Commonly Asked Questions

Do you have a burning question about photography? Are you curious about how I capture specific images or anything related to cameras and photography in general? If so, I invite you to explore the "Ask the Photographer" section of this website. Simply fill out the form provided to submit your question via email. I'll be delighted to address your inquiries and share the answers right here, making them accessible to others who visit the site. Let's embark on this journey of knowledge together!

QUESTION (GRAHAM): "Hi Simon, I just watched your YouTube video on Badgers. I know of a Badger set, but it's located in the woods where it's darker compared to open areas. I only have the Canon 2000D and a 70-300mm lens. Do you have any tips, please?"

ANSWER (SIMON): "Great to hear that you've found a badger set, even though it's in the woods. The best approach for photographing them in such low-light conditions is to introduce additional lighting to the scene. Personally, I use LED lights called Rotolight Neo's for all my nighttime or low-light photography. Alternatively, you could use a flash gun to illuminate the scene, but I prefer continuous LED lights as they are less likely to startle the animals. As for camera settings, you'll need to increase the ISO to achieve a reasonable shutter speed and probably shoot with a wide aperture. Thankfully, Badgers tend to move slowly, so you won't need an extremely high shutter speed. Around 1/500 or slightly lower with Image Stabilization (IS) enabled on your lens should work fine."

QUESTION (KARL): “Hi Simon, Hope you are well and don’t mind the email. I have been admiring your work and watching your videos with great interest and was wondering if you could offer some advice? On my ‘hit list’ of birds to capture are Little Owls. I live in the Lincolnshire country side near a market town called Market Rasen. I have yet to see a Little Owl but know they are around from searches for local information on the Web. My question is, what signs would you look for from your experience? Is there a typical type of habitat or tree they prefer? Any evidence I might see? I would appreciate any experience or advice you would have and apologies for the intrusion.

ANSWER (SIMON): “Hi Karl, thanks for your question. That is a great question. Little Owls are not the easiest to find if I’m honest. With other owls such as Barn Owls you can often see them flying which is a clue to where they can be seen regularly as they are creatures of habit. With little owls its not so easy. I’ve been working three sites, one of which a farmer told be about and the other two I actively looked for. Their nest sites are often hollow trees, barns or other farm buildings, but all my local sites are in hollow trees. Little Owls breed around April / May time and at this time, the male gets quite vocal. If you get to know their call then you can often hear them calling especially at that time of year. Their pellets are not that obvious unless in a barn, unlike a barn owls where their pellets are very large and obvious. Other than that, I would just get out as much as you can, and just keep looking for the obvious sites mentioned above. Also, often the best way to find them is local knowledge, but there is now magic secret. Good luck….”

QUESTION:
BARB - “If I create a good enough photo to put in a frame (maybe 20" x 14", something like that), what sort of paper would you recomment for good quality? There are so many to choose from. Sorry if this is a stupid question! I'm looking at creating composites of my original photos to make an abstract image.Thanks so much. Loving your work!”

ANSWER:
SIMON - “Hi Barb, There are a lot of different papers on offer from a number of very good companies, and the type of paper largely depends on what type of image and effect you are looking for. For me when I print my wildlife images, I always generally print on lustre paper which is in-between gloss and matt. I use this for most my work. If I’m printing a black and white image then I use a metallic paper which really brings out the contrast of black and white images giving the final print really deep blacks. I use paper by Fotospeed which are excellent and you’ll find a lot of the pro’s use them. The specific paper I use is PF LUSTRE 275 PHOTO PAPER and there are loads of other paper types on there. If you’re printing your own, then don’t forget to download and install the right ICC profile for your paper to ensure the colours are printed as intended. The ICC profile will allow you to soft proof correctly in Lightroom or Photoshop so what you see on your screen is as close as it can be to the final printed artwork. Thanks…”

QUESTION:
SIMON - “My setup is a Canon EOS 77D, 100-400mm f/4.5 - 5.6L IS II USM with the 1.4x extender. When taking pictures of birds in flight, up against the sky, I pretty much always end up with just a dark silhouette. With setting EV to +2, I might get a little bit more structure in the body, but it looks distorted and grainy. I've never gotten round to RAW processing, so I shoot using JPEG. What can I do to get better photos in these situations?”

ANSWER:
SIMON - “Hi Simon, Photographing Birds in Flight or BIF is never an easy thing to do especially against a bright sky. I have no knowledge on your camera body, but the lens you are using is an excellent choice and is have the flexibility and easy to hand hold which makes capturing images of birds in flight all the more easy. You are definitely doing the right thing in dialing in a couple of stops of positive exposure compensation, but depending on how bright the sky is and the subject, then you may even have to go higher. A couple of suggestions I do have is certainly move to RAW files. For me although not essential, it does give you the ability to extract the best from your images and gain the best dynamic range. It can be a bit daunting to start with but once you’ve switch you will never look back. The second suggestion is to pick the best time of the day. Photography is all about the light and when you photograph birds in flight during the high of day, there is too much dynamic range for the camera to handle. If you leave it to when the sun is lower in the sky, you will have more of a balanced scene giving you more scope to capture better images.

Looking at your question, I don’t think you’re doing much wrong other than switching to RAW.

QUESTION:
MICHELE - "Brilliant idea! I would love to know about the best technique to clean lens and filters. Frequency wise, I’m guessing it’s best to always clean after every photography outing?

