TRIP THE LIGHT FANTASTIC

It began as a study of isolation.Amongst the tens of thousands of snow geese there stood, one, lone sandhill crane. There were hundreds of other cranes on the pond but most were grouped together along the edge of the sea of geese.Somehow this gal got stranded in the middle. The sandhills were already on the pond when the geese flew in. And when the geese come they arrive all at once and blanket the pond in a matter of seconds. So it’s likely that this crane was just caught off guard and when the feathers settled she found herself surrounded.It was an interesting juxtaposition. I shot a single frame with the crane centered and then recorded a few frames on either side imagining I would combine them into a panorama. Then she slowly began to move, picking her way through and high stepping over the congestion of geese. Gradually she broke into a trot, which became a run, and turned into a take-off as I merrily tracked along with her.It became a study in motion.

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FOURmation

Thousands of sandhill cranes winter at Bosque del Apache from November through February. They spend the nights in long lined formations standing safely away from shore in the middle of three large shallow ponds on the refuge. Every morning as the sun rises over the distant mountains, they walk towards the warmth in small groups until they break into a run, lift off, and then head out to the planted fields to spend the day feeding.

They’ll migrate from field to field over the course of the day, enjoying a mix of grains. Then as dusk approaches they all begin to head back to their select ponds to spend the evening.

I captured these four in the late afternoon. I was standing high on the edge of the field and caught them shortly after take off while they were still relatively close to the ground, which accounts for the eye level view.

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DANCE AT DAWN

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ABOVE THE CAULDRON

Snow geese and sandhill cranes in morning mist, Bosque del Apache Wildlife Refuge, New Mexico, United States.

It suddenly dawned on me after a half hour of shooting, that the beautiful mist enveloping the birds on the pond had not been there before they arrived. It was so cold and there were so many thousands of warm-bodied, heavy breathing snow geese and sandhill cranes, they were generating their own fog.

This was what I called the second staging pond; after the geese left the two larger ponds in the middle of the Bosque del Apache Wildlife Refuge, they would all congregate on this, outlying, relatively smaller pond and leave just after sunrise for the feeding fields. When they left they would blast off en masse, sounding like the roar of a jet, and creating a disturbance in the air that you could feel as they passed directly over.

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DAWNING

Sandhil cranes, Bosque del Apache, New Mexico.

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SERENITY

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TRIUMVIRATE

In the evening, thousands of sandhill cranes gradually wing their way back from the farm fields where they’ve been feeding all day, to the big central pond of the Bosque del Apache Refuge to spend the night.

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DOWN TO EARTH

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Brewer's Blackbirds

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WILD RUSH

Every morning, about an hour before sunrise, the snow geese would leave en masse from a couple of the large ponds where they had spent the night. They then all collected on this pond, would preen and mill around until just after sunrise, and take off again, en masse, and head out to the fields to feed all day until it was time to head back to the large ponds at sunset to again spend the night.

Sometimes something would startle them, as was the case in this shot, and they’d all take off, circle around, and settle back down until it was time to depart. It was absolutely amazing to witness. They started from the point of disturbance and came at me like a wave rushing overhead. The sound was deafening and I could feel it as they blasted toward me, literally blotting out the sun

WILD RUSH is a composite of three sequential images stacked vertically as the birds charged me and I panned upward with them. No geese were added. From where I stood, it was solid birds for about 150 degrees and this image represents only a fraction of that density. It is my belief that almost all of the count – 30,000, were there that morning in front of me.

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Bosque Sunrise

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SUSPLENDID

There are thousands of sandhill cranes who winter at the Bosque del Apache Wildlife Refuge in southern New Mexico. They spend their nights sleeping on the big ponds of the flooded fields and during the day, they feed in the fields that have been cultivated to provide food. They're relatively shy birds and keep their distance from all the park visitors, but their daily routines are fairly predictable. So photographers can stake out along the edges of the ponds and the fields during the "golden hour" of light in the morning and evenings and capture them in all their grace and beauty as they travel past.

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BRUSH WITH BEAUTY

I saw the shot.

I could barely make out a silhouette, but the moment I spotted it, I slammed the brakes and jumped out with my camera, grabbed the tripod from the back, and raced to the edge of the bank to get as close as possible.

It was early evening in Bosque del Apache, and there was a mule deer with a nice rack feeding on the far side of the channel. I only knew he was there because of the shadow of his form against the tall, backlit grass, that he was nibbling on. But in the minute it took me to get situated and shooting, the shot was gone. Now, he was moving around too much and I couldn’t catch a clear silhouette. I kept working it as he gradually foraged his way through the grass and into clear view; some great moments but not what I saw when I came on the scene.

Then I spotted the doe. She wasn’t even visible before, but now appeared, almost ghost like against the grass curtain of light. As she reached up high to nibble the shoots there was just enough definition to make out the silhouette.

I had it.

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INTO THE DARK

Bosque del Apache Wildlife Refuge, New Mexico.

