Category

Water Life

Location

Malls Mire, Glasgow.

Gear

Olympus OMD EM5 MKii, Panasonic 8mm Fisheye, 2x YS-110a Strobes

Description

It's two years since I first stumbled across this little frog paradise, a wetland in Glasgow hidden between tower blocks and industrial estate and ever since then I've had a picture something like this in my head. I spent five consecutive nights lying in the mud into the wee small hours, trying to execute this shot. It combines multiple techniques - split photography, backlighting, remote triggering, close focus wide angle, light painting, long exposure. I hit endless problems with intermittent drizzly rain constantly ruining the top half of the shot, stirred up mud, trying to focus in darkness (impossible), trying to focus with torchlight (scares the frogs), foggy lens after I'd changed batteries. I tried to understand the frog behaviour, however they really just seem to do their own thing. Eventually, when the frogs and moon and clouds aligned perfectly, my remote trigger would inevitably fail. If it wasn't that, my strobe wouldn't fire. Despite 25 hours of trying, I only had a handful of images I'm happy with however this was definitely the standout.

Photographer

mark kirkland

Social Media

Instagram: markunderwater

Facebook: markunderwater

Website: www.markkirklandphotography.com

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