Tag: Trail Camera

HNC Photography

It’s all over. Officially. The certificate arrived in the post (much like the Higher one, although this one actually made it to the right address this year) and my former class mates are off onto the HND. I’ll do mine next year once I’ve worked a bit and paid off a few bills.

So I thought I’d do a bit of a collection of the different work I’ve accumulated over the year of work. So the year started with the still life unit, so there was some studio work but we went outside with lego for It’s a Small World. Then I took it further as the unit ended with the tiny model railway people re-enacting Hands, Face, Space. Some of the other work from the Still Life unit appeared in my more general Autumn post.
New year, new lockdown and we did most of Portraiture in our own homes and I ran a little short on models. The final term was Documentary photography and my final project was Unsafe Spaces. In which I discovered that Photoshop could really use a spell checker function. The Applied Photography unit showed that there was more than just taking photos… The infrared or ultra violet were pretty different although quite easy to do on a basic scale. A more practical application of the infrared was the trail camera. Watching Indy at night wasn’t exactly riveting but it was something I wanted to try for a long time. Finally there was an accumulation of work in an over haul of the Portfolio and the way this site looks.

So it’s just a matter of wait and earn… and hope they let me back in next year…..

Trail Camera

spypoint

So I’ve made jokes about my lack of skills in the wildlife photography department… Very occasionally I get a little luck, like ol’ Jazz Hands here. But as part of my HNC I got to play with a proper trail camera, like someone who really tracks down animals and not just hopes that a heron will stick their landing in front of me.

Jazz Hands!!

It was actually a lot of fun to play with (and I’ll be honest here it was playing). I don’t have any real animal tracking skills and I don’t own the trail camera, so decided to put it where it wouldn’t be stolen and where I know there’s an animal to capture…. So it was placed in Indy’s stable to capture her movement overnight and it worked.

Here she is! I never catch her sleeping so this is really a bit of a treat.

So here’s some hard facts – it’s a Spypoint Force Dark Trail Camera and if you want to buy one Wex is charging £149 (at time of me writing anyway). This model can take photos, video and time lapse both in the dark, using infrared, and in colour. It has a 12 megapixel sensor and is “weather proof” (so I wouldn’t dunk it in the river). It takes a whopping 8 (eight) AA batteries (unless you can put your hands on a rechargeable battery unit for it but that will set you back about £65). However, it does have decent battery life for those 8 AAs. I used some bargain Kodak labled ones and got 4 full 18 hour stints out of them and they were only at 50%. In each of those nights there were about 650 images. This seems OK by my standards and matches what is stated on the websites for it surviving 7 days out in the wild.

I suppose that this isn’t the mose exciting use but I don’t know of any badger setts to stalk. I do know where some deer usually pass through for food but didn’t have long enough to trial that one out as an idea. Maybe next time.