Hi and welcome to Out of the Darkroom on AdoramaTV.
I'm here at the National History Museum where they're showing the wildlife
photographer of the year exhibition
joining me on the show today is Sam Hobson, a London wildlife photographer
who specializes in urban wildlife.
AdoramaTV presents,
Out of the Darkroom with Ruth Medjber.
Sam thanks so much for joining us here in the wildlife photographer
exhibition in the National History Museum
and we're not far from from where you grew up, we're in London,
how does one get to be a wildlife photographer
in probably the biggest urban city in Europe?
Well the thing is I've always been
a little bit feral, quite outdoorsy
so you know since I was a kid it was always
out in the back garden finding little insects and
keeping them in match boxes or foxes, leaving out scraps for the foxes in the
back garden.
You see shots in your mind and you've built up kind of archive of shots in your mind
all the time, so I mean how does that work then? You know do
you just go and you get all the right equipment for a shot? I did I basically
think the fact that I
didn't have all the gear to begin with
especially starting out when I only had a short lens and
you know that sort of thing, I had to develop my field craft, I had to
learn how to get close to stuff,
predict where it's going to be, when, so I can wait there so when it comes to the
right place you'll sort of
set up, if you concentrate on getting a cool picture of something in your back garden
rather than like aiming to go and photograph
a lion or a tiger or whatever, then it's
it might not seem exotic to you but it is to somebody on the other side of the world.
That's exactly what you do I mean like your foxes, I mean we all probably are,
especially in London
and when you're coming home maybe at like 3 or 4 in the morning, I used to walk
a stretch of road, a few hundred meter's
and there's loads of foxes, they're just like dogs here
they're so common and I see them so much, but you make them out to
be supermodels! Well yeah, well I don't know, the thing that I think
I'm best at is finding
an animal that is up for being photographed. So I found, I went out and I
found a family of foxes
I had basically spent a bit of time with them, just like
instead of chasing them around just like sat down
let them get inquisitive and start coming over to me.
So it's basically a portrait of a family! Yeah
because I'm shooting at night, I shoot a lot at night because I think
it just gives your picture an extra dimension, there is only so many things you can
do in the daytime and in the daytime I still trying to do that,
I try and use fill flash, or light or
or filter just so the sky is
nice and dark and punchy or something. So would you use a filter
then a lot for you know, daylight? In the day yeah,
at night there is already a load of interesting stuff going on, there is
a load of different lights, different color temperatures
there is also the weather,
it doesn't matter you know if it's wet that looks better, because it's
you know, they're reflecting on the street lights and stuff like that so.
So basically at night with the with the foxes in particular
what i do is I guess just set up
I always try and think about the context
and the composition and where the animal is going to be in the picture
so I set up my composition, get my
get my sort of diminishing perspective or something
going on and then set up the lights, do a few tests
and then hope and wait for the fox to come over and
be in the right place. I'm stood back by this point with like a PocketWizard.
So far would you be? Not too far,
the other side of the street is the furthest I'd be I guess.
Usually about 10 feet and they come over
inquisitive, take a few snaps. In terms of
post-production, retouching I
do, I process with Lightroom or something
like that and then maybe in Photoshop I do a little
few tweaks, color balance and contrast and stuff like that, but that's
that's as far as it goes. Maybe you could do us a favor though because I know there's a
lot of photographers that are watching this
that maybe want to take their practice from an amateur status into a more
professional
level, is there any tips or advice that you've learned along the way that
you could
tell them? I think what I was saying about the local stuff basically
like especially with wildlife photography,
like nobody, anyone can take a bad picture
of a zebra or an otter, or whatever
and but like I've never seen a really
good, interesting portfolio creatively lit
of snails you know!
I've never seen somebody really work snails, like going to the
back garden...
So snails is your tip! I'm just saying whatever is accessible to you, and you can be
creative with
rather than think about, like in a trophy hunting
but if you've got like
you know a tame Robin in your back garden,
why aren't you shooting that, why are you travelling,
spending all that money to go the other side the world. So you can do it in your back garden
you just have to be creative. Yeah completely like you know like I'm all about context and showing things
showing animals in their environment, doing something creative with that and
the thing about urban wildlife photography is you've got all these
interesting perspectives, and like, stark lines
and stuff like, you know you can do interesting things with composition
basically,
and you know it is that there's a million opportunities like
you know take a picture of a robin with a long lens, soft focus,
shallow depth of field, everyone has seen that before
like you know, put a robin in ten different places and you've got ten
different pictures.
So maybe you'll talk to us a little bit more exactly how you got
the technique down for shooting the picture that's hanging here today,
so we might have a little look at that as well then, that's great.
Sam, so tell us how you got this amazing shot.
In London and sort of the surrounding areas, mainly along the river
parakeets roost all year-round, but in the winter
the roosts are much bigger, basically. So you're getting roosts of up to 5,000
parakeets in one park or one cemetery or whatever and thats
all over London, so we were there just coming up for dusk, so I tried a few different
things a few different techniques
its dusk, so you need quite a slow shutter speed
and you're going to need flash too. These have got trials coming out
the back of them, but if you just leave, if you just
do a slow shutter speed with flash, the trails would be coming out the front of them
so you have to put it on the end of the exposure so
that rear curtain sync flash basically. I mean so is your
flash on top of of your camera? It's the only time
I've put a flash on top of my camera, I setup the
camera on a wide lens here, that's my second body its only a D7000
so what I was doing was I was standing back
with a PocketWizard and the
camera flash on top of camera as they're flying past, I saw them coming close
to the camera just be firing away,
and you know the fact that they are you know aliens in the
English landscape anyway,
I wanted it to have a bit of an otherworldly look about it. D7000, on a
on a 17-35mm f/2.8,
and you at 17, at a 30th of a second, but that you know,
you're on a tripod and you get the long, but you're at f/6.3. I just basically
30th of a second I thought that would be just enough time to create
to leave the trial behind. Which is absolutely perfect because he doesn't catch up with his trail it's
just the right amount. So that's where I started, I wanted a 30th of a second
first and the thing with the flash is
you need quite a low powered flash,
because then the burst is a lot quicker.
If you were on half power or full power, those birds, there would
be movement. If you're at like a 32 or a 16th
or something like that then it freezes fast motion.
Ok so you set it at a 30th, and the flash in question is an SB-800
yeah, its a great flash. Yeah, it's a good flash
it's got loads of power and also the SB-800
was good because you could plug different things into it and stuff like that
whereas you can't these days! But then
the D7000 has got a crop sensor so
when it says 17mm, its more like 23, 24mm or whatever
so they're not too far away. That's brilliant.
And then the ISO and things like that, that was all dictated by the shutter speed that I wanted.
So you had to keep your shutter speed
at a 30th, so your ISO in this case is 800
which you know is fantastic in a D7000 can handle it.
These are backlit images here in in the museum and
they're pretty clear, the D7000 really held its game in that one.
You're happy, you should be delighted it's amazing, it's a great shot thanks for sharing
all the information
for us, cheers Sam. No problem, alright!
Join me again on another episode of Out of the Darkroom
AdoramaTV, I'm going to be speaking to some more great photographers
and also learning some tips and tricks along the way.
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