This is my first shot of a dipper and I’m pretty pleased with it. It’s not a great image, far from it, but it has made me very happy. Let me explain…
This image was captured on a day when I had seriously considered leaving my camera at home. It was overcast and gusty, but we were heading for the coast and I thought I might be able to get a few nice gull portraits if I was particularly lucky and the sun broke through the clouds for a few minutes.
It didn’t. In fact, as we strolled along the promenade in Largs, the sky got darker and the gusts became stronger and more frequent. Even the gulls weren’t going to pose for a photo! Needless to say, my camera remained zipped up in my bag. That was until we crossed over the bridge and paused where the Gogo Water river meets the Firth of Clyde and there, on a rock, bobbed a lone dipper.
I have only briefly spotted dippers before and I was determined to get some images of this bird, but the conditions were pretty rubbish. The light was non-existent and the gusts kept catching my lens and nearly knocked me over. So, I went and sat right at the water’s edge, getting as low to the water as I could for a bird’s eye view and to make myself as stable as possible. It was better, but still pretty tricky. The dipper wasn’t fussed at all and just carried on with its business while I battled with the elements.
This was the one usable image I got from that brief session. I had to set ISO to 2000 and +1 stop of exposure compensation to get it and the quality isn’t great as I was struggling to keep my lens still. So, why do I like this image so much? Because it reminds me of a top tip for amateur photographers who don’t have a lot of time to get out and capture images – never miss an opportunity. You can’t take a photograph if you haven’t got your camera and you never know when a great opportunity, like a dipper, will literally pop up in front of you!
If you’re hoping to spot a dipper, you can often find them bobbing up and down on a stone in a river or stream. Dippers feed on stonefly, caddis fly larvae and other underwater invertebrates. They will walk into, or dive straight under, the water to find them.