It’s hard to take a picture of a duckling that doesn’t have some degree of cuteness. Every spring we’ve been fortunate to have a family of mallards on our backyard pond. And every year I spend as much time as possible during their first couple weeks photographing them. That’s when the ducklings are at their absolute cutest. They can be a little challenging to shoot because mom is hyper-protective at this stage: it’s easy to spook her right off the pond for several hours – simply by walking in the yard. So I try to get out early and into the hunting blind before they arrive, wear camo on any exposed flesh, and always move in slow motion. So, 5 years x 2 weeks x 3 hours per day x 500 pics per day = an embarrassing amount of duck photos. Only a handful however, approaches the cute-factor-level of Mr. Ripples.
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.
This fall I opted to do Algonquin park over several weekends rather than an extended stay. I’d leave home on Saturday at 4:00 in the morning to get up in time for first light, spend the night and return home Sunday evening. I had god luck seeing moose every trip. But by late fall the moose move deeper into the park and after one trip of seeing nothing I called an end to moose hunting season. … Until it snowed. Then I raced back up hoping to catch one last glimpse of one last moose in first snow. It started out perfect. The park was covered in a foot of freshly fallen snow and I practically had the whole place to myself. As I drove into the park a bull charged onto the road. Though he disappeared as soon as he saw me stop, it was looking good. But it wasn’t. I never saw so much as a rabbit track. I tried all my favorite spots, staked out a few places hiding in the snow under camo. Practiced my moose calling. Nothing. I was totally skunked. Nonetheless it was beautiful and quiet, and I milked the day for every drop of solitude and sunlight. I headed home in the dark and I was midway through the park when I saw a car up ahead pulled off to the side of the road. Always a good sign, though I wished it had come with some daylight. As I approached I could see the bull behind the tree line – even less light back there. The other car gave up and left me alone with him. I could see he was a young bull and didn’t mind company. He ambled about feeding, occasionally glancing toward me, but I could barley pull focus and didn’t really have a good shot. Then he popped his head through the brush, appeared to glare at me, then disappeared into the dark. But not before I was able to focus in on the snow dusting his head