I wanted to try for a different view of the sandhill cranes as they flew into the big pond for the evening so I’d left the crowd of photographers and set up at a nearby trail where the birds would pass over an opening in the tree canopy.

Well, it didn’t pan out and had gotten dark and I was about to leave when I spotted what I assumed was a coyote coming down the trail. But when I focused in I realized I was looking at a mountain lion.

Incredible luck. There’s always talk about the lions at the refuge but the sightings are rare. And here I was, all alone, in the cover of my car with the camera all set up, as a big cat slowly headed straight towards me.

It was one of those wonderful moments in the viewfinder that gets the adrenaline pumping. To add to that I was nervous - worried I would blow the shots; it was way dark, difficult to focus, and it was my first few days with a new camera and unfamiliar controls.

As he neared, the cat graciously turned to give me some profile time before disappearing into the bush. I sat there for a while in the quiet of the night soaking it all in. Then I raised the windows so no one would hear my whooping it up and headed back to town.

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Bush Family

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HIGH STEP'N

Sandhill cranes and snow geese. New Mexico, United States.

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DAWN

The first time I witnessed the snow geese arriving I didn’t know where to begin to shoot. Thirty thousand birds landing en masse, squawking, flapping, and settling down on this huge pond in just a little over five minutes is a lot to take in. How do you pick a shot out from all that? How do you capture the frenzy as well as the calm with so much to choose from across such a wide expanse?

Fortunately, it was a routine that they repeated daily during their winter stay at Bosque del Apache in New Mexico. It gave me plenty of practice and by the end of my first week there I’d found the rhythm and figured out my approach.

DAWN was taken several minutes after the mass landing frenzy as the stragglers caught up with the rest of the flock. The cold temps combined with the warm bodies and the sun hitting the frigid water as it cleared the distant mountains, created a beautiful misty backdrop for their graceful winged poses.

The field of action was seventy meters distant so I swept across the pond with my 600mm and stitched the results into this panoranimal. Other than that, nothing was done to alter the image. The morning light, atmospheric distortion, and slow shutter speed, naturally combined to give it a painterly look.

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MORNING GLORY

The highlight of most mornings in the Bosque del Apache Wildlife Refuge is when tens of thousands of snow geese blast off from the big pond.

Actually there are two blast events: The first is before sunrise from the pond where they spent the night. Thousands of geese take off at once silhouetted against the first streaks of orange and purple sky. The timing is such that you can take photos of this event and then make it to the next staging area where MORNING GLORY was captured.

The second-stage pond is where hundreds of sandhill cranes have spent the night. The geese from first pond join them and together they spend an hour or so milling about, resting, and preening.

Once the sun clears the distant mountains, the cranes begin leaving one at a time and in small groups. They’ll spread out their departure this way over a couple hours.

The geese on the other hand are unpredictable. You know they’re going to launch, en masse, but you never know when and no one knows what prompts them. It’s always after sunrise but it can happen right away or it can take a couple hours. So you have to keep alert. You might get advance warning and hear them begin to chatter in anticipation – gives you a chance to pick your area, like this cotton wood tree. But quite often you just hear the cacophony of thirty thousand wings beating as they explode off the water.

It’s great drama in the desert.

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CAMO

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SPIRITS RISING

Snow geese. Bosque del Apache, New Mexico, United States.

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WET PAINT

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DESERT BLAZE

Red winged blackbirds flocking to feed in the grain fields of Bosque del Apache, New Mexico

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LAST STAND

It pays to look around.

I heard there were elk. Then I ran into a ranger and she told me where I might find them. Ran into her later and she actually pointed them out. But they were so far off they were hardly visible.

So like a Pavlov dog every time I drove by that area I always stopped and scouted. Didn’t see a thing all week.

On my last night I headed to my favourite hotspot for sunset-sandhill-crane-fly-ins. I had just set up when something told me to look behind.

Just across the road at the edge of the clearing were my elk. Looked like they were enjoying the sunset as well.

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DIAPHANOUS DESCENT

It was a moment of weakness.

I was never a big fan of intentionally, blurred shots. I had tried a few early on when I began shooting but I didn’t really push the technique and was never all that satisfied with the resulting images.

However, midway through my third trip to Bosque del Apache in New Mexico, I’d just about exhausted every angle, composition, and idea for shooting the cranes and geese. I wanted something different. I was ready for the blur.

If you can pan with the birds and match their flight speed you’ve got a fair chance of getting the head in relatively good focus even when using a slow shutter. At the same time, panning with a slow exposure blurs and streaks the background. In addition, it allows the wings to blur. The resulting images can run the full gamut of totally abstract to hauntingly surreal and all of them convey the sense of motion better than birds frozen in mid-air.

With so many variables it’s a bit of a crapshoot. Some images were way too abstract and I had many fails because I couldn’t get the heads sharp enough. But some like Diaphanous Descent blew me away.

Now, I’m a believer.

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