Photographing Yellow (Grey) Wagtails on my First YouTube Video
It was a lovely calm late winter dawn around 5.45am and other than birdsong, there was no other sound. Apart from the incessant voice in my head telling me not to make this YouTube video; It’s going to be a failure, what do you really know about photography? You’re going to mess your words up. This kept going over and over in my mind, along with the fear that someone in the neighbourhood was bound to hear me and think to themselves ‘that’s bound to be a failure, what does HE really know about photography? He can’t even get his words out right!’ All of this is nonsense of course and only the result of my cripplingly negative regard for myself and my self confidence.
So I walked down the road for a bit, where I distracted myself with taking some video of the half moon (maybe still a Waning Gibbous?) and fantastic cloud formations (think they were either altocumulus or cirrocumulus, any meteorologists or climatologists please advise?
What kind of clouds are these?
I tried to start talking to the camera but every time I did a car would pull out, someone would be walking their dog (at 6am on a weekend?!) or I would just tell myself that I didn’t have to start yet, I could wait until I get there. But on the night before I said to myself that I wanted this video to include a journey to the site of the Yellow, sorry Grey Wagtail (we’ll get to that later) and I really wanted the video to be more than just a technical demonstration on how to set up a tripod and gimbal head with some bird footage and a photograph to round it off with, I wanted you to experience the peacefulness of that time of day, where most sensible people are still in bed and not fretting about ISO’s and whether their head is cut out of the frame. If nothing else, I hope this video offers the aforementioned peace and mindfulness we all need.
When I arrived at the site, I started to feel quite excited and optimistic about making this video; That was until I saw other people out (this was a much more acceptable time of day to be walking your dog, around 7am - the site is only a mile away but I got a little lost, this is mentioned too). However, after a ten minute conversation with one gentleman I did find out that what I thought I had come down to photograph were Yellow Wagtails, turned out to be Grey ones! (time to dig out that Reader’s Digest book and get swatting up!). Despite this unease I soon had the place to myself again and although I did trip up on some of my words and faffed around quite a bit with my tripod, both in demonstration and then setting up to film and photograph the wagtails (the latter doesn’t appear in the final cut) I did grow in confidence and I really hope that you all enjoy the final result, I’ve embedded it for you to watch below, along with one of the final images. I still have much to learn about filming techniques, composing myself in front of a camera and getting to grips with all the multiple features that Premiere Pro has to offer, however maybe next time I may not doubt myself as much.
Final Image, I waited quite a while for the Wagtail to land on this perfectly placed log.