Setting some goals

On Friday I got up at five-thirty in the morning and drove a little over 50 miles in search of hares.

A few years ago my wife, Carrie, kindly treated me to a day photographing hares when I was quite early in my wildlife photography days. It was a great day, with an excellent guide but I did not think I made the most of the opportunity - I just wasn’t good enough. It niggles at me! I have had some chance encounters since, but 2022 is going to be a year I try harder for hares.

So Friday was a recce day to find some spots where I might go back over the coming weeks and months. There were good bits - I found some hares, met some people with whom I chatted, and found a place I will definitely go back to. The less good bits were the usual curse of the weather forecast - the promised afternoon of unbroken sunshine turned put to be a few hours of unbroken rain (when will I learn not to trust the forecast?). Photography wise it was ‘proof of concept’ - I have hares filling the frame but through a gauze of grasses that I couldn’t find a shot around. Add those to my other ‘proof of concept’ shot from my car window the week before and I feel I am making my first steps on my ‘Hare Project’.

Projects are a new thing for me - I get obsessions, but I don’t normally plan out long ahead what I’d like to achieve as a goal for any one year. I have regular season highlights - the short eared owls in winter, the barn owls in summer, the osprey over the autumn and winter months in Portugal, as well as the bluethroats in the winter… these are things that mark out my annual calendar but I don’t think of them as ‘projects’.

There are two things I’m going for about setting myself projects.

The first is concentrating on a single subject to better understand them, and how to photograph them. I can be guilty of

Proof of concept 1. Brown Hare. Kent, UK. February 2022

Early in the day yesterday a red kite flew over low, catching the sunshine. I didn’t bother raising my camera… red kites are common where I live and fly low over the garden each day. They are utterly beautiful birds but I have neglected them because they are common place to my area - and that is of course ridiculous. So project 2 for 2022 is to use what I have close at hand, stop always driving away from my own home area, and focus some love and attention of the local red kites. It is a way of teaching myself to fully appreciate what I have on my doorstep.

Red Kite. Eton, UK. March 2020