Eric Médard has spent 25 years developing sound-proofed infra-red camera equipment, allowing him to photograph wildlife at night. Working mostly in his native France, in the woodland that surrounds his home, his images offer rare glimpses of creatures too shy to see during the day.

I have always been fascinated by the night - it’s when our senses are awakened, when our focus naturally shifts to sounds, smells and the feel of the wind.Many animals are more active at night - and while it is much easier to photograph them during the day, it’s like you’re only seeing the tip of the iceberg. The night life of animals is something that the general public and even many naturalists still know little about. Yet we are poorly equipped to see everything that’s going on.Infra-red cameras have allowed me to unlock some of the mysteries of what animals do, where they go and how they behave under the cover of darkness. I’ve worked hard to make my equipment silent and invisible so that it creates very little disturbance. It’s only my scent that sometimes gives my cameras away!

My interest in noctural photography began 28 years ago, when I photographed a badger outside its sett, using black and white film and classic flash units. At that time I was aware of infra-red technology but didn’t have the ex-pertise to pursue it myself.My approach has developed enormously since then. This shot was taken on a path through the woods, which I recognised as a badger track. By positioning a sensor at this spot, I knew I could use the large oak to give the image a sense of scale - and to frame the badger within its natural environment.

I quickly realised that I have an important respon-sibility with certain species to avoid disturbance. The use of conventional lighting or the sound of photographic equipment can seriously impact sensitive species like bats or owls, who might abandon their roosts or nests if alarmed.My infra-red flash set-ups and soundproof camera housings offer the possibility to take pictures with-out the animal detecting anything at all. It neither sees any light nor hears any noise. In effect, it cannot be startled by the camera and behaves completely naturally while the images are being recorded.There is also the added advantage that multiple frames can be recorded, while the animal conducts its nocturnal sorties completely undis-turbed.

To get this sequence, taken in my garden, I worked from a hide on the roof of my tractor, which serves as a mobile hide, allowing me to be at the right height. During the mating season, the owls mate several times at nightfall. While there was enough light, I used normal photography techniques - and then as soon as it was night I continued to work using infra-red light to avoid disturbing them.

I primarily use camera traps to take these imag-es. Recently, I’ve developed an infra-red obser-vation technique that allows me to shoot on loca-tion during the hours of darkness. From my hide, I can observe my subjects without using any vis-ible light, and I can see them as clearly as if it was daytime! This has allowed me to increase my nocturnal observations. But I continue to use the camera traps as well, because they allow me to create photos which would be impossible by other means.

Often people say to me “Your work is easy, the images take themselves while you are sleeping!” But in fact, this photographic approach is more complicated than any other. To know how and where to place the traps, you need to understand your subject in detail. Unless you can predict what the animal is going to do, and where and when it is going to do it, then you cannot hope to succeed. If the animal is not exactly where you expected it to be, the camera will record nothing.

For these shots, I attracted the pine marten with eggs, one on each of the two branches. To save itself the effort of walking all the way to the ground and back up to the other branch to get the second egg, the marten would jump. The camera trap is positioned in the space between the two branch-es, so that it is triggered at the moment the action takes place.

I set up my camera in this location after finding otter spraints. Pho-tography excites me but this kind of detective work, when you really have to understand animals and their behaviour, is even more fas-cinating.In this shot, I clearly didn’t capture the otter I was looking for, but I did photograph a beautiful grey heron, which was visiting this location ev-ery night to fish.

I light my subjects only with infra-red surveillance spotlights , some-times modified as needed. The light is invisible to the animals.

If there is a single animal that represents the night for me, it is the genet. Photographing one had always been a dream of mine, but in the Loire Valley, north of the river where I live, this species is very rare. To get this shot I knew I had to head south.A friend of mine told me about a rock where a genet had marked its territory. It was a great place to position my camera trap, because the surroundings were so photogenic. I was lucky that the genet looked up at just the right time to allow me to get this photograph. I par-ticularly like the way that the infra-red light emphasises the animal’s backbone.

This little owl is a daily visitor to my garden. It’s good practice to get to know the habits of the animals on your patch. I’ve found that owls are loyal to a perch for weeks at a time before suddenly moving on to anoth-er. This means that, as a photographer, you have to be very vigilant, constantly looking for clues as to their preferred spot. Fresh droppings in one location sev-eral mornings in a row are a clear indicator, and when you think that you have managed to find their perch, you just position the camera and hope for the best!

This picture was taken in my cellar. I installed a camera trap for two weeks and each morning I discovered hundreds of photos which had been taken during the night. I quickly worked out that there were two mice regularly visiting the cellar to eat the grains which I left out on the stone floor. It was pure luck that the camera trap was triggered during a dispute between these mice, and even more fortuitous that their fight took place in a sat-isfying part of the frame.

[Left] I came across this beautiful ivy-covered bridge and realised that it would be the perfect setting to photograph bats in flight. But I had no idea whether these nocturnal aeronauts would actually fly through here.I got my answer on the first night, though they were only in one photo. My second atempt yielded a lot more images, but nothing that was sufficiently sharp. It was only on the third night that I captured this picture. I shot it with a sin-gle exposure and five flashes, because I wanted to fill the space underneath the arch with a number of bats.

Otters are very rare in my part of France - there are only 10 or so in the rivers of Mayenne. So it’s not surprising that nobody had managed to photograph one where I live, though I knew they were there from the evidence: spraints, tracks and three dead bodies.It took me several weeks to find enough evidence to iden-tify a spot that this male otter visited regularly. Even then I had to wait two months to get a photo of him. It was an incredible feeling. Since then I’ve photographed him hun-dreds of times and, although I’ve still never seen him, I know him by heart.

Sometimes, the otter passed this same spot five or six times in the same evening. In this photo he has just got out of the river and is leaving a spraint on a rock.

