An evening with an osprey in the Trossachs

I recently spent a few hours in the Trossachs Osprey Hide about an hour and a half away from Edinburgh. It was one of the hottest days of the year, and the temperature felt a good 5-10 degrees warmer in the hide, so it wasn't the most comfortable experience (though I'm not blaming the hide for that). After about half an hour of waiting we heard the distinctive chirping call of an osprey, and one soon landed at the top of a nearby tree. We watched it gazing down on the pond below - fish jumping out here and there (it's next to a trout farm) - considering its next move. It stayed in the tree for what felt like a painfully long time (perhaps more so due to the heat and the sun being in our eyes). Eventually, it made a dive. It missed on its first attempt, and after a few seconds of splashing around, it flew off and back into the tree.

We were quite lucky that it missed, because this meant we got to see it having another go. It dived once more and missed, then dived, aborted and flew around, before finally catching a fish on its third dive. This gave me a few opportunities to photograph the bird, though they were all very brief and unannounced. I could only manage a few quick photos each time. Most were no good, but I got a few that I'm happy with.

After the first 2 dives, I thought I might as well try an experiment with the next one (since it hadn't yet caught a fish, I was fairly sure it would try again). I set the camera to a slower shutter speed - around 0.4 seconds - which required an aperture of f/45 in the bright evening sun. I made a few test shots on some nearby ducks and trees, and I quite like these too. I was aiming for just the right amount of blur - not too much that it was impossible to see anything, but not so little that it just looked like a missed shot.

I could take 4 photos of the osprey using this method on its third and final dive of that session. The last one I took, when it was flying away from the pool with a fish in its talons, might be my favourite of the day (see the first image in this post). The world is saturated with crisp photos of birds looking majestic. Those can be great, too, but I wanted to try something a bit different. It was a leap of faith, since it could easily have failed and I'd have missed the rare and fleeting moment of a successful dive. In the end, though, I was very glad I tried it.

Below are a few other photos from that session, including some 'standard' osprey photos which I quite like. I might make one or two of these sharper images into prints - perhaps risograph or gel plate image transfers - for something a bit different.