which are buzzing around in my head.
It’s amazing what people will tell you, without realizing it.
Posted by Liam Pauling on April 20, 2009 at 5:47 PM
I completely agree with you Ray but would you consider Gigrin Farm "silver service"?
Posted by John Robinson on April 20, 2009 at 8:27 PM
I personally, after photographing birds at pools for 40 years feel that Bences images are certainly attention grabbing for card pics etc, but nothing like real life bird shots as anyone who has sat in a pool hide for a few hours , sees them.. If the public etc want thatsort of pic, -fine.
Its like a Dormouse asleep in a Daffodil. !!
At least with a Nikon D200 you can vomit over it!
JR
Whilst we are debating this, a voice for the defence....
It all depends upon how much time you have on your hands. A 12 hour day+ with commuting doesn't exactly leave me much time to research my own hotspots build hides and maintain feeding stations. I can definately see the attraction of using Bence's services as it allows me to get up close and intimate with species I couldn't otherwise photograph.
Not sure why there is so much criticism of phototourism, it enables the less fortunate or able to take images that they are quite happy with.
If you are going to knock sneer at Bence's set ups you should equally knock the golden eagle set ups used by Danny et al, any of the Great grey owl pounce shots achieved by lured bait and fishing rod, diving fish eagles taken from boats, black bears in the forest, black cock leks, or even Vince's wildlife days the list can be as endless as you want.
The common theme here is that people have paid to use other peoples knowledge and expertise in setting up a photo opportunity for them. I see no issue with this approach at all. Otherwise why pay for your house or car, the purist thing to do would be build them yourself........
Mike,
I would think that photography as art is more about original thought mixed with a little technical ability, whereas phototourism is more about technical ability mixed with little original thought.
I know folk who can paint a technically very good Mona Lisa but there's no way in this world they would call themselves artists, painters yes, but not artists
Labels, labels, we're all tagged with them
Posted by Rene de Heer on April 21, 2009 at 3:18 AM
I am with Mike.I have used Bence Mate's hides and they are superb. I have a busy job in the city, spend most of my time abroad during the week and when I finally come home I also have to get involved (gladly) with my 2 children. Maybe some of you don't have those responsibilities or simply have too much time on your hands!
Hence the reason why i use prepared sites, I don't have the time to do my research, so if I am out photographings birds for a week, I need to be pretty sure that I come back with something! I do not agree with a statement that it takes away creativity, I still need to release the shutter and make the image mine and think HOW I take the image.
Can I give an example? On my website is an image of mating golden eagles in the snow. Taken from a so called prepared hide. I sat in the hide from 5 in the morning till 5 in the afternoon. For 15 minutes the eagles came down and i was able to take these unique images. Surely without prepped hides near impossible.
I also find there is a bit of hypocrisy around. I checked some of your comments on the excellent images of Danny Green et all, for example the golden eagle, no one finds it necessary to mention in the critique that the image was taken at a set-up, the only mentioning it gets is that it is a great image.
So for both kind of images is a place but if you don't like it fine but be consistent in your comments.
For what its worth; I'm off to Hungary in June to photograph Pygmy cormorants...from prepped hides.
You can all discuss this to the cows come home. The welfare of the subject is number one, in the commercial world the image is number two, everything else comes afterwards.
Cost/Quality/Time : three inextricably linked factors in the final image - for a set (expected) 'Quality' you can only play with cost and time. As the Quality Bar gets higher, the sum of the other two has to move a similar magnitude. If you have the time you can move at little cost, if you have the money you can move at little time (providing there is a supplier).
We have been paying people for years, sherpas, guides, trappers, hunters, species experts, to enhance our opportunity and reduce the risk, the only thing that is different now is that these people are also photographers.
T
Posted by John Robinson on April 21, 2009 at 5:02 AM
I have to agree that was I not retired and working long days, etc , then I too would use prep hides. When i have done such as the kestrel, then the perches are all changed sothat the shots are not just a repetition of the others.
I have to say I was not relating the vomiting comment to bences pics - just the Dormouse in the daff.
Cheers
JohnR
good topic....and whilst i have to declare i am not posting this at all for the commercial interest, it did make me chuckle thinking of silver service, and the forthcoming trip i am organising to the amazon. no one on the trip will get silver service that's for sure!!
wooden floors and boiled rice. lovely.
Very interesting the views expressed above, and how far from the original topic it has drifted.
Personally, I don’t give a monkeys how or where an image was taken, so long as it is true to nature, and the welfare of the subject was in no way jeopardised.
