The Noss Boat Photographer Showcase: Andy Howard

Shetland Seabird Tours – The Noss Boat, are delighted to see the photographic side of our business really take-off over the last few years alongside our regular, popular scheduled tours. Since we started our boat tours back in 2016, we have collaborated & enjoyed working with some amazing names in the photographic and film industry, honing our skills to be able to offer a professional, knowledgeable boat platform to help others achieve outstanding results. In the 2nd of our showcase posts, we celebrate the wonderful work of Professional Wildlife Photographer, Natural History Author & Tour Leader Andy Howard. Check out his amazing portfolio of images on his website: www.andyhoward.co.uk

 

Andy has been coming to Shetland leading wildlife & photography tours for many years & has been collaborating with us to offer his clients bespoke photo tours to Noss throughout . We were already well aware of Andy & his wonderful photography before we met him, it has been wonderful to help provide a stable, comfortable boat platform to create super imagery from, for part of his bespoke Shetland photographic group experiences. We are enjoying our Early Bird Boat Tours with Andy & guests this week & look forward to seeing more of his Shetland imagery soon. Andy has written 3 highly acclaimed books (shown above), the latest being his Otter book The Secret Life of the Otter published in 2021. Andy is well known for his extraordinary images of Mountain Hare & Red Squirrel, many of which can be seen in his other publications in the same series, The Secret Life of the Mountain Hare (2018) & The Secret Life of the Cairngorms (2019).

Andy says ….

“We fell for the charms of Shetland and its friendly and welcoming people a decade ago and have made return visits every year since. Each and every time have returned from our travels with stories to tell and memory cards full of images. It’s without a shadow of a doubt my second favourite destination to photograph wildlife, outwith my beloved Cairngorms”.

Extract from Andy’s Bio on his website:

“A major part of my life as a professional entails running workshops, masterclasses and photo-tours. I love doing this and relish the opportunity to improve and encourage my guests/clients to improve their photography skills whilst at the same time capturing images they can be proud of. Many of my guests/clients have gone on to win competitions with images taken whilst out with me including a category win in the BWPAs!”.

 

© Andy Howard

Check out Andy’s Social Media Pages:

Facebook page: www.facebook.com/Andy-Howard-Nature-Photography

And Instagram: www.instagram.com/hare_whisperer

And Twitter: twitter.com/highland_andy

 

From feather to fur on Shetland’s westside….Olympus style!

I have not yet had too much opportunity to enjoy or put my new Olympus gear to the test, after switching from Nikon to Olympus at the end of January. With appalling weather in February and the world health coronavirus crisis and lockdown since…time spent behind the camera has been minimal. Plans are afoot to resurrect my garden hide set up before species other than House Sparrow and Starting start to move through as well as concentrate on more macro work in the short term at least. In the meantime, I’ve just been looking back at a couple of pre-lockdown Olympus sessions out into field on Shetland. The first early opportunity was on the westside of mainland Shetland, where, after a couple of failed attempts at approaching a very nervous Mountain Hare, I found another more confiding individual. Mountain Hare in early spring are still white, beacons against the harsh browns and dark peatlands of rural Shetland which rarely has any serious snowfall so little need for white camouflage ( or indeed any camouflage as predators are few and far between here). Given the culls of Mountain Hare on mainland UK, I think Shetland’s populations are probably the luckiest in Britain.

The upright-hoping-she-can’t-see-me approach, before settling a little lower in the heather. My first ever wildlife shot using the Olympus E-M1X with 300mm pro f4 lens & x1.4 converter hand-held. The conditions weren’t great, but I took this at ISO 640 at 1/400sec, f5.6. My initial thoughts I remember were being delighted to be able to take shots with such a lightweight set up which enabled me to nimbly move across boggy peatland to approach my subject. The set up actually felt almost toy like to hold and shoot with after lugging around my Nikon DSLR for so many years.
What a beauty…. The other immediate benefit was that I could so easily feel confident in my manual exposures (I always shoot manual) in a situation which was a little tricky with a white subject on a dark background. The ability to look through the lens and visibly watch my exposure changes and tweaks on the image in front of me – in LIVE exposure meant that when I took a shot – what I saw is exactly what I got – no need to check after or worry about over exposure (EVF).  The resultant image was as I had seen it when I took it. What a benefit.
The level of detail was astounding I thought at ISO 640 and with the 1.4 converter…..here is a similar shot to the image above but at 100%.

The changing topography of my approach to the hare meant that actually I ended up a little closer than I had intended to achieve a clean shot. In hindsight I’d have removed the 1.4 converter and given my fury subject a little more space – but in this instance I took what I could in the given opportunity. Mountain Hare are numerous and often approachable on Shetland. I can’t wait to go to a few of my hare hotspots after the lockdown finishes.