For many nature and wildlife photographers, travelling is part of the deal. Admittedly, great shots can be taken close to home – but changing scenery for new ideas and inspiration can be fruitful as well. And, to be honest, I can’t wait to go someplace abroad any time soon again.
As I have often stated, shooting with two people is doable, but I prefer being on my own when photographing my favourite subject, birds.
This means often also travelling alone, but having a nice travel companion makes things much more pleasant and convenient. I found such a travel companion in the form of Boris. The good thing is, that Boris never complains, and – most importantly – is very patient. I can spend as much time as I want to wait for things to happen. Boris will never start moaning about time for dinner, nor start arguing that I could as well call it a day since ‘it’s not going to happen anymore’ or otherwise will be a nuisance. On top of that, Boris always takes extremely good care of my expensive equipment – making sure it’s well protected from rain, sand or impact. The latter is important, since – and I admit this shamefully – I don’t treat Boris very gentle all the time. Which sometimes makes me feel bad. But Boris never shows any signs of weakness or damage. As a reward for its services, it can always travel with me in the cabin when travelling by plane.
One of the places I visited several times with Boris is Florida (USA). For the bird photographer a great place to visit. There’s an abundance of birds, and most of them are relatively easy to approach. There are hardly any ‘bad’ spots I found out, as the feathers are literally everywhere: shoreline, swamp, suburbs or dirt roads. And for those that favour shorts and flip flops over down jackets and snowshoes, it’s definitely worth a shot.
So, it might easily be one of the first places to take Boris in the near future We’ll see, for the moment I will happily look back on some of the images we took over the last years…
Hans Overduin – MrJanGear Ambassador