To photograph a nightjar in flight in the middle of a heath is an example of a photo which is not simple to achieve, even in daylight. It’s easier to do this with conventional flash - but infra-red makes things much more complicated.I had to work for more than a month to get these images. It was very difficult to predict in which di-rection the birds would fly and also to install the equipment without influencing their flight path.

Deciding where to place my cameras and sensors takes a lot of detective work and naturalist skills that I have built up over the years. Looking for tracks and droppings helps determine the paths that animals use.I often position my camera along this track near my house, where I have successfully photographed roe deer, badgers, pine martens and foxes. So this image came as no great surprise at first. But then I zoomed in on the prey the fox was carrying and saw that it was kittens - presumably the offspring of a feral domestic cat that lives nearby.

I visited this forest in Slovenia mostly to photograph bears, before I realised it was full of edible dormice. In autumn they make a lot of noise at night, and since they are at-tracted to fruit, they were pretty easy to photograph!

[Left] Even with plenty of research and detective skills, camera trapping can be a hit-and-miss ex-ercise. This bear photo, taken in Slovenia, was the result of 2 weeks of intensive searching and camera trap placing. I only managed to achieve this image 2 days before I returned home. During the trip, I explored along a large area of forest without seeing anything in the daytime.

[Below] On other occasions, I’ve been incredibly lucky, like when I succeeded in photographing a lynx in the Swiss Jura just two nights after setting up my equipment. In a place where some people have taken years to get a photo, I was astonished at my good fortune! When I collected the camera trap, I had tears in my eyes.

I position my equipment to photograph individu-al animals, but ocassionally I capture something I didn’t expect.When I retrieved my camera one morning, hoping that I would have some pictures of a pine marten near my home, I was surprised to see that I had something more than that: a marten with a wood mouse in its mouth.Photographing with camera traps can be frustrat-ing, particularly when the cameras record nothing. But to be rewarded with a shot like this makes it all worthwhile.

There are a lot of wild boar in the forest close to my home. But I never see them. They are strictly nocturnal and very wary because they are hunted. My camera traps have been a great way to take photographs of them without disturbing them. I made pools of water to try and catch them drink-ing and especially wallowing in mud. I have some-times caught them when I expected a different animal altogether. The shot of a large group of boar was taken in a location where I had set up my camera to photograph deer (see next page)!

Eagle owls inhabit rocky areas, often with a scat-tering of trees and bushes. During the breeding season, this male was bringing prey to a high, rocky ledge as a gift for a female, who came and took it from this special place.

I have almost no pictures of deer taken with infra- red. In the forest where I work they are very rare and, surprising as it may seem, they are very shy of the equipment. To get photos it is absolutely essential that the equipement is very well hiden.

Above all, I seek to create an aesthetically pleasing photograph with a strong nocturnal sense. Some-times, I try to create a moonlight effect. But I am also a naturalist and therefore I sometimes want to show the animal clearly, using infra-red spotlights. Wherever possible, I seek to place the subject in the context of its natural environment. And above all, I try to convey the atmosphere and the emotion of the forest at night.

Years ago, I photographed bats flying low over water, to hunt and drink. But those images were taken with conventional flash and I wanted to re-peat the work with infra-red. Using the technique and camera set-ups I had already developed, I positioned the infra-red beam above the water so it would trigger the camera when a bat flew past.Then all I had to do was change the flash units to infra-red.

Barn owls have lived with me for 15 years, along with little owls, tawny owls and kestrels. All liv-ing in the walls of my home. But two years ago, during the severe winter of 2012 when there were no small mammals around, the female of my pair died just after laying her eggs. I took this picture of her coming out of my barn three weeks before her death. Since then, no barn owl has re-established itself at my home.

Pine martens are not very shy of photographic equipment, much less so than other musetlids such as weasels, otters and badgers. I realised that they were often around and that three mar-tens frequent the borders of my garden. Thanks to a sucession of images taken over several weeks and months, I have learnt a lot about them; no-tably that when they moult in spring, they start to lose their hair around the eyes first - and then over their face and so on to the end of their bodies.

I protect my camera traps with peli-case boxes, which are impermeable to humidity. Sometimes I use custom-built camouflage boxes (for example, a case that is designed to look like a rock). I cover it with moss and vegetation to hide it from both animals and people, as the equipment stays in place for several weeks or even months. I wouldn’t like to see it dis-appear!

Nightjars are very hard to find - but in late May, when night falls, they leave a big clue. As soon as the sun drops below the horizon, they sing their strange song. But you only have a few minutes before night falls to find their singing posts!

The most difficult species to photograph are the very secretive ones, especially mustelids. Pine martens [above] are easiest and I have also photographed beech martens [left], as well as badgers and even otters. But polecats, with their more changeable hab-its, have so far proven impossible to photograph. I’ve been trying for three years without success!

To photograph this little owl with my house in the background, all lit by infra-red, was not a simple task. I wanted to capture the scene in a way that was evoc-ative of how the owl might see it. To the unaided human eye, it would be impossible to view this scene in any detail. But the owl is in its element.

There are still very few beavers around my home. This image was taken near Lyon in central France, on the backwaters of the Rhone. I still have a lot of images in mind I’d like to take of this animal, but it’s easier said than done!

[Left] Hedgehogs have become very rare in my area and I have had very few opportunities to photograph them. So I was pleased to capture this image of the hedgehog looking straight at the camera.

This coypu image was a happy accident, made while I was trying to photograph an otter. Coy-pu are quite common in the ponds and streams around my home and they often use the same trails as otters.

[Right] Fire salamanders are difficult to see during the day, spending much of their time hidden be-neath stones, wood or other objects. But at night, they become more active, allowing me to photo-graph them in the open.

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