For this round’s bi-monthly interview, may I present NPX’s “professeur” of bird ID who happens to teach for a living too. A walking guide book for birds, no one in NPX has yet to comes close to his abilities to identify a living or dead bird.

The interview as follows:

NPX: What got you interested in photography?

Ingo: My family always did a lot of travel photography, and also some modest bird photography, but what really got me into it was the possibility to get solid documentation of bird observations by digiscoping. Then I somehow slid into real photography because I had enough of always getting very soft shots.

NPX: How long have you been doing photography?

Ingo: I did my first nature shots more than 15 years ago, maybe around 1990, but photography as a serious hobby really started in 2003 with digiscoping.

NPX: How and what got you interested in ID-ing birds?

Ingo: My parents took me out to watch and ID birds for as long as I remember. By the age of five I was already a little birdwatcher.

NPX: U are a mathemathician? … but your hobby is so different from your work. How does bird watching / photography fascinate you so much?

Ingo: I can’t really say why I’m a birdwatcher. I grew up knowing about birds because my parents taught me how to ID birds and took me out to look for birds, although not on a ‘twitcher’ level. Birdwatching was then always a hobby – i just enjoy it, and although I stopped for a couple of years during my studies, I never lost my fascination for birds. I never planned to become a professional ornithologist or birdwatcher, because a) it is not so easy to get a good job in that business and b) I want to keep it fun. There’s no connection for me between birding and maths, I just happen to enjoy maths, too. Photography is a different matter – I’m not really an artistic person, and as such photography for me is much more of a documentation task – a visual book of field notes. It is more like a supplement to birdwatching really, it helps me to ID difficult species. Therefore I usually go for ‘boring’ ID shots only and won’t wait till I have some interesting behavior to shoot – I’d rather leave and look for new species. It also gives me the possibility to share with friends and family what I’ve seen in the wild. When I was younger getting good photos of birds was linked to absurdly expensive material and people planning months ahead in a hide next to a nest – this was never something I wanted to do, although I took occassional bird photos, like puffins in Norway with a normal camera (my parents were a bit more into it, they actually have a good collection of filmed material on seabirds, long before the arrival of video). With digiscoping that changed a lot, suddenly, getting a record shot was just a matter of putting your camera to the scope for a second. Then came the relatively cheap 100-400 mm zoom from Canon and the price drop in reflex cameras. I was never bothered for quality at that point, just records. The idea that nowadays ‘everybody’ can get reasonable bird shots actually came to me in Singapore, where the community of bird photographers is much more obvious in the streets than at home in France. I still haven’t given up on being a birdwatcher first (hence my refusal to remove the scope from my tripod and put the camera on it), but I’ll now at least try a little longer to get a sharp shot.

NPX: U have been travelling a lot. Where have you been? Where is your favourite place for birding? where is your worse? why?

Ingo: Actually my travel activity really only picked up in the last few years, I haven’t seen that much of the world, mostly Europe and the Far East (mainly Japan, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, Cambodia). Plus a few scattered trips to Australia, USA and Northern Africa and a recent first trip to India.

Favorite place for birding, that’s really too tough now.

Here are some absolute highlights:

Africa:

Crocodile Island – Luxor (Egypt), winter

Tendaba (The Gambia), winter

Mataranka (The Gambia), winter

North America:

Sanibel Island and nearby beaches (Florida), April/May Dry Tortuga (off Florida), April/May Magical Hedge (Chicago City), May

Europe

Estremadura & Montfrague (Spain), spring

Cota Donana (Spain), spring

Myvatn (Iceland), early June

Asia

Fraser’s Hill (Malaysia), all year

Lower Kinabatagan (Malaysian Borneo), all year

The four Dois – Doi Inthanon, Doi ANg Kang, Doi Lang, Doi Chiang Dao (Thailand), winter

Australia

Top End (Northern Territories), july-september

Cangooroo Island (South Australia), august

Kunneth’s Well (near Alice Springs), august
Worst places:

Paris (France) – too few parks, no green along the river Seine

Nice inner city (France) – almost zero green inside the city, but nature is not too far (one hour by car)

Kansai plain (Japan) – altough I know where to find my birds in Kyoto, the urban monster Kobe-Osaka-Kyoto is generally a nightmare for birding

Much of rural Cambodia – although there’s still good birding in Cambodia, I have never seen such large scale forest destruction at work before – much of the countryside is very sad to look at

Vietnam around Hanoi – I have never ever seen a city with so few birds like Hanoi, also the rice fields around town were completely depleted of anything but farmed ducks

NPX: What’s your favourite genre of photography? (eg. nature/portraits/landscapes/abstracts)

Ingo: Birds.

NPX: What is your favourite species of bird? why?

Ingo: Well, if I can only name one, it has to be the Atlantic Puffin. My family is a great fan of Scandinavia and northern UK, we went to see seabird colonies almost every year when I was in school – and when you visit seabird colonies, you just have to love puffins – they are such absurdly cute and colorful birds that far up north.

NPX: Who are your photographic influences?

Ingo: When I was still digiscoping I always wanted to get shots like Nigel Blake. Seeing his shots was one of the reasons I gave up on digiscoping. The guy that influenced me most on the choice of current equipment is locally known as wkcheah.

NPX: What kind of stuff do you put in your camera bag?

Ingo: Binoculars, scope, Canon 40D, 300 mm f2.8 IS, 1.4 and 2 teleconverter, 580 Ex II Flash.

NPX: What’s the most challenging aspect of shooting your favourite genre of photography?

Ingo: Getting a sharp shot while living without a tripod.

NPX: What advice would you give someone who is interested in picking up your genre of photography?

Ingo: 1) Get rich – equipment matters. 2) Learn about your subjects – ID, behavior, calls and song – in the long run you’ll greatly benefit from such knowledge.

NPX: How do your family feel about your photography passion?

Ingo: My parents both share my passion, my girl-friend would probably be very pleased if I did less birding, but she is generally quite tolerant and sometimes joins.

NPX: Describe your worst followed by the best photography experience you encountered while out in the fields.

Ingo:

Best: Shooting passing vultures on top of Montfrague Castle in Spain – they come very close, sometimes down to 15m distance. You can hear the air rush through the wings when they glide past.

Worst: Doing an Amami-Okinawa trip when my camera broke down and I had to ’shoot’ the super-rare Amami Woodcock and Okinawa Rail at point blank range with a pocket camera.

NPX: If you have to choose TWO favourite photos which you have taken, which will they be? Reasons?

Ingo:

1) First winter Greater Spotted Eagle in Sungei Balang. One of my very first shots with the 300mm. I like this shot because it shows upperwing, underwing and tail pattern in a single shot.

2) Female MacQueen’s Bustard in the Little Rann of Kutch. Bustards are one of my favorite bird family. They are very heavily hunted and pushed towards extinction. As a result they’re very shy and usually take flight at well over 100m distance. This rare close encounter down to below 20m was the highlight of my India trip.

NPX: Thanks for giving us this interview.

Ingo: Thank you.

You can view more of Ingo’s works and images at http://www.pbase.com/ingotkfr

__________________interview edited by Roger