After meeting Bob Brind-Surch at Bracknell Camera Club I signed up to receive his newsletters about coming events. I decided it was time to try out my macro lens at one of his harvest mouse workshops.
I set off early for my morning workshop. A cup of tea in Bob’s kitchen was most welcome once I arrived. I met the two other participants in the workshop and we chatted as Bob explained about how the workshop would be organised.
Bob’s workshop was in the field opposite his house in Greens Norton, Towcester. We set up to wait for the harvest mice to be positioned on a corn stem held by a bunsen burner stand. The stand was in a run with high enough sides for the mice not be able to escape.
With a special corn cob
On the stand and in the run.
On a twig
In the flowers
I learnt that harvest mice need to rest after lots of activity so Bob changed the mice as the morning progressed so that none of the mice became over-tired.
More than one on the branch
And here are the ones that refused play up on the branches.
Back to just one harvest mouse
There were just three of us circling around the run trying to avoid each other or getting each other’s ishots. I did keep forgetting about the background fences, barn and houses.
This was my first shoot with my macro lens and I was finding it hard enough to get the mice in focus with such a narrow feld of focus to be too worried about the background …
We were getting spots of rain as the morning went on and the mice were getting as wet as us.
The finale
One of the other photographers, Warren Price, had requested that Bob set up the mice to be on two stands of wheat. His objective was to capture a mouse straddling between stems.
Unfortunately I was on the wrong side for this shot!
And then the rain really came down.
We went back inside Bob’s house to get dray, have another cup of tea and to review our morning.