ANSWER:
SIMON - “Hi Michele, Thanks for your question and being the first one. I’m hoping this section grows and people find it useful. My technique for cleaning lenses and filters is in two parts both of which are very important. The most important is part one where you MUST use a blower to blow off any loose material such as grit etc. This will almost certainly scratch the delicate glass on your lenses and filters and the front element of your lens will be very expensive. Once I am confident, I use a propose lint free cleaning cloth that you can purchase from any good photographic store or Amazon. I use the Lee one which is quite expensive but one of the best I’ve found as it’s quite large. I personally never use cleaning fluids as I don’t feel they are needed really. Some may disagree but all I do is breath on the front of the lens to create a small amount of moisture on the glass and then working from the centre outwards, clean the lens using circular motions working outwards towards the edge of the glass. That’s all I do. I don’t normally clean after every use. If I’ve been down on the beach with the salt spray and sand then I will always clean all my kit, but generally on lenses I check every week and filters, yes every time I use them as they are very simple to clean and using smaller apertures as you tend to do in landscape photography, you will see any dust on the glass. That’s my method anyway.
It’s always been good for me so I hope that helps. - Thanks”

QUESTION:
DAVID - “Hi Simon, how did you start out and progress to the stage you are at now? . I started approx 3 years ago but am struggling (in my opinion) to make progress with my images. Any advice you can offer would be greatly appreciated.”

ANSWER:
SIMON - “Hi David, I started my photography journey about 7 years ago. I’ve always had an interest in wildlife and photography, so it was something that I always wanted to do eventually. My photography started when my wife was diagnosed as seriously ill. I used as a way of coping with the daily stress of dealing with that situation at the time. Thankfully she is now fit and healthy. I’ve always shot with Canon gear and started off with an entry level camera and 100-400mm lens. This allowed me to learn the camera controls / principles of exposure and how to use them in a creative way. I then progressed up to a second hand 500mm lens and 7D Mark I where I started to enter into competitions and magazines. This increased my passion for the subject which I then took the decision to investing heavily and progress onto the pro level gear and 600mm lenses etc.

There are a few things key things which I think take wildlife images to the next level. 1. Always Shoot in RAW - Shooting RAW format always you to get the best out of your images. RAW files contain all the possible data available which will enable you to post process your images to the fullest. 2. Get Down Low - Getting down to a level with your subject brings a whole different perspective to your images. It makes them much more personal and creates more distance between the subject and background, allowing for those lovely blurred backgrounds using a shallow DOF. 3. It’s All About The Light - Concentrate you’re photography to times of the day with the best light of the golden hours. I personally never go out with the camera when its sunny during the day as he light is way to harsh. I pray for cloudy days… 4. Plan A Photo - 99% of all my images are carefully planned. I rarely go out and just see what happens. You may get lucky but I personally think you get the best images when you have an image in your head that you’d like to capture and you plan it. 5. Study The Subject - I spend a lot of time in the field watching my subjects to determine what their habits are before I introduce a camera. This way you can really get to know your subject and learn when it flies etc. Barn Owls for instance are creatures of habit often down to the exact time to when and where they hunt. Get to know these patterns. 6. Use A Hide - I’m often using a hide or guilee suit to capture my images. I rarely use public hides but I do use simple throw over hides, scrim netting to conceal myself from the subject. That way you can get remarkably close which leads to better and more detailed images. 7. Get to Know Lightroom / Photoshop - Pretty much all the best images you see are not straight out of camera. They are carefully processed in these packages to extract the best. Personally I’m not a fan of changing an image beyond what it would be naturally, but learning those software packages would certainly help extract the best from them especially from a RAW file. Capture One is also another very good software. If you are shooting canon then I highly recommend Canon’s own DPP4 software which is free and is designed to show your canon files to their best as only Canon know their algorithm’s for their camera and lens combinations. - Thanks“

QUESTION:
IAN - “You have some absolutely stunning Little Owl flight shots. Any top tips as to what settings to use? I have tried many times, but always seem to miss the key moment, lose the focus or not have the shutter speed high enough to freeze the action without needing a crazy high ISO.?

ANSWER:
SIMON - “Thank you Ian. Flight shots of owls in general are never easy when the light is low and the worst situation is when they are flying directly towards you. I wouldn’t say there is any top secret method, but I always maintain a shutter speed of 1/1000 sec and above. To do this, if its late in the evening I always shoot wide open at F4. If the light is better then I will close the aperture down a bit but 9 times out of 10 I’m at F4. In terms of ISO, this largely depends on the camera you’re using. For my full frame Canon 1DX Mark II, I have no issue putting the ISO up to 10,000 and beyond as the camera can handle it. I’d rather get a sharp slightly noisy image as apposed to a blurred one. Noise can easily be dealt with in post processing. If I’m on a cropped sensor then things become more difficult. These don’t handle high ISO so well, but I’m happy to go to 3200 on these camera bodies. For AF focus points, I use centre point with the surrounding 4 points active. I tend not to use Zone AF to track the bird as with the lens wide open at F4, the DOF is literally cm’s if that at 600mm, so the AF point only has to be slightly off the eye and you will have an out of focus image on the critical points of the subject. AF sensitivity I turned right down so it doesn’t switch to other areas of the frame. This way it helps to track the bird and stay with it.

Finally, it pays to predict where the bird is going to appear. For the Little Owls as an example, you can tell by their body language when they are going to move so you can almost predict their flight path. If you can pick the subject up early enough, it gives the camera much more time to acquire focus and stay with the subject. Even the best of camera miss focus. - Thanks“