Award-winning bird photography

Brutus Östling is one of the world’s leading photographers of birds. He has won the prestigious WWF Panda Prize twice, is a previous holder of Nature Photographer of the Year in his native Sweden and is currently Nordic Nature Photographer.

But despite an interest in his teens, Brutus didn’t become serious about his photography until he was almost 40, proving that a great talent will always come to the fore. We caught up with him preparing for the launch of another book.

What are you working with right now?
I am working on a book to be released in Sweden this autumn about "Birds with an Attitude". Going out on a boat on choppy water, I saw an osprey sitting on a sign, which indicated a protection area for birds from which humans are prohibited. That bird was acting as a guard. I grabbed my EOS-1D Mark III with the EF 600mm f/4.0L IS USM from the floor of the boat. Handheld I quickly got seven shots of the osprey, which was definitely showing attitude. Five of the seven shots were pin sharp.

But the most astonishing thing, which I only discovered later, was that I had my EF 2x II Extender attached to the lens. So I hadn't been shooting 600mm, but 1200mm - handheld in a rocking boat. I was very grateful for the image stabilisation then!

Osprey

What else?
I am also working on a book about "The White Eagles"; gulls. This autumn there will be a new edition of Richard Bach's classic "Jonathan Livingstone Seagull" with about 25 of my gull images. I could not give away some of the images though, I had to save a few for my own book in a year or two.

When working with gulls I used the EF 70-200mm f/2.8L USM zoom, sometimes with an extender. A zoom lens is great because the gulls move quickly and sometimes they come in very close.