If paying out your hard earned cash, to be escorted into a hide, sat down, setup your gear, point your lens at the “kill zone”, which has been pointed out to you, check your settings, put the camera on say 5 frames per second and sit back and wait, possibly with a cup of tea to hand, rocks your boat, that’s fine with me. But for me, all you are doing is being a recorder of an instant in time, of a setup constructed/designed by someone else, and not what N.H. photography is all about, as there is nothing in the resulting image which is part of you.
Liam, you asked about Gigrin. Well, I could make a very good argument saying that it is at least a “copper service”, but that would just be me acting as a devil’s advocate. For me, if an image contains some input from the photographer, be it only that the photographer chose their own viewpoint, thus composition, then it isn’t “silver service”, it’s their image.
Bence Máté and others make no pretensions as to what they offer. So I don’t see what there is to knock or sneer at, and if it came across that I was sneering, then I apologise. They offer a “silver service” photographic experience, after identifying a niche in the market, so good luck to them. It just isn’t for me.
If I had the opportunity to go into one of these hides, would I ??? Of course I would, but would I take any pride in the images, and post them on a forum such as this, the answer is NO. As they truly aren’t mine.
But saying that, if I was a professional, then I’d send them off to a publisher like a shot. After all, I have bills to pay just like everyone else.
There is obviously a market out there for this type of photography, and I think it is brilliant that so many take advantage of it. Whilst they are in their little boxes, adding to their photographic tick lists, I’m out and about working for my images, and they aren’t getting in my hair. But I do know, who will have the most satisfaction at the end of the day with their images, and it won’t be them.
Rene, you point out what you consider to be hypocrisy, re comments on images posted on this forum. Well, too many it was obviously at a setup, so there was no need to mention it, even if they thought of it. Also I think that in the initial post, invariably the fact that the image was taken at a prepared hide is stated. Besides if an image is a quality one, irrespective of what was involved in achieving it, then it is only right that its quality is acknowledged.
To be in a hide for twelve straight hours is not unusual. To get fifteen minutes of action, well, some would call that being lucky, as most N.H. photographers are prepared to spend days in a hide, to get their shots. Bet your camera was hot after those fifteen minutes.
Strange how no one asked about those site shots I have, or how I would do a similar setup with flexibility of viewpoints, particularly as this thread was initially about hide construction. Bit late now.
Perhaps doing a bit of your own research & using your own thoughts when time suits mixed with the use of other peoples facilities / expertise when it does not or just to try somthing different may be the soloution.
Lee
Posted by Danny Green on April 23, 2009 at 2:12 PM
Hello Ray
Came to this late as I have been away believe it or not running the same thing you are talking about. (you see mods I didn't mention it) but I have to totally disagree with what you are talking about as lets use Rene de heers mating golden eagle shot as a prime example of what can be acheived from these sort of places, that is still one of the best golden eagle pictures I have ever seen taken and as far as I know has never been bettered so for you to just dismiss that image as he didn't earn it then you are only fooling yourself and in the meanwhile Rene can still claim to have one of the best eagle shots ever taken, that is fact. Your reactions and your composition and the light still has to be right and as you know every day is completely different.
Danny, re coming late to this post. Don’t worry about it, I’m sure you won’t.
I would have posted this earlier but my computer has thrown a wobbly, can receive e-mails, which is how I got your post, but I can’t connect to the net.
This thread was initially about hide construction/design, and was posted in order not to hijack Peter Cairns post, but has been hijacked to the usage of hides built and then opened up for commercial reasons.
I never said anything against Rene’s eagle shots, but there are a few indisputable facts. He would not have got the shots if he hadn’t hired the hide, which had been strategically placed and continually baited with carrion, so that the local predators became familiar with the food and safe source. I suspect the hide was even advertised along the lines of, come and photograph Golden Eagle etc. close up, in other words a near guaranteed shot, of a “blue ribbon” species. But just imagine the sense of elation they would get, if they had done all the work themselves.
Danny, you say: “Your reactions and your composition and the light still has to be right and as you know every day is completely different.”. Of course your right, but I would dispute, this with the use of commercial hides and workshops. As you know, many who attend workshops, have their cameras set to the manufacturers auto settings and effectively never change them. Many don’t think about lighting, compensation, f stop/shutter speed etc., and when it comes to, for example, histograms, well, few know they even exist, let alone how to interpret them, and this is where workshops come into their own. But what about those commercial hides.
With a commercial hide your camera is in a set position, as is the food source relative to it, so your composition options are usually fairly restricted. You know the size of the expected subject, so you can select your lens accordingly. You will have time to check your exposures, by taking a few shots and then checking the histogram. O.K. so the lighting changes, so what just a recheck is required. But what if you get it wrong, well, no big deal, you always have Photoshop to fall back on. If you are really cleaver, you take a laptop into the hide with you, down load some images to check onto it, and you can study them and the resultant settings to your hearts content on a big screen. What part of this is due to the creativity of the photographer ???
