In the area of our permanent summer base at Camping Landgoed Tolhek in Anderen, Drenthe, many bird species can be seen and photographed. It is only a pity that the background consists of spruce trees, which means that there are large differences between light and shadows in the background.
Watched many examples on Youtube for inspiration. That’s where the publications fell Jan Wegener en Duade Patron straight up. Not only the techniques for photographing birds, but also the correct camera settings and making setups.
The solution was to create an artificially blurred neutral background by dyeing a bedsheet with various natural colors in an overlapping pattern of spots.
To make it even more exciting to take pictures, it seemed nice to make a small reflection pool in the foreground at eye level while sitting in front of the caravan.
No sooner said than done, I thought. But to really dress it up with scenery and make it attractive so that birds would also use it was a bit more difficult.
The construction is now complete, the water basin is filled and part is decorated with bolmos and wood covered with moss. A problem with this is that when the bolmoss touches the water surface it immediately starts acting as a capillary vessel and sucks the water out of the water tank and it does not flow back into the tank but next to it and runs away.
Consequence….. adjust the construction so that the water runs back into the water tank.
I now know that real bolmos was not a good choice because birds looking for food really demolish everything. Next year I will replace the ball moss with coastal moss that cannot be distinguished from real moss in the picture.
Incidentally, at the time of writing this, the entire scenery has been replaced by feed silos with upright branches where the birds wait their turn until they can reach the feed silo.
Setting up a different scenery every now and then ensures that there are more composition options.
