Carolina Wild Photo (the blog)

One of the photographic techniques I’ve been wanting to improve upon is photographing birds in flight, or “BIF” as they’re called by wildlife photographers. This past weekend I made another trip to Cambridge, Maryland, where I planned to concentrate on my technique with ducks (just about my favorite photo subject). I hoped to catch them one last time before they made their usual mid-March exodus to parts far north for the Spring nesting season. Once again I was blessed with sunny warmish weather, a rare freak occurrence it seems this winter, between all the frigid ice, sleet, snow and rain that has characterized the beginning of 2014.
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As a continuation of my recent marathon weekend post, I’d like to focus individually on the two locations from the trip that produced some great photos. In this “part two” installment, I will highlight Cambridge, Massachusetts. The location is along the Choptank River in a quiet old neighborhood near the downtown. The locals began feeding ducks that stopped over on their migration, and ever since ducks have taken advantage of the free corn they have come to expect at this one magic spot. In fact, photographing ducks here is akin to “shooting ducks in a barrel”, to quote a recognizable phrase.
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My absolute favorite birds to photograph have to be ducks. They tend to be the most skittish subjects in the bird world, generally making the task of getting good photos of them fairly difficult. Thankfully there are a few places one can go to get reasonably close to a few species, where they will tolerate the presence of humans in their proximity, within limits of their choosing of course. And with the right equipment and quiet patience, it’s possible to get some excellent photos of these fascinating birds with relative ease, compared to hours or days in the “wilderness” trying to find them, and attempting to get close enough for photography.
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A week and a half after the big coastal snow the NC coast got hit again, this time with more ice and sleet than snow. Power outages and driving on more ice than snow would have made a trip to the coast a very bad idea for this round of weather. Instead I hung around home for the 5 inches we received, with some sleet on top of that, and more snow still on top of that. Though it’s been overcast and snowing, the sky has been a brighter overcast than on my coastal snow trip. That made it feasible to get some photos at home around the bird feeder.

Though there were Juncos, Goldfinch, Red-bellied Woodpeckers, Downies, White-throated Sparrows, Robins, Tufted Titmouses, Nuthatch and a spattering of other birds hanging around, my camera was drawn to the Cardinals. The brilliant red of the males is so photogenic with the snow. As a bird photographer acquaintance of mine put it – “Cardinals and snow go together like strawberries and creme.” Besides, with the not-so-bright light available, the photos needed all the color they could get, and the male Cardinals provided that.
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Well, I’m almost a week into my retirement and I can’t get a break. With all the rain and overcast there’s been no opportunity to get out and get started photographing the winter migration flocks. It seems more like a month though, and actually it has been, because of all the vacation time I had to burn in December just to reach my official retirement date. Christmas and the holidays took up much of that time, though I have been busy with projects around the house, and working on a couple of photography equipment projects, plus general maintenance of my several photography web sites. Still, that’s not photography per se, and I’m itching to get busy on that. As I write this it’s 8 degrees outside with a stiff wind bringing below-zero wind chill temps. Before that it was rain, drizzle and overcast. Cold weather in and of itself is not a deterrent to my photography, although anything below about 25 degrees, particularly with a wind, takes most of the fun out of it. Rain, overcast and no sunshine makes it a complete waste of time.

I managed to write up an equipment article for CarolinaWildPhoto.com for attaching a Hoodman Loupe (a Christmas present) to my camera. I’m also trying to finish up a Ghillie blanket I started back in the summer. After making two Ghillie suits with hoods, and two Ghillie covers for my 500mm and tripod, I pretty much ran out of desire to finish up that blanket at the time. But now that I have the time to work on it I ran out of Ghillie thread, and I’m having to wait on an order to arrive so I can finish the blanket.

So, here I sit behind a keyboard wishing I was behind my camera instead. Maybe I’ll catch a break soon.