Just before December of last year, as my yearly enthusiasm for the countdown to Christmas was beginning to set in, an idea popped into my head: to create an 'advent calendar' by taking a different photo every day in the month of December. I then found that many others had had the same idea as me when I discovered the hashtag #adventcalendarphotochallenge on Instagram. Perfect! From here, I embarked on a mission to take daily photos of a different Christmas-related object or theme and post them to my Instagram account.
2020 was a year to remember for all the wrong reasons, so I wanted to create something that would keep me entertained and lift my spirits in the lead-up to the festive period. I'm sure we're all aware by now that the anticipation and excitement of Christmas loses its edge as we get older. So, I thought that this exercise would give my followers (and admittedly myself) a daily boost of Christmas joy... And I really enjoyed it! The process of planning it out and choosing a theme for each day was a great mood-booster and allowed me to practise my photography skills every single day for a month: An endless source of entertainment!
For day nine of my challenge, I decided to photograph this Christmas ornament: a ballerina which hangs serenely from a tree branch in front of the Christmas lights adorning the garden fence (hello bokeh, my old friend).
However, I ran into a problem whilst trying to capture its beauty in the dreary low light of a Winter's day: I struggled to achieve a crisp photo for these long exposure shots, even with the use of a tripod, due to my hands shaking when pressing the shutter. A truly frustrating experience! This problem would only worsen when it got later in the day and the light started to diminish even further; I'm not used to photographing in exceptionally low light.
This lengthy and slightly unnecessary backstory leads me to the actual point of this blog post... This was how I came to receive a remote shutter release for Christmas. This simple but ingenious piece of equipment is basically a remote control which connects to the camera, enabling me to press a button to capture a photo with no camera shake. I've always been fascinated at how photographers use slow shutter speeds to capture movement, whether this be a flowing waterfall, the trails of car headlights, or the movement of stars through the sky. (I aim to experiment more with these in the future) ...
The various lockdowns that occurred during the last year allowed us to spend more time at home. Frequently, this meant we had more time to appreciate nature and the goings-on in our gardens. I love nature photography, especially wildlife. You can find me chilling of an evening watching A Perfect Planet, listening to the soothing sounds of Sir David Attenborough and his velvety voice whilst marvelling at the cinematography. However, I have never really had the right equipment to enable me to photograph animals myself. Since lockdown, we have recently noticed a myriad of different birds flitting about in our garden. So I decided to use my remote shutter to document some of them. This handy little gadget is wireless, which means I can set up my tripod in my desired position and then click the remote from the comfort of the sofa. This proved to be of great use for bird photography as you can’t get close to them without scaring them away; This Christmas gift was truly the perfect practical present.
29/12/20
This was my first attempt at capturing a bird with my remote shutter. I learned that it’s essential to use the auto-focus setting in this situation where you’re shooting with a remote as you’re not able to control it from the camera. In this instance, I had to focus on the bird feeder and then hide inside and wait for the birds to flock towards it, as standing there to take the photo in person would, of course, scare them away. But I soon ran into a problem with making the bird the main focus of my photo: I can’t focus on something that isn’t there yet. It is clear from this photo that this became an issue. When this adorable little Blue Tit came to feed, he ended up slightly blurry because he was positioned in the out of focus area of the shot. So, this took some practise to get right.
I tried again a few days later, with better results:
07/01/21
This time, I used the same technique of focusing on the front of the bird feeder, and this beautiful Great Tit happened to descend onto it with perfect positioning within my shot. I sat inside, excitedly clicking away at my remote shutter in the hopes I would get a passable image and was extremely pleased with this outcome. Patience is a virtue!
Thanks for reading.
H. x
Instagram: @hevans_photo98