This robin has a nest near my garden, and I noticed while digging the soil that it was taking advantage of the insects and worms that I was uncovering. Even a bird as tame as a robin is difficult to photograph without some sort of hide. So I stuck the spade in the soil just outside my garage window, and waited inside with the camera – a Canon 5D Mk3 – pre-focused on the handle.

The lens was the Sigma 180mm f3.5 macro lens, and I used a touch of fill-in flash to ensure that the underside of the bird isn’t too dark, and to put a catchlight in the eye. As usual, I was in manual mode, choosing a shutter and aperture combination to throw the background nicely out of focus, and setting the flash power to give the amount of fill-in necessary to lift the shadows without overpowering the daylight.