Braving the Elements
So it is day 2 of my Scotland photography retreat in the stunning Cairngorm National Park and today’s plan, is to head up a mountain to photograph mountain hares.
For this trip, I have hired the Sony 200-600 f5.6-6.3 G OSS Lens from Hire a Camera and today is the first day that I get to take it out and use it.
I chose to hire, as this is my first real time photographing wildlife, so I didn’t want to go a splash a load of money on a lens that I may not end up using, and in total the lens hire cost me £185 for 11 days which is a bargain (at least, I think so).
After getting all our gear together, we headed off towards the mountains. We hadn’t got far, when we hit an unusual roadblock in the form of a massive flock of ducks sitting in the road! Once we had passed this obstacle, we continued into the mountains.
We started to see our first glimpse of wildlife in the form of a MASSIVE heard of Red Deer stags, there must have been at least 50 of them in this group happily grazing on the side of the mountain. I got my first taste of the 200-600 lens as I took some images and video clips of the stags, though they were too far away to get some proper keepers, and I would have to wait until later in my trip to get some really special encounters with these guys. I was also able to capture what could be my favourite image of a male red grouse, that was right across the road from where we were standing.
My favourite grouse image of the trip
We carried on up the mountain and once parked up, donned our wet weather gear as the drizzle had started and we headed out on our walk.
As we rose up the mountain, we started to spot some tiny white specks hunkered down amongst the rocks and heather, these were what we had been wanting to see. Though we were still quite far away, with the massive reach of the 200-600 lens, I got my first sightings of the mountain hares we were after.
We carried on up the mountain, in the wind a rain, and were rewarded with more and more hares. The main issue I was having, was the fact that the massive lens I was using, was acting like a flag in the wind, making getting stable footage for my video and keeping my subject where I wanted it in the frame incredibly hard.
Though I had the 600mm reach of this lens, I did also make use of the crop mode of my Sony A7iv to help me get a little closer to the hares. However, I do also like the more environmental images that I was able to get as, for me, they portray the conditions that we were photographing in which is what I remember of the day.
We were out for about an hour and a half and even with the weather, I had an absolute blast capturing my images and enjoying my time with the other photographers. We headed, cold and wet, to the café at the Glenshee ski centre to warm up and refuel.
Once home, the weather had improved, so I re-donned my camera gear – this time just taking my 24-70 f2.8 GM ii, to wander down the road to one of the beautiful bridges that goes over the Lui River.
My plan was to get some long exposures, and also try and get some of myself in the images, through the use of my phone/Bluetooth remote (see my blog from Lake Vyrnwy as to how this setup works).
I set up my tripod on a rock by the river and dialled in my settings before heading out to position and remain TOTALLY still in order to be sharp in the long exposure I was creating (I could have taken 2 exposures, one of me and one of the scene and then blend the images together in photoshop, but I preferred this method as I knew I could stay still for a grand total of 0.6 seconds!)
Once I got my images, I headed back to the house where we were going to be having a roast chicken for dinner, the fire was roaring, and the food was amazing, a perfect end to another awesome day in Scotland.