How to teach mice to make selfies?

Today I will share with you a simple trick that can help you when shooting small birds and animals :) At one time I rejected almost all the photos for technical reasons, but as illustrations they are quite useful.

My models are absolutely wild forest dwellers, cautious and timid creatures, having completely different portraits and characters. The most beloved to me the character was this little mouse, or rather a mouse, because it's a girl. The sex of animals in the face I learned to determine not immediately, but only after a few years.

Now I am absolutely sure that this is a girl, at that time a young indecisive person, tactful, accurate and, I think, with a claim to intelligence. Here she is, catching a rolling nut.

For 6 days I have photographed 7 different mice, many shots I poudaljal still on the site of shooting. My personal participation in this event was almost non-existent, the visitors were photographed independently, and my task was to organize a visit to the forest studio and correct the lodge. So how was it filmed? I'll start from afar.

My mentor, Arseniy Vasilievich Krechmar, calls this process - "shooting at the poke". This method is used for the shooting of small animals or birds with additives, if the presence of a person is undesirable or difficult. The essence is simple, in the place where the target object is supposed to appear, a contact pair is established. It is a double stranded wire, one of which dissolves up to one thin vein, and the second is wound into a ring with a diameter of 5 mm. An anvil is guarded in the center of the ring, and the wires are locked in order for the contacts to not lock themselves. To do this, I clamped a small nut between the wires (which I got under my arm) and wrapped it with electrical tape, so I got the right clearance between the contacts. This part is called "poke". In the picture against the backdrop of my palm in the stick is seen the very post poking. Having touched him, I lowered the camera and got a sort of self-shot :)

And what is on the other end of the wire? And there the wires come into the power circuit of a small relay, which operates from the crown battery. The relay itself closes in turn three camera trigger contacts responsible for focusing (in this case, the focus is in manual mode) and the shutter release. Several years later, by the method of Professor Tyk I found out that the camera can be lowered by one transistor and stopped using the relay.

Pay attention, in the picture above, near the muzzle of the mouse, the typing post sticks out. From the front lens to the model only 28 cm, the shutter clicks of mice do not scare at all, know yourself the nuts are being dragged. The main problems were the frequent short-circuiting of contacts by mice and the lack of light, since the survey was conducted in the undergrowth in cloudy weather. Approximately every 40 minutes I had to come to pour bait, at the same time and corrected the postings. But with light had to be refined. From improvised funds had to build two reflectors. Silver was made from the lid of the pot (we have the same studio!), And I made a golden one from the lid from the business lunch and clerical buttons, which before throwing into the backpack pocket. Thanks to this solution, the shutter speed from 1/60 of a second was shortened to 1/80 and the number of sharper frames increased.

Gradually, my stocks of nuts were depleted, in the lowlands the stlanik did not lose it completely, and it was far to go to the top of the hill. At altitudes of 500 meters above sea level, the walking wind pollinated the thickets well and the nuts were flooded. And the weather upstairs was also very different from the one that reigned on the coast. It looked something like the picture below. A dense fog all week long settled in an endless drizzle and all this time the camera stood autonomously in the undergrowth, and the sun was shining upstairs.

In general, I got some green cones over the thickets, but they somehow did not fit into the composition and were unnecessarily stacked next to the stump. The mice entered into a rage from the distribution of free food, and some quite oborzeli. They gnawed and green cones, and even rowan. I had to update all the scenery, and then go to the seeds. Watching from the top with a dozen meters through binoculars, the time of the appearance of the next visitor was noticed. On average, every 12 seconds, a mouse appeared and dragged the food into the lodge.

At my appearance someone impatiently whispered in the fallen leaves, someone was looking out of the mink nearby. With every day the beast boldened. In the morning of the seventh day, next to the tent, I found a chewed corpse of one of the mice, our dog caught a brave man. It should be noted that before the tent from that stump was about 50 meters and the dog from the owner does not run so far, although who knows. It was decided to stop shooting and free distribution was stopped. Well, as a conclusion, the shooting of wild animals and the presence of dogs are absolutely incompatible. A dog is an animal that is sure to be crushed by someone for nothing.

В завершение вот кадр с запечатлённым актом вандализма на съёмочной площадке :)

Have a nice day!