Ears in the grass
This small “Bunny series” is actually a great example of how little the wildlife photographers usually are in control of what they are gonna shoot. Of course you can plan your trip with an idea of taking pictures of some specific animal and choose the location accordingly, however, it is ultimately the animals themselves who determine the outcome. These pictures were taken at the end of April when I went for a short stroll hoping to photograph some buzzards or hawks, which I knew lived in the area. But even though I saw some of them in the sky, they were too far to shoot and whenever I tried to get closer, they just seemed to flee from me further away.
A little disappointed I was about to head home when I noticed something moving in the grass nearby. It didn’t take long for me to realize that while I was focusing on the sky I totally missed the fact that there were several European hares hiding about 30 metres away from me. When I briefly searched the area I found out that there were in fact many others hiding on the grassy fields on the both side of the road. So at that moment I switched myself to “hunting mode” and tried to get as close to them as I could. Hares tend to stay hidden as long as possible and only when they think you got too close they start running like crazy. Well, it is hard to blame them, since no matter how cute they are, their life consist mostly of constant danger from predators (did I mention I was about to shoot local birds of prey that day?). Luckily, I managed to take some nice pictures nevertheless.
The first picture above might actually look like composite photograph of one running hare, but it is actually a single picture of three hares on the move in line. I call the photo “Study of hare’s move”, because it kind of reminds me some artistic drawings of their anatomy that could be printed in some biology textbook. The other two pictures capture one hare which was sitting in a grass not tall enough to actually cover it. There is no doubt it knew about me all the time, but it let me get to it quite close (about 15-20 metres) anyway. For the whole time of our encounter it was ready to flee, but it also seemed a bit curious, which I find rather odd (again - hawks, buzzards in the sky...). Its bravery, however, allowed me to take some nice photographs despite the not so pleasant back light.
The light appeared to be the biggest challenge, since I struggled a bit to get the colors look natural in post-process. The overcast sky made all the colors look very dull and washed out the contrast from the scene. And it is up to you to tell whether I succeeded or not in making the results watchable.
