As some of you may know, my two daughters are Irish dancers, even though we haven’t an Irish bone in our bodies. It came to pass that Irish Dancing Magazine wanted a cover shoot of one of the girls’ fellow dancers, Molly McAdam at the Kelly Hendry Studios. I might be a wildlife & sports filmmaker and photographer, but I’m always game for a cover shoot!

Tony Henderson, the Journal’s Environment editor, wrote a piece last Saturday on the 2nd edition of my book, which came out at the beginning of this month. There’s a PDF of the article here and you can buy the book here.

Here’s a copy of the article text:

THE JOURNAL SATURDAY, JUNE 13, 2015 – TONY HENDERSON – ENVIRONMENT

PHOTOGRAPHER FINDS A WILDLIFE PARADISE ON DOORSTEP

WILDLIFE photographer Kaleel Zibe has been making up for lost time. As his hobby of photography developed, Kaleel turned professional seven years ago. The Farne Islands off Northumberland quickly became a favourite location.

“For me, the islands have been a late discovery since I became a professional photographer;” he says. “My real passion is wildlife photography and I still can’t believe it took so long to visit such an important place right on my doorstep. I thought I would have a go at documenting this amazing place!’

His book on the islands, part guide and part wildlife images, appeared in 2011, but now Kaleel has updated and expanded it with 200 extra pages of new pictures, species accounts, and photography tips. Wildlife of the Farne Islands 2nd Edition at £7.99 is in e-book form so that island visitors can carry it on their phone or tablet. To download go to kaleelzibe.com

Kaleel, who lives in Newcastle, operates his wildlife and sports photography venture from Dissington in Northumberland and also runs an ink business, Multichem, in Hexham. He leads picture safaris to Kenya and the Farne Islands, and also runs photography workshops.

He says: “There are so many thousands of birds on the Fame Islands that it is a feast for the eyes, whether people go for the photography or not. It’s a fantastic place. The book has been a pet project for me for seven years. I love wildlife and the islands, so producing the book has been a personal ambition. It is a celebration of the natural wonders of the Farne Islands. In the breeding season they are a Mecca for anybody with an interest in birds. The angelic terns, jostling guillemots, immaculate kittiwakes, and prehistoric looking shags vie for your attention with the pilfering gulls, wizened fulmars and tight-sitting eiders.

”Also, because the islands are off the coast of Northumberland, thousands of migrant birds stream across, many stopping before reaching the coast:’

Included are results of recent scientific investigations of the islands’ birds. A project.by Newcastle University has shown that breeding puffins will fly

10km to 30km out from the islands to fish. And shags, which feed from the sea bed, will dive from between 15 and 30 metres.

Auto ISO is something that, until I wrote this article, I simply didn’t use. Now I find it indispensable: the ability to use ISO as a third control (in addition to aperture and shutter speed) that automatically adjusts based on the available light – particularly in manual exposure mode – has change the way I shoot.

This article was written for my regular column at Landscape Photography Magazine when it still had a wildlife photography section. You can download the full PDF here: LPM Auto ISO article

Recently, whilst photographing gannets with friends at Bempton Cliffs in North Yorkshire in England, the issue of Auto ISO cropped up again. I felt I should probably give it another go, and the aspect that finally won me around was the discovery that Auto ISO works extremely well in manual exposure mode.

As a post-script to this article, I’ve taught a number of people with Canon cameras, some of which don’t have the ability to set the exposure compensation independently whilst in Auto ISO mode. This is a real pain and I don’t know of a solution to it. If you do, please let me know. The newer Canons don’t seem to have this problem.

In this short article for Landscape Photography Magazine (when it had a wildlife photography section), I contemplate whether pro gear really is worth the money. You can download the PDF for free here: LPM Is Pro Gear Really Worth The Money?

The latest pro-specification DSLRs are bristling with features that sometimes make even a technophile like me scratch his head in puzzlement and wonder. However, top of my ‘important list’ as a nature photographer is the incredible ability of sensors to control noise at high ISO values in extremely low light, compared with cameras further down the food chain. This can mean the difference between getting the image and ruining it with camera shake or noise. I photographed a series of images recently of a wild lioness having her teeth checked in near darkness at ISO 20,000 and the results were gratifyingly clean.

In this article for Landscape Photography Magazine (when it had a wildlife photography section) I looked at how to get the best out of bird photography. You can download a PDF of the full article for free here: LPM Bird Photography

I was a reluctant birder. It took my first safari trip to Africa in 2008 to truly appreciate what birds really look like. I know that sounds absurd, but I had never really considered how subtly beautiful they are until I started taking pictures of brightly coloured rollers and bee-eaters in between the usual big game and actually looking properly at the shots I had of these amazing creatures. I brought that enthusiasm back home with me and gradually started to understand the fascination of birds and how to photograph them, even if our native avifauna is – at a distance at least – rather more dour.

Landscape photography is all about short focal lengths for wide vistas and wildlife photography requires gargantuan lenses that can pick out a grain of sand on Mars. There you go, photography neatly segregated.

In this article for Landscape Photography Magazine (when it had a wildlife photography section), I explored the use of wide lenses for creative wildlife images.

In the same way that landscape photography does not use short lenses exclusively, wildlife photography should not always be about more lens glass than the photographer’s bodyweight. While it is true that most wildlife is not especially happy about a photographer poking a lens up its nose, wide angle photography is well worth exploring in certain circumstances…

You can download the full article for free as a PDF here: LPM Wide Angle Wildlife

A while ago I wrote a piece for Landscape Photography Magazine exploring the reasons that sunrise and sunset mean so much to us as photographers and how to get the best out of photographing in the fantastic light available at these times.

 “I think I have turned into one of my children. Probably my wife would say I’ve always been a big kid anyway, but let me put that aside for a moment and address the issue: I have started, to my own exasperation, asking repeatedly, “Yes, but why?” If you have children, or nephews and nieces, you will recognise this inquisition and may have answered it thus: “Just, because, ok”? I know I have been guilty. The thing that has made me ask questions is our emotional reaction to sunrise and sunset. But I cannot say, “Just because” to myself; so I will have to write the rest of the article instead. As photographers you have crossed paths with the phrase “golden hour”, or one of its variants, which refers to the glorious light we experience at sunrise and sunset; given a clear enough sky to actually see it of course. I have been as seduced as anyone by the warm light of the sun’s tendrils caressing the dawn landscape or the orange-red sunset setting fire to the sky around brooding, silhouetted hills. The light at these precious times of day makes us feel good. The question is, why?”…

You can now download the full article for free here: LPM Psycho Sunrise.