PWP Nature Photography

Last weekend, we traveled to Germany’s Baltic Sea coast for the first time since arriving in this country in August 2016. We are veteran travelers and have spent our fair share of time roughing it in search of great nature and travel photos, but visiting one of the world’s northernmost and coldest seas during the dead of winter would not normally have been our first choice. However, the wedding side of our business brought us up there, as we attended “The Next Step,” a fantastic retreat for wedding photographers based in Germany. During our two days at the cozy OstseeKoje 47, a lovely guesthouse in the village of Boiensdorf, we had the chance to meet with colleagues, share tips and best practices, conduct portfolio reviews, discuss various issues relating to running a wedding photography business and eat some really great food.

As it turns out, we were doubly glad to have made the trip, because we also had an opportunity to capture some travel and nature images that were really stunning and very different from the sort that we have taken in Hannover or Washington, DC. OstseeKoje 47 is located just a few hundred meters from the seashore and the Boiensdorf Werder protected nature reserve. The latter includes several hundred square meters of marshy coastal lowlands and is home to many different species of birds.

We spent our first afternoon Boiensdorf exploring the area, because the organizers of The Next Step sent all of the participants out to conduct a photo tour and to take pictures of anything that caught our eye. Unfortunately, we could barely see anything through the thick sea fog that had rolled in earlier in the day! We wandered around for a while, mostly taking closeup photos of interesting things on land with our Nikon 105mm macro lens. We could hear flocks of birds squawking somewhere out in the sea, but we only caught the occasional glimpse of them through the fog.

At one point, however, we finally had a bit of good luck as we were trudging through some mud near the water. The fog cleared a little, and we heard some honking and flapping out in the bay. I turned just in time to see several geese beating their wings and running across the surface of the water as they began to take off. With the macro lens still on, I quickly raised my Nikon D750 up, tracked the birds and fired off some quick shots. Fortunately, my camera and lens responded beautifully, and we got some great images of the birds beginning their flight.