How to Photograph Deer and Massive Mushrooms

In this informative video, "The Outsiders," Rob Cottle and Geraint Radford head out into the wilds of South Wales to photograph deer. Along the way, they talk about wildlife photography techniques, the kit they use to get the photos, and dabbling in close-up and macro photography.

Rob is a successful professional wildlife photographer, whereas Geraint is well known for his macro photography. The longest lens Geraint owns is the Olympus 60mm f/2.8. So, Rob lends him is Olympus 40-15 mm 40-150 f/2.8 PRO lens and 2x teleconverter while Rob uses the Olympus 150-400 f/4 TC1.25 IS PRO. Both have their lenses mounted on the OM-1 camera.

Even if you are not an Olympus or OM System owner, the video is still worth watching for the techniques the two photographers use to get their excellent shots, as much of what they say applies to other systems.

During the video, Geraint does sport the 60mm lens on his camera to demonstrate the high-resolution mode that increases the resolution to 50 megapixels when using it handheld; on a tripod, it can create an 80-megapixel shot. Meanwhile, later, he heads off to find some fungi to photograph. He explains the settings for focus stacking the shot so he can get the entire mushroom in focus but keep the autumnal background colors blurred because he uses a wide aperture.

Geraint also fits Rob's versatile and affordable Olympus 9-18 mm lens to shoot some close-up images of enormous parasol fungi, again using High Res mode. Rob talks through the settings on his camera for shooting images of a deer partially obscured by foliage and gets some fabulous photos. There's also a tremendous slow-motion movie sequence of a female blackbird feeding on brambles.

Of course, as always with these guys, this video is enormous fun, and there are some fabulous photographs too. They plan to do questions and answers on the YouTube video, so be sure to drop any questions there.

I interviewed Geraint for Fstoppers at the end of last year; you can read that article here. Rob, I interviewed nearly two years ago and talked about how technology is changing photography.