The Way the Wind Blows

(January 27th) It's become a bit of a routine now, waking up before dawn and driving up to the cliffs to spend time with the pelicans. When I got there everything was all wrong. The light was fine, and the pelicans were there. The big problem was the wind - it was blowing in the worst possible direction. If I was to use the light when the sun came up, I'd be getting a lot of photographs of the rear of pelicans. Head-on, from the side - these angles all are workable, but from the tail just isn't good. So I quickly got back in the car and drove another half an hour to get the duck location. After waiting around about an hour for the park to open, in I went and the ducks, like this Ring-necked Duck were waiting.

I had a lot of portrait shots from the last time here, so I was trying to work a few new things. I wanted some 'action' shots, and well... you just have to wait and hope. I found it comical when this Mallard rolled onto its side in the water and started to scratch itself.

While action was a goal, my primary motivation for the day was to apply some of the lessons I had learned from working the light at the shore three days earlier. The goal was to bring out some nice color in the water and work the light properly. Started out pretty simple with some more typical colors like in this Ring-necked Duck photograph.

Clouds came through and changed the light pretty dramatically and I moved around to a different lake. The lakes here had several duck species. While I spent a lot of time with the Ring-necked and Wood Ducks, there were a few of the less common ducks like this male American Wigeon that provided some great opportunities.

I was busy photographing the ducks in the water when the completely unexpected happened. One of the wigeons decided to walk right up out of the water, and right next to me. I'm lying completely down to make the birds at ease with me and also to get a good angle on the birds. It gave me some unusual shots of the American Wigeon I would never have guessed I would take before he walked too close to me to photograph.

The sun eventually emerged from the clouds and I moved back to the original concept and moved to a spot where I could work the color into the water. I was very pleased with the hues in a series of photographs of another wigeon. The water dribbling from his beak added an nice extra touch.

As always, there were many shots I missed. Most I just wasn't able to get the camera on in time and the shot by the time I did, and a few something was missing with my capture. Plenty did come out as I was imagining though. In a few that combination of light, color, composition, and subject all came together. I had a lot of action shots during the day, mostly of birds flapping. I've spent so much time showing off the males, that I thought I'd show this one of a female Wood Duck.