Advice Requested On Photographing Hares

[erainn]

Wondered if anyone with experience of photographing Hares could please offer any tips or ideas on how best to take a photograph of those wonderful creatures. I am a hobbyist photographer with a Canon EOS 450d and 17-50mm F2.8 EX DC OS HSM lens. Any suggestions on equipment, favorable conditions or best time of the day to photograph Hares in the UK would be greatly appreciated. Thanks

[rpcrowe]

Erainn,

I suspect that photographing hares would be much like photographing rabbits here in the USA.

In that, I might suggest that (unless the animals are very used to humans) that a longer lens would be quite helpful. The Canon 55-250mm IS lens is a relatively inexpensive lens with quite decent performance. A 70-300mm Canon, Sigma or Canon lens would also be a decent choice. Despite its low price, I would not recommend the older 75-300mm f/4-5.6 IS Canon lens due to relatively poor performance in comparison to the above mentioned lenses...

Like many animals, our rabbits are more active during the early morning and evening hours. Although I am opposed to using bait in hunting, I would not have any problems with a photographer using bait to attract animals.

Our rabbits are prevalent in many suburban and semi rural areas and are pests since they eat the lawn. I have a bank in my yard on which I planted rosemary. Rabbits had taken it over and there were several bunny families living in the rosemary.

They had developed rabbit runs through the vegetation. My big Goldendoodle was too large to chase them into these runs and my Maltese rescue dogs cared less about chasing rabbits. Enter SASHA THE TERRIER

Shasha is a twelve pound long haired Jack Russell Terrier whose life's ambition is to remove rabbits from my property. She is small enough to chase the rabbits through their runs in the rosemary. Although, there is no evidence that Sasha has caught any rabbits, I have far fewer of those pesky critters eating my lawn with Sasha on guard. If I or my wife see a rabbit on the lawn we say, "Sasha, get the bunny" and the terrier will race to the door.

[Donald]

I'd agree with Richard. You'd need a lens of much longer focal length to have any chance of doing decent images of hares. 300mm or 400mm would be necessary.

And then you need to have patience. Lots and lots of patience. Hares will come in to your field of view, rarely the other way around. They are very nervous, sensitive creatures. You need to get the wind in the right direction - if they smell you, they'll be off. If they see you (and they seem to have amazing eyesight) they'll let you get so close ... and then they'll be off.

I find that, up here in Scotland at least, I see more hares very early in the morning (pre 7am), than I do at any other time of day. That's usually before the majority of country folk are up and about at work and making lots of noise.

[rpcrowe]

Using a hide to shoot from is sometimes the way to get shots of wildlife of just about any kind.

I have a folding chair with a sunshade very much like this one. http://www.rewci.com/camping-chair-w...FYNsfgodbrkAvw

Using some sunshade cloth and a few clips, you can jury-rig a very efficient and comfortable photo hide. Sitting in the chair with your camera on a monopod or tripod and the lens extending through a slit in the sunshade cloth will disguise you from the critters you want to photograph. My chair folds up and has straps allowing me to carry it on my back.

Unfortunately, I do not have the patience needed for wildlife photography...

[erainn]

Thanks rcp/donald very helpful ideas, I had wondered if my lens was not suited for such a subject