Over the past three months, I have been trying a new system of working through what I want to achieve. Don’t worry; this blog is not turning into a life coaching session. That said, I thought it was worth reflecting on how good it feels to cross another major item off my to-do list. Today, that task was sending out my first email newsletter for Opposite View Wildlife Photography.
Finding more ways to connect with people who share my interests – particularly amateur wildlife photographers – was one of my goals for this year. I hope that my email newsletter will be a large part of this. It will only work if people sign up, read it, and send me their thoughts so (apologies for this) I’m now going to ask you to head over to Substack to read November’s newsletter and if you’d like to hear more from me, to sign up for future issues (which you can also do via the footer on this website). Any subscriptions and comments will mean a lot to me, so thanks in advance to anyone who does this.
So, what does a dipper have to do with my ramblings above? Well, getting this newsletter together, along with making videos and doing my local patch project on urban gulls in recent months, has taken a lot of commitment and determination – qualities that this dipper has nailed. I watched it battling the elements last weekend at the point where the Gogo Water river meets the Firth of Clyde in Largs. I had spotted a dipper there before and had my eyes peeled in case I got lucky again. The river was high and the current very strong after heavy rainfall but that didn’t deter this tough little bird. Dippers feed on stoneflies, caddis fly larvae and other underwater invertebrates. They will walk into – or dive straight under – the water to find them. This bird kept diving down and would then be swept downriver before surfacing but it persisted and was eventually rewarded with a meal.
The dipper needs all these skills to survive, whereas sharing on Instagram isn’t exactly key to my existence. However, I need to keep ticking off my wildlife photography goals to improve and move forward.
Persistence was also a key factor when it came to capturing these images. While the dipper was underwater, I sat down on the concrete part of the river bank and shuffled into position. Guessing where the bird was going to pop up was a challenge but, after spending some time watching the process repeat itself, I was able to make an educated guess. I don’t know if it’s just me, but my opportunities to photograph dippers always seem to be in incredibly bad light. This session was no exception. So, I cranked up my ISO to get usable images and then used noise reduction software to do just that in post-processing. For anyone interested the software is Topaz DeNoise AI, which I am getting used to working with due to the many grey days we have had recently.
Anyway, I hope you like these images and thank you to anyone who takes the time to read my newsletter.