PORTFOLIO SELECTS
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LAST LIGHT
From EVERYTHING
FINE LINES
From EVERYTHING
JAY BIRD
From EVERYTHING
PONDERING
From EVERYTHING
From EVERYTHING
From EVERYTHING
From EVERYTHING
From EVERYTHING
LITTLE STRETCH
From EVERYTHING
SKIMMER
SKIMMING BY
ONE OF A KIND
STREAMING SANDPIPERS
SWEET DEAMS
SNUGGLED UP
IBIS
TIPPING POINT
SPRING HERON
IN TRANSIT
STREAMING
SLIPSTREAM
FLY BY
BREAK THROUGH
70 KPH
High winds at West Pennant Point, Nova Scotia.
A WHALE OF A TAIL
From EVERYTHING
CHIHULY- esque
A SWOOP OF SWIFTS
Chimney swifts, Wolfville, Nova Scotia.
PORTRAIT OF A PUFFIN
From EVERYTHING
FINE LINES
Great blue heron
THE BEAVE
POSERS
FULL OF BULL
In the parks out west, the buffalo pretty much appear to have the run of the land, including the roads. Wherever they want to wander and for however long they want to stay is up to them. There is a technique for herding them with your vehicle that locals use so they can go about their business, but for tourists, like us, we just let them be and used it as an up close and personal photo opportunity.
MARK. SET. GO.
It’s fun to photograph Chickadees. The other, bigger birds are always very wary around the feeders but not the little chickadees. They don’t care who’s around. They just want to eat and, if you’re in the way, they’ll just use you as an interim perch.
They’re so small and fast, you never get to see the beauty of their wing forms as you can in the larger birds like herons or swans.
So I baited a branch, set up the camera a few feet away, and focused on the food. They’d pop into frame and snatch some seed. Then I’d start shooting, as I panned ahead in the direction I “guessed” they might exit.
Tricky timing. At first I ended up with a lot of empty backgrounds and just bits of bird in view. But gradually I got good enough at reading chickadee body language to snag a few keepers, including these shots that I combined to show three stages of lift off.
OUT TO SEA
From EVERYTHING
BLACK GOLD
I spent the better part of May sunsets haunting a marsh along my route home from work. I originally attempted to get mostly red-winged blackbirds flying among the cattails but I’m a cheap date and pretty soon was shooting anything that moved.
The grackles were great. They’re not as “popular” as red wings but were a bit slower which helped in my effort to get long sequences of flight.gracklesblackcattailsmarshflyingbacklight
From PANORANIMALS
BLADERIDER
I’d swear they were having fun.
It was a hot and breezy mid-summer day on the pond. And I was actually in the pond half submerged under camo with the camera supported on a surrounding air tube – to enable me to get at eye level with the ducks. There wasn’t much duck action however, and I began to scout around for something else to shoot.
I spotted some damsel flies and drifted over to check them out. They were backlit and the sunlight enhanced the beauty of their wings and rim lit their delicate features. I got some beautiful shots of them hovering over the water with full reflections as soft focused shimmers of leaves and seeds floated by beneath them.
Then I saw the windsurfers.
The damsels were landing on the floating willow leaves. At first I assumed it was just to grab a rest mid-pond. But as I tracked with them it looked like they would land on a leaf, windsurf it to the edge of the pond, fly back up wind, select another leaf, and do it all over again.
Kowabunga.
OVER, UNDER & THROUGH
For the first week or so, cygnets only surface feed. They peck the grasses and anything that looks good floating. And when the adults dip, they hurriedly hover around to grab whatever gets dredged up from below.
Like all of us, they learn from example and before long are dipping and diving for themselves.
I’ve shot thousands of frames of ducks growing through this stage – the mother tilts straight down with her bum pointing up in the air and the chicks surround her in anticipation - but this was the first family of trumpeter swans I’d observed. So I immediately recognized the behavior but rather than a bum in the air there was the beautiful arch portal of the neck framing the cygnets in waiting.
Nice.
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.