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Drone problems? Maybe hire this seagull thief for your next aerial shoot

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GoPros are great to capture death defying stunts and extreme sports. But that’s not all they’re good for. Recording wildlife is another activity that’s high up on their list of uses. Their tough design allows them to easily withstand the elements. It also helps to fend off animal curiosity, and there are a whole lot of curious animals out there. Very curious. And some very confused.

This particular video shows a seagull taking a rather keen interest in one person’s GoPro while they were feeding it in the Cies Islands, Spain. Deciding that the GoPro (or should that be GullPro) would make an interesting meal, the gull picked up and took off. After a brief circling of the area, the gull did finally come into land, allowing the owner to get their camera back.

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Is “baiting” animals worth the shot for wildlife photography?

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The practise of using bait to attract owls and other wildlife is a controversial topic. On the one hand, it can remove the fear of humans from rare and protected species, putting them at risk. On the other, how is it any different to putting out a feeder for wild birds in your garden? Then there’s also the chance that the humans can put themselves and others at risk as more dangerous species lose their fear of people.

NPR reports that earlier this winter, photographer Michael Furtman was driving along the North Shore of Lake Superior. He was looking for Great Grey Owls. Several of them had flown down from Canada in search of food. When he pulled off onto a dirt road where he’d seen them the previous night, he saw one, along with a pair of people recording video of it.

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I Walked on Frozen Baikal, The Deepest and Oldest Lake on Earth, to Capture Its Otherworldly Beauty

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Baikal is impressive. It’s the deepest and the cleanest lake on Earth. When we were planning a trip, we didn’t even suspect it is so wonderful, majestic and fairy. We were raptured over its beauty so much, that we almost didn’t sleep all 3 days we were here.

Lake Baikal is about 600km in length. The thickness of it reaches 1,5-2 meters. This ice can tolerate the vehicle of about 15 tonnes, but sometimes we saw cars that had been fallen down. Ice has different patterns in different parts of the lake. It happens because water is freezing layer by layer. Especially it is very interesting to find a fish or a branch in the ice. The ice in Baikal is the most transparent in the world! And this is true. You can see everything till the bottom: fish, green stones, plants and bluish gulf. The water in the lake is so clear, that you can see various objects on the depth of 40 meters.

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How to Make a DSLR Camera Trap Housing

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Looking to make your own DSLR camera trap housing? You’ve come to the right place. Camera trapping is an increasingly popular technique, and it’s rather addictive too. The ability to leave your DSLR camera out for days or weeks at a time, watching and waiting 24 hours a day, has revolutionised the wildlife photography field. Now it is possible to take photos of rare animals, such as jaguars or leopards, at night. But it doesn’t need to be a big cat, as camera trapping can be used even in your own back garden with the likes of foxes and badgers.

But if you’re going to leave your camera out and exposed to the elements, then you need to build yourself a DSLR camera housing. This tutorial will look at the best way, trusted by almost all camera trapping photographers to date, to build your housing. Watch our video tutorial below, and refer to the rest of the article for more specific guidance.

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Mindshiftgear’s Moose Peterson bag will auto close on your gear to protect it

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Here is a problem nature and wildlife photographers have to deal with. How to protect gear when accesing the bag. Some shoots involve dust, rain, mud and other elements that may “interact” with your $11,000 600mm f/4 lens. And you wouldn’t want that.

Mindshift Gear’s (re)newed version of Moose Peterson’s “ears” bag suggests a solution to this problem. Here is the premise, while some environmental interaction is unavoidable, the bag tries to reduce them to a minimum. When you open a compartment to get gear out (or put gear in) the flap will automatically close and seal itself so the gear and bag interior stays safe. You still need to close the zipper though.

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Watch An Antelope Knocking a Phantom Drone Out Of The Sky

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Done and nature don’t always play nice together. We’ve see drones being attacked by chimpanzees, eagles and lions, but this is the first time we are seeing a drone being knocked down by an antelope.

According to KGW photographer Travis Higgins was flying a drone in Clarendon, Texas when he spotted a Pronghorn Antelope resting and minding its own business.  Initially, the antelope was startled by the noise and the foreign flying object (I guess it can only think about it like we thing about UFOs) and started running away.

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Get Up To $100,000 Per Year Doing Ansel Adams’ Job For The National Park Service

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If you thought that film is dead and that there’s no money to be made in nature photography, you’d better think again.

74 years after the National Park Service commissioned the great Ansel Adams to document the National Parks, the NPS is looking for a full-time photographer to perform a similar job, and is offering a salary of up to $100,000 per year.

One of the fortunate photographer’s duties will be to capture large-format photos for the Library of Congress collection.

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How Social Media Is Destroying Our National Parks

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I, like many others, am extremely active on social media. I check it first thing when I wake up and right before I fall asleep. I follow many people whose work I find inspiring and I constantly check hashtags in an effort to discover new people, new locations, and new perspectives. However, lately I have begun noticing a trend that extremely distressing to me as a conservationist and park ranger: People hurting the protected (and to me, the absolutely most sacred) land of our national parks, in order to get the shot. I don’t want to point fingers, name names, or even be a spoil-sport, but somebody has got to say something, and it might as well be me.

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How to Shoot in the Arctic Without Freezing

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As a professional photographer, Tim Kemple believes it’s his job to capture situations and perspectives that few people would ever see, let alone be able to capture themselves. “In my mind, the best photographs happen in environments and locations where other people would normally want to be inside by a fireplace, or in a warm bed,” says Tim, who recently traveled with SmugMug to Iceland to explore the ice-climbing opportunities on, and inside, Europe’s biggest glacier. “Shooting outside in the cold is a perfect opportunity to capture a time and place that a lot of people aren’t comfortable in.”
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