Of winter birds and travel plans

Today I'd like to give you a little "interim report" 😉

 

The last few days and actually the whole month of February, photography has been a bit neglected for me. For good reason: traditionally, January and February are always marked by travel planning and booking, which took up a lot of time this year.

 

The last six weeks we have already planned and booked the next five trips, two of which will be photo trips with participants. I am really looking forward to that!

 

In addition, I put a lot of effort into "pre-trip-research", during which I also produced a lot for the bin, because not all nature photography projects are feasible.

 

Somehow I wanted to see completely different motifs again - ones that are not at all commonplace, even for ambitious nature photographers. I've never really had this urge before. I still think that you don't need spectacular motifs for good nature photos. But I still want to see some of them 😉 .

 

Coupled with the fact that my fear of flying has improved considerably, Christina and I also looked beyond the European horizon. I ended up doing a lot of research - like the last time at the end of 2017, when we researched a list of 36 spots in Europe that we travelled to for the following three years.

 

Now I've noticed that I have quite few must-have spots outside the EU. Actually, there are only five places/motifs worldwide. In landscape photography, only one spot outside Europe really attracts me, in wildlife photography there are four places or species.

 

I don't want to put myself under any unnecessary pressure, so I'm brazen enough not to reveal them 🤫 I've decided to simply present the results when the time comes. I have to go very far out of my comfort zone for all five "projects", so backtracking is always a possibility 😅.

 

Realistically, maybe one of these places a year is possible, and this year I'm already going to make the first attempt. Let's see if it works out - especially with the exotic animal projects you also always have a decent chance of a complete fail 😅 But I've decided to invest 1-2 weeks a year in this risk....

 

Until that time comes, I'd like to show you a few winter birds I've managed to photograph since December. Three pictures were taken in December, when the kingfisher was still in my favour. The rest are from only three photo sessions in January and February.

 

Next Saturday, the participants of our photo trip will be going to Iceland and I hope to see some northern lights 😀 So I won't be back with new pictures until the end of March.

 

I wish you a good time until the beginning of spring 👋

 

Many greetings,

Thomas

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I hope you enjoyed the series 😃🖐