Just announced our Slovenia floating hide workshop in August with Starling Reizen; the perfect moment to show you all the results of our trip last August!

Like the year before, we had a great week with a wonderful group and beautiful results. Armed with a Nikon Z9, I captured tens of thousands of images. That’s one of the reasons why it took so long to find time to select and edit this trip, apart from being away on many other tours in between, of course…

I published some pictures of the 2021 Slovenia floating hide trip on my Facebook page, so if you haven’t seen those, make sure to have a look! I intentionally focused on other species, light conditions and style.
As I mentioned in my previous Slovenia floating hide report, this is a great way to learn how to work with a floating hide, improve your skills or capture some fantastic species. While elsewhere in Europe it’s quite calm this time of year, in Slovenia you’ll find a wide variety of herons, ducks, grebes, waders and other birds in front of your lens. That’s why I love going back again and again with the floating hide.

It’s not a holiday trip, though. We get up very early and enter the water well before sunrise. When you leave the water a few hours later, temperatures are hot. We have time for a nap in the afternoon, but we want to float again for a few hours until sunset. You will have just enough time to download your pictures and recharge all batteries.

A floating hide is the best tool to observe and photograph birds on the water, and after using this system for more than 25 years, I am still as excited as I was on my first attempts. We use the Mr Jan Gear floating hides, so you don’t need to bring one. These hides are very flexible and have proven their success. With some patience and luck, you can get extremely close to the birds, make awesome low-viewpoint pictures and play with the direction of the light and distance just by walking around in the shallow water.

I hope you will enjoy the pictures! They were all taken in one week, in a few different locations. This is just a selection; the photographed species list is much more extensive! Let me know if you want to join me this year, we have a few spots left!