Egrets! An Essay on How to Be Prepared and Unprepared for a Shoot

Those that know me know that above all, I am a por­trait shooter–I like pho­tograph­ing peo­ple. How­ever, as I’ve men­tioned before in this blog, when I’m not pho­tograph­ing peo­ple, I push myself to pho­to­graph other things–landscapes, wildlife, skate­board­ing, what­ever. Whether the pho­to­graphic results are good or bad, they always teach me some­thing, usu­ally use­ful, about myself, my cam­era, my gear, or about the world around me.

This morn­ing, I got up before dawn, which is some­thing I usu­ally only do because I have to work. I brewed some fresh cof­fee, and started pack­ing my cam­era bag. I made sure I had my 16–35, my 70–200 f/4 with tri­pod col­lar, my polar­izer. I dou­ble checked for the things I use less often–soft and hard grad­u­ated neu­tral den­sity fil­ters, the fil­ter holder, a step-up ring for the 70–200 so I could use the fil­ters, my teleconverter.

My gear packed, I drove out to Maple­view, a dairy farm in Chatham county that is a favorite of mine for ice cream, relax­ing, get­ting away from town for a minute, what­ever. It is one of the places I go to relax, usu­ally in the late after­noon and evening, when the sun is set­ting over the grain ele­va­tor and pas­tures. I’ve only pho­tographed around Maple­view one other time at dawn, way back when I was still shoot­ing Nikon, and really enjoyed the expe­ri­ence. So I headed back, know­ing the sun­light would be at my back and hop­ing to get some nice, bucolic late sum­mer photos.

I arrived at my park­ing spot, got out of the car and popped the trunk, looked out over the fields still dark in the predawn, a low fog hang­ing around the trees. It would be a lovely morn­ing to pho­to­graph. And then I opened the trunk, only to find.…… I’d left my tri­pod at home! A twenty minute drive wasted, and pre­cious lit­tle time to go till dawn. I could stay, shoot high ISOs or wide aper­tures and hope for some okay images, or I could rush home, grab the tri­pod, and try to res­cue the morn­ing by going some­where closer to home and beat the sun. I chose the lat­ter. So, les­son #1 in how to be pre­pared: pack all your gear the night before when you are sharp and not sleepy or rushing–you are much more likely to for­get that one essen­tial piece of gear that will keep you from get­ting opti­mal images.

From the images in this blog post, you may have real­ized that my fall­back loca­tion was Jor­dan Lake, a fin­ger of which is about fif­teen min­utes from my door. It is an area I have scouted exten­sively, and I know, gen­er­ally, what it will look like at a given time on a given day. Les­son #2 for being pre­pared: the more you know about a given loca­tion, the more quickly you can get to opti­mal pho­to­graphic places and get set up. I was able to get the tri­pod, get to Jor­dan Lake, hike through the woods to the shore, and get every­thing set up before the sun rose.

I was for­tu­nate this morn­ing to find what I did: a large con­gre­ga­tion of egrets and herons, brought together by the low lake lev­els, which cre­ate mud­flats and large expanses of shal­low water, per­fect hunt­ing grounds for these shore­birds. Most peo­ple asso­ciate ultra wide angle lenses with land­scape pho­tog­ra­phy, but every one of these pho­tos was taken with the 70–200 AND the 1.4x tele­con­verter, for a max­i­mum focal length of 280mm. Of course I’d like longer, but it gets the job done. Les­son #3: Just because you plan to use your UWA lens for your land­scape pho­tos, bring along a tele­photo, just in case–you never know what you might be able to do with it.

The final les­son is to be pre­pared for the unex­pected. I had fin­ished shoot­ing this side of the lake and headed over to the other side, where the sun was at my back. I was set­ting up to shoot land­scape photo fea­tur­ing the full moon over the lake, when a decid­edly non-heron like bird flew by. I still had my 70–200 + tele­con­verter on the cam­era, but it was oth­er­wise set up com­pletely wrong for shoot­ing a bird-in-flight. I fum­bled with the set­tings, man­aged to get a few set right, and cap­tured this:

No, it’s not a great bald eagle photo and no, it won’t win any awards, but that’s kind of my point. If I had been pay­ing closer atten­tion, and had set up my cam­era for this sort of chance encounter while I was walk­ing, I might have been bet­ter pre­pared and might have taken a bet­ter photo–this eagle came from behind me, and was much closer than when I finally cap­tured this frame. At the same time, though, I was semi-prepared in the sense that I had my tele­con­verter and tele­photo with me, and that I know my cam­era well enough that I was able to make some set­tings changes quickly enough to get a photo before the eagle soared away.

In the end, it was a lovely morn­ing to be alive, and out­side, and watch­ing the world awaken. You should always be pre­pared to expe­ri­ence that, to enjoy the fresh­ness and hope of dawn or what­ever it is you are pho­tograph­ing. You should always be pre­pared to expe­ri­ence life, and every­thing else, includ­ing pho­tog­ra­phy, should be secondary.