Last Friday I was offered the role of event photographer for the Bristol Natural History Consortium's, 'Wildlife at Night' evening as part of the Bristol and Bath Festival of Nature.
The evening began with a couple of great talks by members of local natural history societies (Bathscape, Bath Astronomers, and Bath NATS) on topics like moth trapping, bats, and astronomy.
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This was very much the usual event photography style which is simple but can be very satisfying when you capture the right facial expressions people make whilst listening to a speaker! Also getting down to crowd level can help separate the speaker from the crowd by blurring the foreground.
The group then headed down to Norfolk crescent with bat detectors in hand to search for the winged mammals. Whilst searching we were given more information about the types of bats we have in the UK as well as what they hunt, what hunts them and the types of noises they make.
There were many bats (mainly pipistrelles with a few noctules flying higher up) around the riverside and swooping in and out of the bushes. I managed to capture one image of a bat in flight as it flew over our heads! See the images to the left.
Once the bats were pretty much impossible to see with the fading light, a few stars began to come out and we were told all about the problems with light pollution in cities as well as the effects that satellites have on the night sky.
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This event was the first job related to my degree in natural history photography, I have got. Taking images of people and their interactions with wildlife and the environment on their doorstop is definitely what I want to do more of. It was a pleasure to capture this event for the Bristol Natural History Consortium and I hope I get to work with them more in the future!
