A Snow Goose (Chen caerulescens) with wings and tail flared to land, Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge, San Antonio, New Mexico
I spent the better part of the day today editing images from my recent trip to Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge in New Mexico. By editing, I don’t mean Photoshopping. I mean slogging through thousands of images looking for the keepers. For me, Bosque is mostly about flight shooting. And flight shooting means heavy shooting: a bird flies by at thirty miles an hour. I track it with my camera. When it’s in just the right spot, I hold down the shutter button for a second or so. The camera makes a staccato rattle as I capture six or eight frames. (Gotta love 8 frames per second.) The next bird flies by. Repeat. It’s exhilarating, nonstop action.
A Sandhill Crane (Grus canadensis) lands in a snow-covered field, Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge, San Antonio, New Mexico
The downside is when I get home. There are many, many images to edit. And there are many similar images, with only slight variations in sharpness or composition. Carefully sorting through a day’s worth of heavy flight shooting can take a week or more of spare time. It is mentally taxing, and sometimes a bit tedious. However, there is an upside: hidden among the mass of images, there are always a few gems.
A Snow Goose (Chen caerulescens) with wings extended, Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge, San Antonio, New Mexico. Note mud on bill from feeding in wet fields.
These images are the gems. I made a couple of “wow” images during my expedition to Bosque. I either knew it when I captured the photo or the first time I looked at the file in Lightroom. These images did not leap out at me immediately. But what a reward for a day of editing to find these lurking among my captures. Great action, light, and color.
Snow Goose (Chen caerulescens) landing in a farm field, Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge, San Antonio, New Mexico
Hope you enjoy these photos. As a reminder, these images are available as fine art prints, printed and matted in our studio. Please consider purchasing a print to support my photography.
Snow geese flock takes flight at first light, Bosque del Apache NWR, San Antonio, New Mexico.
Once again I am wading through the huge number of captures that I made at Bosque this year. The going is slow: it is surprising how mentally taxing it can be to make fine distinctions between image after image. If I edit for too long at one stretch, I find myself keeping too many mediocre images. However, there is an upside: finding hidden gems that I previously overlooked.
This is one of those gems. I shot this in very low light, with an iffy shutter speed, at ISO 3200. On my 7D, ISO 3200 often resembles a pointillist painting more than a photograph. Consquently, I did not look at these images very closely on my first quick edit. I just didn’t expect much. In revisiting the high-ISO images this morning, I noticed the pleasing pattern of birds receding into the fog at bottom, coupled with the pleasingly blurred birds taking flight. To my eye, the noisy high-ISO files usually don’t look that great in color. But in black and white, the noise looks artistic, rather than crappy. Add a slight color toning, and voila.
Like this image? Hate it? Please drop me a comment or a tweet.
A flock of Northern Pintail (Anas acuta) takes flight into backlit ground fog. Dawn. Bosque del Apache NWR, New Mexico.
Sometimes, nature photography is just about being in the right place at the right time. As I’ve posted before, I had the great pleasure of shooting in backlit ground fog (“fire in the mist”) conditions at Bosque del Apache for four days this winter. I made more great images in a few morning hours at Bosque than I’ve made in the prior year.
This flock of Northern Pintail (Anas acuta) kept lifting off into the mist (probably scared by the resident bald eagle) wheeling around, landing, and then doing it again. Spectacular. To capture this image I carefully checked the exposure, composed for a strong line at the bottom of the frame to ground the image, and tried to give the birds a bit of space to fly into.
Check out the ducks in the water at right — I love the rows of roosting ducks receding into the mist. (Click on the image for a larger view.)
Sandhill Cranes (Grus canadensis) and light geese in backlit ground fog at dawn, Bosque del Apache NWR, San Antonio, NM.
As promised, here are some additional “fire on the mist” images from Bosque. I’ve been fortunate to photograph in these conditions a number of times, but it never gets old.
A flock of light geese (mostly snow geese (Chen caerulescens)) roosts in backlit ground fog, Bosque del Apache NWR, San Antonio, NM.
A flock of ducks takes flight into backlit fog, Bosque del Apache, NWR, San Antonio, New Mexico
I returned to Bosque del Apache NWR for the fifth time in December. Conditions this year were the coldest I have ever experienced in central New Mexico. It was around -7°F on the first morning, with heavy snow on the ground. But there was a huge silver, or rather golden lining in the cold temperatures. I was treated to four straight days of spectacular backlit ground fog. Overnight, the relatively warm open water sent billowing clouds of mist into the air. I carefully positioned myself so that the fog would be backlit by the rising sun. As you can see, the results are spectacular. Photographers call this “fire on the mist” for good reason.
I have an (almost) embarrassingly large number of these photos, but I’m fairly sure that this is my favorite. Stay tuned for some more “fire on the mist” photos.
Update: somehow, I lost the text of this blog post. I’ve restored it now. Sorry for any confusion.
American Wideon in Flight, Socorro, New Mexico.