Now you won’t like this scenario. Lets take Bence Máté’s drinking pool. Frame the “kill zone”, and set the camera to manual focus, exposure etc. to auto. Then lock the camera down, then set the camera to time lapse photography. Now you can curl up in the corner of the hide, have a snooze or read a book. Then every hour or so, download your images, to a laptop and return to your corner. There are advantages to this if you think about it. That Starling which jumps up, if you are pushing the button and you press the button at the top of the jump, you will have missed it, as it has landed when the camera actually fires, but with time lapse, you would stand a better than even chance of getting the image. Told you that you wouldn’t like it. (Me being devils advocate).
I used to think that 80% + of any N.H. image was the photographer, and the rest being equipment etc.. I have now revised this, as there is now a second group of photographers emerging, where the percentages for me are, 80% + workshop leader or hide provider, and the balance being equipment/photographer. In other words, hunter/gatherers or farmers. There is obviously a place for both, but it is down to the individual as to what path they go down.
The difference being that the first I consider to be N.H. photographers, and the second being photographers of a N.H. subject.
I have nothing against workshops or hired hides. In fact, I have always said the best way is to go out with an experienced photographer and learn the trade of photography first hand, effectively a one to one workshop. Commercial hides and workshops, obviously fulfil a need for some, which is great. On a personal note, they are currently doing me a big favour. Rene who has stated his use of these hides. lives within a twenty minute walk of where my new feeding station(s) will be, so it’s a win/win for me re working the site.
As an aside Danny, I fully appreciate why I get the comments that I do, re for example, unnatural foregrounds invariably due to low angle shooting, as I’m effectively questioning how people are marketing themselves, and thus earning a living.
One last thought. If we were still using film, how many “N.H. photographers” would there be ?? So the argument could be put forward, that it isn’t so much the photographer but technology which gets the images. One saving grace tho’, is that you still have to have an eye for a shot.
Obviously I’m back up and running, it was an intermittent fault on the router. Had to get a new one.
Discussion
16 repliesSo I thought I would explain a little about what was behind my comments to Nick, in the thread.
Bence Máté’s set-up is effectively a 4 metre long, 2 metre wide and 1 meter deep, concrete lined trench. These dimensions aren’t accurate, but they will give you the general idea, and I won’t argue the odd centimetre or two, but they are in the right ball park. At one end there is a sunken hide, where the lens ports are level with the waters surface once the trench is filled. This hide, even has a waterproofed slated roof, and you shoot through one way glass, I believe.
A rather sophisticated set-up, but he does open it up for a small consideration, which is, I believe, at least £200 per day, not sure, but that might even be per person, and the hide takes approx. four photographers at a time.
He has a number of other hides overlooking different habitats, so there are plenty of opportunities. The range of species which he has coming in is quite phenomenal.
Personally I much prefer to do it myself. The thought of turning up at a hide, being told where to put my tripod, then where to point my lens, with the only input from me, re the final image, is when the button is pushed, doesn’t exactly fill me with enthusiasm, but I know that for many it does. I have much better things to do with my money and time. Besides, I also think it is a good idea to be able to at least move your shooting position, re the “kill zone”, if not both in relation to each other.
You can make your technique as basic or as sophisticated as you want, it just depends on what your end target is.
Hope this helps clarify a few things.
Sure he gets good money for it, but as a photographer myself it would seem a bit strange to go and get carbon copies of someone elses shots, especially when they're so obviously setup and repeatable.
If I was going to go somewhere and pay money, i'd at least want something that would be more "mine"
http://hidephotography.com/
I agree with Tim, who wants to do something that loads of other people have all ready done
I find such information/images fascinating, as it shows how different people come up with answers to the same problem. From experience, I’ve found that some little thing, which you see or hear, can often be the catalyst for you to advance.
Tim, I couldn’t agree more. Bence Máté’s set-up to me is the equivalent of “Silver Service”, in other words, you open your wallet, push a button and you get the product, which as you say are all much of a sameness. If you go to Bence’s site, you will see a “fire tower” which overlooks a Roller breeding colony, now there is only a limited number of perches which the Rollers use, which are open to photography, so everyone’s images are all quite literally the same..
Now do you think that Bence actually uses the same set-ups that his punters do, I wouldn’t, and I’m sure neither does he.
Liam saw the site, as I said, “Silver Service”, all you need is the “Maitre D’” to complete the scene.
