It seemed easy enough… I read about the new polar bear cub at the zoo and immediately decided to go while he was still in the “cute” stage. Didn’t know what to expect but figured it’d be relatively simple to get a few “aw” pictures. The only special game plan was to wait for a snow day. Perfect. A snowstorm arrived in a few days and as I worked my way through morning rush hour, clichés of “shooting fish in a barrel…” rang in my ears. Slightly mistaken. There were two viewing areas. One from behind a barrier and chain link fence – not gonna work. The second was a half-enclosed shelter with glass - but only five meters wide for an overflowing crowd of families. The challenge. - The glass was covered with condensation on both sides from all the warm bodies making it difficult to focus. - There were dozens of kids plastered against it scrambling for a view and parents with strollers packed in behind them. I didn’t want to hit anyone swinging around 20 pounds of camera nor get in the way of them enjoying the cub. - The storm brought a cold snap and I’m a wimp when it comes to numb fingers, metal objects, little buttons, and fingerless gloves. Eventually. I contorted myself into a corner and with the sounds of kids laughing and cheering at the baby bear’s antics, settled in for one of the more enjoyable shoots I’ve done. … Not as easy as planned but more fun than I expected.
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.
Robin gathering tiger lily leaves.
