This month it is not a photograph but all the work of a photographer that we invite you to discover. Eric Dragesco – http://www.ericdragesco.com/ – has belonged to our member clubs SNPN. He began wildlife photography in 1970, at the age of 16.

I was born on the Peninsula of Crozon (Finistère, France) which is my paradise. Having spent my entire youth, surrounded by the countryside and marine environments, I am now back to my "roots", photographing. I do not seek the rare or exclusive species, but through my images, I try to share intense moments with all. To observe and photograph a squirrel, rabbit, deer or hare, a starling or sandpiper, an insect or a seascape ... gives me complete satisfaction.

VEREIN FÜR TIER-UND NATURFOTOGRAFIE ÖSTERREICH

Six dedicated nature photographers founded the VTNÖ (Association for Animal and Nature Photography Austria) in 1988. Nowadays we count about 100 members throughout Austria. To communicate the beauty and uniqueness of nature to interested people is probably the most important objective of the VTNÖ. We further support projects and photo documentations of NGOs dealing with nature conservation.

The golden princess's secret revealed

Who has never been fascinated by a female Argiope bruennichi, the beautiful and intriguing wasp spider otherwise so common? Who has never wondered why our golden princesses generally decorate their otherwise rather ordinary web with a particular zigzag ?

We still know little about animal communication, and science regularly brings its load of amazing news to the layman. Here is some of its latest news.

Mother Mice tell Daddy mice to care for the pups

Mice are non-monogamous in the wild. But when lab mice are housed together with their mates and  pups for a few days, otherwise uninterested fathers can be induced to provide parental care to the pups by ultrasound vocalizations and/or odour emitted by the mothers.

By Laurent Arthur, Deputy-curator of the Natural History Museum of Bourges (France), author of “Pionniers de la Photographie Animalière.”

Today, the trail of the pioneers of animal photography will lead us to an encounter with the smaller of wildlife representatives: to the world of insects. A universe which, as you will see, created a lot of problems for our ancestors ...

By Adrian Langdon, UK

Many of us share our images with friends and groups of like-minded people on sites such as Facebook, Twitter or Flickr and it is good to get those pictures off the hard drives and into the world for their appreciation. This is often all there is to it and we get a few “likes” and some praise and everybody goes to bed happy. Other times things can go wrong and we find our photographs turning up in places that we never expected and often without our watermarks and even sometimes credited to others. This happened to me recently when a Facebook thread popped up advertising a Holiday company here in my native Cornwall but featuring one of my dolphin photos in its header. My photo had alongside of it a tagline “Feel free to download this photo by Adrian Langdon”. It had already attracted a couple of thousand downloads so I wrote in the comments section that they had ripped off my photo and it was copyrighted and how did they think they can get away with stealing others work! I then received a fair bit of abuse from people all over the world that had been following the website saying I was over-reacting etc. I did some Googling and finally tracked down their office and wrote them a formal e mail asking them to remove it and asked how they got it in the first place. Surprisingly they did reply and took the photo down from their site and told me that they had taken it from Flickr as they did virtually all their advertising photos saying that they considered them free to use if they were downloadable. I must admit that I didn’t really understand how the copyright preferences on Flickr worked and to this day I’m not sure what mine were set to as I immediately removed all of my images from their site. Taking a look at the site again I still find it difficult to ascertain how to get the most protection of my images, they don’t make it easy! I now try to watermark almost all of my images on social media unless they are so poor I needn’t worry about them. If people want an image enough they will still steal it and Photoshop out the watermark so it is worth considering if you wish to share that “shot of a lifetime”, although by keeping it hidden on your PC nobody else sees it at all…. and was that your original intention?

A floating hide can be bough or home-made. It should be at the same time light, to carry it around, and stable for your equipmen's safety. Some are created by covering a small boat where you can lie or even sit. Serge Deboffle gives you his tips for using the one he likes best, the very light, very mobile, small ones which hide the photographer and equipment while he/she walks on the bottom of the pond,  like to the one he has built for himself. 

Hints from Finland

The golden and the necessary rules of hide photography

Commercial hides offer has increased and, as summer arrives, there comes the desire for sensations and images these hides can provide - sometimes for the first time. You can install your own bird or big animal hide, but you must first obtain the necessary authorisations.