November 2011

It is difficult to choose the first photo of the month for your new website! Many good ones, but which one is good enough to launch the site with?

This is the shot I chose, it is a Red-necked Nightjar. They breed in the Iberian peninsular, Marocco, Algeria and Tunisia. It is the biggest Nightjar of Europe. The problem with Nightjars is that they are mostly nocturnal, which makes it hard to see them, let alone photograph them.

Last August I was in Spain visiting a friend, who was working on his big photography project. While driving home after a long day of photography we were lucky enough to bump into this beautiful Nightjar individual. Nothing to it really! The Nightjar flew through the headlight beam of our car and I guess it got blinded a bit. It landed on the middle of the road and stayed there for a little while. I got my gear and started crawling to this individual. I was afraid it would fly off but this was one of those times where my subject was just ease with my presence (or maybe still blinded). In my excitement I forgot to check beyond sharpness and ignored other stuff like the background. When I looked back at the shots, I was happily surprised with the out of focus streetlights in the background. For me it made this picture, of the Red-necked Nightjar in its night habitat, complete and the composition worked too! Go figure, sometimes the best things come unexpected.


Canon MarkIV 1Ds, Canon 300mm L IS USM F4, 1/32 at F4.0, ISO 2500, Handheld with carlights as main lightsource

Enjoy,

Krijn