If you glean a bit of information here and there, put it all together, then you have the potential for a very versatile set-up, where you can not only use long lenses but wide angle, get drinking, bathing behaviour and perching up, all with various backdrops, within reason.
Which is why I’m so keen to set up a new station, so that I can try out all those ideas which are buzzing around in my head.
It’s amazing what people will tell you, without realizing it.
Its like a Dormouse asleep in a Daffodil. !!
At least with a Nikon D200 you can vomit over it!
JR
It all depends upon how much time you have on your hands. A 12 hour day+ with commuting doesn't exactly leave me much time to research my own hotspots build hides and maintain feeding stations. I can definately see the attraction of using Bence's services as it allows me to get up close and intimate with species I couldn't otherwise photograph.
Not sure why there is so much criticism of phototourism, it enables the less fortunate or able to take images that they are quite happy with.
If you are going to knock sneer at Bence's set ups you should equally knock the golden eagle set ups used by Danny et al, any of the Great grey owl pounce shots achieved by lured bait and fishing rod, diving fish eagles taken from boats, black bears in the forest, black cock leks, or even Vince's wildlife days the list can be as endless as you want.
The common theme here is that people have paid to use other peoples knowledge and expertise in setting up a photo opportunity for them. I see no issue with this approach at all. Otherwise why pay for your house or car, the purist thing to do would be build them yourself........
I would think that photography as art is more about original thought mixed with a little technical ability, whereas phototourism is more about technical ability mixed with little original thought.
I know folk who can paint a technically very good Mona Lisa but there's no way in this world they would call themselves artists, painters yes, but not artists
Labels, labels, we're all tagged with them
Hence the reason why i use prepared sites, I don't have the time to do my research, so if I am out photographings birds for a week, I need to be pretty sure that I come back with something! I do not agree with a statement that it takes away creativity, I still need to release the shutter and make the image mine and think HOW I take the image.
Can I give an example? On my website is an image of mating golden eagles in the snow. Taken from a so called prepared hide. I sat in the hide from 5 in the morning till 5 in the afternoon. For 15 minutes the eagles came down and i was able to take these unique images. Surely without prepped hides near impossible.
I also find there is a bit of hypocrisy around. I checked some of your comments on the excellent images of Danny Green et all, for example the golden eagle, no one finds it necessary to mention in the critique that the image was taken at a set-up, the only mentioning it gets is that it is a great image.
So for both kind of images is a place but if you don't like it fine but be consistent in your comments.
For what its worth; I'm off to Hungary in June to photograph Pygmy cormorants...from prepped hides.
Rene de Heer
Cost/Quality/Time : three inextricably linked factors in the final image - for a set (expected) 'Quality' you can only play with cost and time. As the Quality Bar gets higher, the sum of the other two has to move a similar magnitude. If you have the time you can move at little cost, if you have the money you can move at little time (providing there is a supplier).
We have been paying people for years, sherpas, guides, trappers, hunters, species experts, to enhance our opportunity and reduce the risk, the only thing that is different now is that these people are also photographers.
T
I have to say I was not relating the vomiting comment to bences pics - just the Dormouse in the daff.
Cheers
JohnR
good topic....and whilst i have to declare i am not posting this at all for the commercial interest, it did make me chuckle thinking of silver service, and the forthcoming trip i am organising to the amazon. no one on the trip will get silver service that's for sure!!
wooden floors and boiled rice. lovely.
Personally, I don’t give a monkeys how or where an image was taken, so long as it is true to nature, and the welfare of the subject was in no way jeopardised.
If paying out your hard earned cash, to be escorted into a hide, sat down, setup your gear, point your lens at the “kill zone”, which has been pointed out to you, check your settings, put the camera on say 5 frames per second and sit back and wait, possibly with a cup of tea to hand, rocks your boat, that’s fine with me. But for me, all you are doing is being a recorder of an instant in time, of a setup constructed/designed by someone else, and not what N.H. photography is all about, as there is nothing in the resulting image which is part of you.
Liam, you asked about Gigrin. Well, I could make a very good argument saying that it is at least a “copper service”,
Bence Máté and others make no pretensions as to what they offer. So I don’t see what there is to knock or sneer at, and if it came across that I was sneering, then I apologise. They offer a “silver service” photographic experience, after identifying a niche in the market, so good luck to them. It just isn’t for me.
If I had the opportunity to go into one of these hides, would I ??? Of course I would, but would I take any pride in the images, and post them on a forum such as this, the answer is NO. As they truly aren’t mine.
But saying that, if I was a professional, then I’d send them off to a publisher like a shot. After all, I have bills to pay just like everyone else.
