Life's Little Ironies — WildArt Photographer of the Year

Life’s Little Ironies

by

Rob Read

I never fail to be amused by life’s little ironies. My very love of the outdoors, wildlife, and photography has led to my almost permanent incarceration in my office at home; my keyboard and screen my ball and chain as I spend increasing amounts of time at my desk.

Never has it been more difficult to make a living from wildlife photography. Gone are the days that stock agencies would sell enough of your work to pay the bills and continue to fund new shoots. If you want a career in wildlife photography these days, then you must diversify, find a niche, and create your own markets. As well as producing great work, you must also be good at marketing and administration. It’s tough, and the result of these pressures, for me at least, is that time out in the field gets cut to a minimum to ensure all the other tasks get the attention they need.

So, when I do get the opportunity to get outside, I relish it. And it doesn’t have to be with a camera in my hand either. One of the joys of owning a dog is that you are forced to spend at least some time outside every day and, yesterday, Skye and I went out for a long walk in the countryside that surrounds the house. The weather was cloudy and grey, so all I carried with me were my binoculars.

After the stresses of a working week, it takes me a while to unwind and get back in tune with the great outdoors. For the first 20 minutes or so of our walk, I found myself contemplating another irony – here I was in the great British countryside with acres of green space around me and hardly a house or road in sight. Yet, most of the land was privately owned, inaccessible and a desert in terms of the biodiversity is supports. Acre upon acre of monoculture stretched before me, punctuated by hedgerows which had been flailed to within an inch of their lives by landowners obsessed with order and ‘neatness’, a visual reminder of their power to control and contain nature. But then the cynic relaxed, and the nature lover began to enjoy some of the treasures the autumn landscape began to reveal.

One of the first things which struck me was the rather muted colour palette of this year’s autumn, the usual display of vivid reds, yellows, and browns, was mixed with a rather withering display of desaturated greens. The rather topsy turvy seasons of 2021 no doubt being a major contributor to this underwhelming display. The backdrop of the day’s iron-grey skies added to the overall dullness. But there were other things to enjoy as I trudged paths that I had not set foot along since May, when they had guided me along the same field edges I now walked, and cut dashing strides through woodland copses, then carpeted with the colourful spring glow of Bluebells.

As we walked on, numerous Skylarks belted out a mixture of their continual fast-paced song, more commonly associated with summer, as they rose from the stubbled fields and hovered in the sky above before descending again; a more winter-like single note call was also being delivered as they darted busily this way and that not 20 feet above my head. Small groups of fungi were bursting forth along some of the grassy field margins. Patches of dead nettles still flowered along the odd bank, accompanied by the occasional small umbellifer. Buzzards commanded the slate grey autumn skies as they glided effortlessly over the fields of winter stubble and grass, the odd mewing call breaking the silence. Small flocks of boisterous Goldfinches occasionally made their way across the airspace above my head, and the Woodpigeons gathered in their hundreds forming restless flocks large enough to provide murmuration-like displays as rose and fell from the bare surface of the large arable fields.

As Skye and I hit the tarmac of narrow lanes which formed the early part of the return journey of our circular route, a female Kestrel hovered over a roadside hedgerow intent on its next meal. We followed its progress along the hedgerow as we walked, and it maintained a constant distance between us, no doubt fully aware of our presence. After half a mile or so, it disappeared around a bend in the road and, as we rounded the corner, it reappeared perched on the top of a road sign at an intersection. It was the only moment of the morning in which I wished I had my camera. We stopped and lingered to enjoy the encounter for a few seconds before she stretched her wings once again and floated over the next hedgerow.

15 minutes later, we were home. A cup of coffee brewing in the cafetiere, I sat in my office chair and switched on my computer.

Rob Read. November 2021.