This American Wigeon (Anas americana) is an early favorite from my recent photograph expedition to Bosque del Apache NWR in New Mexico. A flock of wigeons gathered in a small pond in a town near the refuge. Though the birds were wild, they were obviously well fed. Whenever I walked up to the pond, a number of the birds would fly right at me, hoping for a treat. After carefully selecting a spot with a good light angle, it was relatively easy to pick up a duck as it flew toward me. Good photographs are usually not about the gear. However, this image would not be possible without the speedy autofocus on my 7D and 500mm lens. Hungry wigeons are fast.
Conditions this year were fantastic, and I came home with several thousand images. Stay tuned for additional images as I make my selects. I am determined to process the images more quickly than last year.
Finally. It took way, way longer than it should have. But I’ve finally culled more than 5,000 images from Bosque del Apache down to a handful of selects. Fortunately (given how long it took) I’m pleased with the final product. These are by far my strongest Bosque images. Indeed, I created a couple of images that rank among the best in my portfolio.
As a sort of celebration of having finished, I created the video that headlines this post. I’ve been looking for a new, non-boring way to highlight my work. Looks like Animoto may be just the ticket. It’s easy. It looks great. Slideshows are usually so boring, but this keeps things interesting. There are only two real downsides: (1) Animoto gives no control over the way it assembles the final product. You click, wait, and hope. Mostly, this works fine. However, the software occasionally insists on cropping some images to a 4×3 aspect ratio. I couldn’t find any work around, no matter how many times I clicked the “remix video” button. (2) even though I’m using a paid version of Animoto, it insists on branding of embedded video.
Please watch the video (it’s short) and let me know what you think in the comments.
Below is a gallery of the images from the slideshow, in their full, un-Animoto’ed glory. Click on a thumbnail for a larger version and for links to purchase a print or greeting card, or license an image. (If you’re reading this through an RSS reader, the gallery will look much better if you click through to my website.)
A snow goose breaks to land, Bosque del Apache NWR, New Mexico
This snow goose (Chen caerulescens) is one of my favorite images from Bosque del Apache National Wildlife refuge. Even with thousands of birds landing in the field to feed, it is surprisingly difficult to get the perfect head-on shot.It is doubly hard with a perfect light angle, as here.
A sandhill crane is silhouetted at last light, Bosque del Apache NWR, New Mexico
This is a less subtle take on the sandhill crane silhouette that I posted previously. Which do you prefer? Let me know in the comments.
A sandhill crane is silhouetted at last light, Bosque del Apache NWR, New Mexico
This is another favorite image from Bosque del Apache NWR. I’ve shot a number of silhouettes at this pool over the years. Something about the strong, graphical quality of the bird’s profile combined with the ever-changing quality of the light appeals to me. The understated pink and turquoise colors here make this image for me.
Sunset at Bosque, Bosque del Apache NWR New Mexico
My Bosque del Apache folder is the most daunting obstacle in catching up from my backlog of images from last year. After deleting the bad images, I still had ~2000 images to winnow down to my final selects. Unfortunately, I have a difficult time deleting technically competent, but aesthetically mediocre images. I should approach image editing by picking out the small percentage of outstanding, portfolio-grade images and deleting the rest. Instead, I find myself editing from the bottom up, deleting the weakest images during several iterations through a collection of photos. I keep thinking “that one’s decent . . . I might need it some day.” Needless to say, that approach is not very efficient.
Today, however, I made some real progress. While my family was out of the house, I culled the images down to around 500 (this leaves about 150 photos per day of shooting; not terrible). As I head into the editing home stretch, here’s a nice sunset silhouette image to celebrate my progress. At sunset, thousands of birds on the Bosque del Apache NWR fly to their night-time roosts. (The birds in this image are snow geese and sandhill cranes, in case you’re wondering.)
This looks best big. Be sure to click on the image for a larger version.
American Wigeon drake landing
I photographed this American Wigeon (Anas americana) in the same pond as the ring-necked duck in the previous post. When I captured the image, I was concerned that the duck was not front-lit. But on further reflection, the back light nicely highlights the feathers in the bird’s wings. Be sure to click on the image for a full-size version; the small version looks a little dark.
I photographed this ring-necked duck (Aythya collaris) in central New Mexico near the Bosque del Apache NWR earlier this winter. This is a beautiful duck, though it’s virtually impossible to see the eponymous ring. The wonderful color on the water elevates the first image from the typical “nature guide photo” to something more, IMHO. Be sure to click on the image for a larger version.
This image does not show the classic front-lit style that is popular for birds. But the side lighting does a nice job of brining out the iridescent sheen in the bird’s head.
I have lots of work ahead of me to edit the 4,000+ images I shot in Bosque del Apache this year down to a reasonable portfolio. This image of a Sandhill Crane (Grus canadensis) is one of the early contenders for my favorite image from the trip. Please leave a commend and let me know what you think.
I started a long blog post about my experience shooting at Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge over the last three years, years, the difference between the conditions this year and last, the reasons why I made various images, etc. Then I realized that the post was ponderous and boring. Instead, here is a simple gallery of the best images from my trip this winter, plus a so-so quail image that I included for sentimental reasons. Hopefully the images can speak for themselves. (Click on a thumbnail for a larger view and for a slideshow).
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