There is obviously a market out there for this type of photography, and I think it is brilliant that so many take advantage of it. Whilst they are in their little boxes, adding to their photographic tick lists, I’m out and about working for my images, and they aren’t getting in my hair. But I do know, who will have the most satisfaction at the end of the day with their images, and it won’t be them.
Rene, you point out what you consider to be hypocrisy, re comments on images posted on this forum. Well, too many it was obviously at a setup, so there was no need to mention it, even if they thought of it. Also I think that in the initial post, invariably the fact that the image was taken at a prepared hide is stated. Besides if an image is a quality one, irrespective of what was involved in achieving it, then it is only right that its quality is acknowledged.
To be in a hide for twelve straight hours is not unusual. To get fifteen minutes of action, well, some would call that being lucky, as most N.H. photographers are prepared to spend days in a hide, to get their shots. Bet your camera was hot after those fifteen minutes.
Strange how no one asked about those site shots I have, or how I would do a similar setup with flexibility of viewpoints, particularly as this thread was initially about hide construction. Bit late now.
Lee
Came to this late as I have been away believe it or not running the same thing you are talking about. (you see mods I didn't mention it) but I have to totally disagree with what you are talking about as lets use Rene de heers mating golden eagle shot as a prime example of what can be acheived from these sort of places, that is still one of the best golden eagle pictures I have ever seen taken and as far as I know has never been bettered so for you to just dismiss that image as he didn't earn it then you are only fooling yourself and in the meanwhile Rene can still claim to have one of the best eagle shots ever taken, that is fact. Your reactions and your composition and the light still has to be right and as you know every day is completely different.
Danny
I would have posted this earlier but my computer has thrown a wobbly, can receive e-mails, which is how I got your post, but I can’t connect to the net.
This thread was initially about hide construction/design, and was posted in order not to hijack Peter Cairns post, but has been hijacked to the usage of hides built and then opened up for commercial reasons.
I never said anything against Rene’s eagle shots, but there are a few indisputable facts. He would not have got the shots if he hadn’t hired the hide, which had been strategically placed and continually baited with carrion, so that the local predators became familiar with the food and safe source. I suspect the hide was even advertised along the lines of, come and photograph Golden Eagle etc. close up, in other words a near guaranteed shot, of a “blue ribbon” species. But just imagine the sense of elation they would get, if they had done all the work themselves.
Danny, you say: “Your reactions and your composition and the light still has to be right and as you know every day is completely different.”. Of course your right, but I would dispute, this with the use of commercial hides and workshops. As you know, many who attend workshops, have their cameras set to the manufacturers auto settings and effectively never change them. Many don’t think about lighting, compensation, f stop/shutter speed etc., and when it comes to, for example, histograms, well, few know they even exist, let alone how to interpret them, and this is where workshops come into their own. But what about those commercial hides.
With a commercial hide your camera is in a set position, as is the food source relative to it, so your composition options are usually fairly restricted. You know the size of the expected subject, so you can select your lens accordingly. You will have time to check your exposures, by taking a few shots and then checking the histogram. O.K. so the lighting changes, so what just a recheck is required. But what if you get it wrong, well, no big deal, you always have Photoshop to fall back on. If you are really cleaver, you take a laptop into the hide with you, down load some images to check onto it, and you can study them and the resultant settings to your hearts content on a big screen. What part of this is due to the creativity of the photographer ???
Now you won’t like this scenario.
I used to think that 80% + of any N.H. image was the photographer, and the rest being equipment etc.. I have now revised this, as there is now a second group of photographers emerging, where the percentages for me are, 80% + workshop leader or hide provider, and the balance being equipment/photographer. In other words, hunter/gatherers or farmers. There is obviously a place for both, but it is down to the individual as to what path they go down.
The difference being that the first I consider to be N.H. photographers, and the second being photographers of a N.H. subject.
I have nothing against workshops or hired hides. In fact, I have always said the best way is to go out with an experienced photographer and learn the trade of photography first hand, effectively a one to one workshop. Commercial hides and workshops, obviously fulfil a need for some, which is great. On a personal note, they are currently doing me a big favour. Rene who has stated his use of these hides. lives within a twenty minute walk of where my new feeding station(s) will be,
As an aside Danny, I fully appreciate why I get the comments that I do, re for example, unnatural foregrounds invariably due to low angle shooting, as I’m effectively questioning how people are marketing themselves, and thus earning a living.
One last thought. If we were still using film, how many “N.H. photographers” would there be ?? So the argument could be put forward, that it isn’t so much the photographer but technology which gets the images. One saving grace tho’, is that you still have to have an eye for a shot.
Obviously I’m back up and running, it was an intermittent fault on the router. Had to get a new one.