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.
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.)
A young Sandhill Crane (Grus canadensis) brakes to land, Bernardo Wildlife Management Area, New Mexico
Here’s another favorite image from Bernardo Wildlife Management Area. As I mentioned before, I photographed here for the first time in December 2010. What a great discovery! Non-stop flight action, with good light angles. Heaven!
There are four keys to a successful flight image like this. First: shutter speed. Even at 1/1000th of a second, you can see that the wing tips are slightly blurred. If my shutter speed was much slower, the entire bird would be unsharp. Second: great light. Third: the background. I strongly prefer flight images with a background that has more than just blue sky. The extra hint of color and context help a lot, I think. Fourth: lots of practice. I’ve made tens of thousands of flight images, and it’s still not easy to keep a fast bird in the frame. But what I thrill when I do.
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.
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.
Mallard drake in flight, Broomfield, Colorado
This Mallard (Anas platyrhynchos) flew by while I was photographing a blue heron rookery. (I made some very nice blue heron images, which I’ll post shortly.) It’s easy to forget just how fast these birds are until they fly by. Note that even with a fast shutter speed (1/1000th of a second) the wingtips are still slightly blurred.
When I migrated my old site over to the current one, I left out a number of photos that do not represent my best work. This mallard image didn’t make the cut. My brother likes this one enough, however, to complain that he could no longer find it. By request (and after more carefully evaluating the image) I’ve added it back to the bird portfolio.
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