Making the Photo You Want

(September 5th) At first I thought making great wildlife photos was a matter of being in the right place at the right time and mastering all the technical skills. This really isn't the case though - the best photos are made rather than just happened upon. Today I was fortunate to make one of those photos that I like and it took quite some time and a little bit of luck. First of all, you have to have the animals well and where they'll be when. For shooting some of the shorebirds I wanted I headed to a great location called Pt. Mouilee and began lying in mud before dawn. This is so the birds will be accustomed to you and come quite close. You must also know the light. I know well where the sun will rise, so I made sure to lie in spot that the sun would rise in the right direction over the spot that the birds would likely be. Lastly, you need to have the composition visualized beforehand. For this shot, I knew I wanted to work into the image the Purple Loosestrife that you see here - a killer background in my mind.

You don't usually see flowers in pictures with shorebirds, so this kind of opportunity is rare one. Everything has to line up right. As I'm lying on my belly, the birds need to be in just the right spot, with the right body angle. A few inches to either side and either vegetation will be in the way or the background will be out of balance. In the end I was able to make a shot that I really like of this Lesser Yellowlegs. It's not perfect, but the image came together in a great way. In a sense, I started working on this photo a year ago when I learned much about the behavior and favorite haunts of the Lesser Yellowlegs during their fall migration through Michigan.

There were plenty of other shorebirds around to keep me occupied while I was waiting for the Lesser Yellowlegs shot to line up. There were many Least Sandpiers around, poking and prodding at the mud looking for food buried beneath.