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 sandhill cranes roosts in backlit ground fog at sunrise, Bosque del Apache NWR, San Antonio, New Mexico.
Here’s another favorite image with the “fire in the mist” backlit ground fog. I like this one because of the wider perspective and sense of billowing fog. This looks best BIG. Be sure to click on the image for a larger version.
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.
A sandhill crane (Grus canadensis) is spotlit by the setting sun, Bernardo Wildlife Area, New Mexico
This year, for the first time, I detoured from Bosque to photograph at the nearby Bernado Wildlife Management Area (note: link is to a PDF). The crane action at Bosque was a little slow, both because the corn fields failed, and because the crane pools were frozen solid. Bernardo, on the other hand, had both corn and cranes in abundance.
Bernardo was chock full of cranes; I quickly made some pleasing flight images. However, there were almost too many birds. I couldn’t quite figure out how to make an interesting of the thousands of cranes gathered to feed at the edge of a cornfield. I came up with a few decent takes (some of which I’ll post shortly.) But nothing that I was completely excited about. Just too much detail, too much jumble. Then, just as I was about to pack up my gear and drive back to town, the last rays of the setting sun spotlit a single crane in the field. I’m not sure what created the mix of light and shadow — probably some nearby trees. But whatever the source of the light, I finally had a pleasing image.
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.
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 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.
Sandhill cranes with rising sun, Monte Vista NWR
I never quite get what I expect at Monte Vista National Wildlife Refuge, but I always seem to come away with something good. On my first visit, I was unexpectedly treated to backlit ground fog, leading to some of my all-time favorite images (samples here). Last year, no ground fog. Instead, I made a wonderful image of a roosting sandhill crane, though I never expected to get close enough to do so. (Cranes don’t like company when they’re asleep).
This year was no exception. The biggest surprise was that my favorite image from the trip is of a road, not a bird. But another surprise was that my images came out much better than I initially expected. Indeed, I was a little bit bummed on the drive home, thinking that I’d wasted the weekend. This is not false modesty. Instead, I think, it is the result of four factors. First, I’ve spent a lot of time photographing sandhill cranes (Grus canadensis) already, and so it’s hard to make an image that really excites me. The flight image, below, is a good example. Three or four years I’d have been ecstatic to make such an image. These days I’m happy enough to capture a good flight image. But with lots of practice, it’s not that hard for me to capture these anymore, and I already have a stack of similar images.
Sandhill in crane in flight over farm field, Monte Vista NWR
Second, the lousy weather affected my mood and sense of photographic opportunities. It was horrendously windy and dusty. At one point, the wind was blowing so hard that I had trouble keeping my tripod upright. Photos are ultimately about emotion. An unpleasant and frustrating experience, I guess, makes one discount the emotional impact of a scene.
Sandhill crane in "T" pose, Monte Vista NWR
Third, I tried some challenging new techniques and I wasn’t sure that my experiments would result in any good images. The sun image at the top of this post is a good example. For a variety of reasons (including not wanting to burn a hole in my retina) these are somewhat of a “hold-down-the-shutter-and-hope” image. Likewise, flight images with the bird directly overhead, like the one above, are tough. The birds pass overhead very quickly (more so with the howling wind), and only a few images come out well.
Sandhill crane on ice, Monte Vista NWR
Finally, as usual, Monte Vista was different than before. Not worse. Just different. For example, there was no ground fog, and indeed the pool where I photographed the lovely ground fog/mist was dry. My plans to make previsulalized images went out the window. Happily, I eventually overcame this change in plan. For example, instead of roosting overnight in the “ground fog pool”, birds roosted in different spot where they were illuminated by beautiful morning light. (Example above). And, there was great behavior on display this year. The cranes were “dancing” (really, fighting) like crazy (see below). Plus, I witnessed a huge crane “blastoff”, where thousands of cranes take to the sky at once. (One example is below; others are in the thumbnail gallery at bottom). Instead of coming away disappointed, I should have realized that these unexpected opportunities would serve as material for some nice images.
Sandill cranes dancing, Monte Vista NWR, Monte Vista NWR
Here is a gallery of additional images; please click on a thumbnail for a larger view. (If you’re reading this from an RSS feed or by e-mail, this won’t look right. Long story. Please click through to my website to see this as intended. Sorry!)
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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.
Roosting Sandhill Crane (Img# 100328_1006145)
These are the best images from a quick trip to the Monte Vista NWR at the very end of March with my dad and our photographic friends, Mark and Claudia Brown. Conditions were not quite as good as last year (we were a little late for the peak of the crane migration), but we still had plenty to shoot. The image at the top of this post is easily my favorite from the trip. It is unusual to get this close to a roosting crane, let alone in such great light. Since I couldn’t get a direct sun angle without trespassing, I picked an angle where the sidelight defined the bird’s feathers. Fortunately, the bird was oblivious to me, giving me plenty of time to work into a good shooting position.
Here are some other images from the trip. (This min-gallery may look a little funny if you’re reading this with an RSS reader. Sorry.) Click on a thumbnail for a larger view.
Note: I posted some landscape shots from the same trip here and here.
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).
Cranes in the Mist at Sunrise
I should be camping tonight, getting ready for an early morning shoot in Rocky Mountain National Park tomorrow. Only one problem: there is absolutely nowhere to camp in Estes Park on short notice. So, instead I’m working through some of the images in my que. I have just posted a new gallery of images that I shot at the Monte Vista National Wildlife Refuge in March. Over all the refuge is only “so-so” for crane shooting, but the crane-pool sunrises with steam rising off the pool were spectacular. Here are a few more favorites from the new gallery:
Visit my Monte Vista gallery for more images
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After spending way, way too much time editing and tinkering with my images from Bosque, I have finally posted a collection of my favorite images from the trip. See the whole collection in the Bosque 2008 Gallery.
If you enjoy the images, please let me know in the comments.
Sandhill Crane Calligraphy
I continue to wade through the images from my trip to Bosque Del Apache. I’m making progress . . . slowly. In the meantime, here are two of my favorite “blur” images from the trip. The “Sandhill Calligraphy” image was fairly easy to make, though I was fortunate to capture both birds at the same point in their wing beat. The 2nd image, a pan blur, was much, much more difficult. I made dozens of images before I captured one with a pleasing background and where the bird’s eye is sharp.
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