marlenkemmet

When most photographers start taking images of waterfowl, we take a lot of images of birds sitting on the water. But, as we strive for more intriguing images, we lean towards birds in motion. Although I tend to shy away from photographing paddling birds, I look for any opportunity of waterfowl fighting for a mate, taking off, or landing on water. Splashing water helps communicate movement. A fast shutter speed will freeze the disturbed water giving the image another visual element. To capture this type of shot, I photograph in the cluster mode so I can get seven to eight frames per second. And, I watch birds closely to know when the best splashing will take place. Shoot too early or too late and it’s easy to miss the effect. And, by shooting multiple frames per second, it allows me to choose the image with the best water movement. The other interesting aspect of this photo is the goose’s tongue. Sometimes you don’t notice characteristics like this until you view the photo later on a large screen.

Water is always blue, right? Nope. I’ve seen water change different colors as the sun sets or rises. The color changes when the sun is hidden behind clouds and then is not. This image was photographed at the Saylorville Spillway just before sunset. In a matter of minutes, the water turned from an uninviting, cold gray to this golden hue. At first, I thought it was the reflection of the fall foliage on the water, but I now believe it was simply the reflection of the sunset on the water. I had my back to the sunset in this photo and wasn’t aware of the color of the sky of the setting son. The afternoon this was taken, I was practicing taking pelican flight shots, working on my panning and shutter speed. The water was only this color for about five minutes, and luckily the pelicans were still flying. This is another great example of the beautiful lighting you can get after sunrise and before sunset (the golden hours). DSM magazine gave this image an entire page a few years ago.

Before visiting a particular location, I’ll often read as much as possible about the specifics of what can be photographed before going to the spot. Knowing sunrise and sunset is often extremity important. Case in point, Mount Evans, Colorado. The best time to photograph the Mountain Goats and Bighorn Sheep are very early in the morning as they tend to head down the mountain side to graze within an hour or two after sunrise. From our lodging in Breckenridge, Colorado, Slade and I would get up at 4am, drive to Idaho Springs, and then take the white-knuckle drive up Mount Evans. This road is the highest paved road in North America. Once at the peak you can photograph the goats and sheep at close range. But, by 9am, they start to disperse and head down the mountain. In Yellowstone, Slade and I are usually heading out of Gardner, Montana at 5:30am to be in Lamar Valley by sunrise. When photographing wood ducks from a blind northwest of Minneapolis, I have to arise at 4am to be in the blind prior to sunrise. It’s not enough to be at the location at sunrise, but you need to be set up and ready to shoot at sunrise. You snooze you lose.

When I first photographed a pelican, it was a ways off, and I almost had to tell people looking at the picture what it was. Then, I started photographing pelicans at a closer range paddling and then flying. A few years ago, I realized I had thousands of images of pelicans in flight. Since I greatly enjoyed watching them, I knew I had to shoot something more exciting. I spent several hours with binoculars watching pelicans to witness a behavior I had not photographed when I noticed that when a pelican caught a fish, there were times when the fish was visible for a few seconds before a pelican would swallow it. The larger the fish, the longer it took to get swallowed. From then on, I spent countless hours closely watching pelicans in hopes they would catch a fish and that I would be able to photograph it before it got swallowed. Patience (not my strong point) paid off as I now have dozens of feeding shots like this one. Sometimes you lay the camera down and just watch wildlife to learn their behaviors and characteristics. You will learn something that is absolutely amazing even if you don’t get a picture.

I was photographing at the north end of Bosque Del Apache near Socorro, New Mexico in November, and I was fixated on the thousands of Sandhill Cranes and Ross Geese feeding directly in front of me. As the cranes were leaving the field and heading back to the safety of water for the night, I panned their flight path. With my camera mounted on a Gimbal-style head atop of a heavy-duty tripod, I started taking images directly in front of me and then rotated the camera 90 degrees to my right as they flew away. In doing so, I inadvertently noticed that the moon rise was before sunset and that by following the birds flight path, some of them were flying directly between the full moon and myself. I’d like to say I planned it this way, but I was lucky to be in the right place at the right time. Had I not viewed my surroundings and continued to shoot just in front of me, I would have missed this golden opportunity to catch both the cranes and geese with the moon in the background.

As an aspiring wildlife photographer, I would often drive country roads looking for the occasional pheasant, turkey, duck, deer, or coyote. Most days I came home with few or no good images. Then I started doing more research and followed numerous online image-posting sites to see what, and more importantly where, other wildlife photographers were shooting. Last fall I learned that Longfellow Gardens in Minneapolis is a frequently visited area for hummingbirds on their fall migration south. The groundskeepers do an incredible job of having numerous flowers in bloom for hummingbirds to feed at. On a good day, there are dozens of birds feeding in a small area, making it easy for even a novice photographer to grab some great images. To freeze the wings of a hummingbird in flight, I shoot at least 1/1000 of a second. Longer exposures can be used to freeze the body, but create a blur of the wings. Both acceptable methods. 1/1250 sec., f/6, 400 mm, ISO 400, Nikon D7200, Manfrotto tripod with a Gimbal-style head.

In researching birding behaviors, I learned that great blue herons create their nests in rookeries. Here in Central Iowa herons prefer sycamore trees for their communal nesting sites. This particular rookery consists of about 50 nests in four sycamore trees in close proximity to each other. At two herons per nest, there are approximately 100 herons that populate this rookery. This time of year herons are working on their nests. To do this, the male heron flies to a nearby area and either finds a stick on the ground or breaks one off a tree. He then flies the twig back to the nest and gives it to the female who uses it on the nest. Ornithologists believe that the main reason for communal nesting is due to a scarcity of nesting areas that are isolated, near an abundant food supply, and contains tall trees. By living in large groups there is cooperative protection of their young from predators. If a hawk or raccoon is seen stalking a baby heron several adults in the colony will physically attack the predator. This is called “mobbing”. With their long, dagger-like bills, a heron can easily kill most predators. Herons are mostly monogamous during a breeding season, but choose new mates every year. In watching the herons for 90 minutes this morning, there was seldom a 15-second period where there wasn’t at least one heron in the air returning to a nest with a stick.

I’ve been to Yellowstone twice, both times with our oldest son Slade, a professional photographer/videographer. Each time I swore I wouldn’t take another image of a bison. But when I saw this one rolling in the dirt, I couldn’t resist. Wallowing is when bison roll on the dry ground in a “dust bath” to relieve skin irritations caused by shedding a winter coat or seeking relief from biting insects. Rolling on the ground also creates a layer of dirt on the bison’s body that forms a defensive barrier from ticks and lice. The wallowing behavior of bison creates wallows; bowl-like depressions. Wallows were once a common feature of the Great Plains before European settlement and changes in land use. Across the Great Plains, it is estimated that there may have been five or more bison wallows per acre. With a historic extent of 500,000 square miles, the Great Plains could have once been marked with over 1.5 billion bison wallows.

When we did a scuba diving trip to Bonaire, Netherlands Antilles, I knew it was a great opportunity to photograph flamingos. But, when I heard a fellow diver mention the bats outside his room every night, it caught my attention. I went to the area of his lodging, in the middle of a large complex, and sure enough bats were flying around a blooming agave. Although there was a little ambient light, the area for the most part was very dark. At first, I tried to focus on individual bats, but unlike a hummingbird which will spend two to three seconds feeding at a flower, a bat spends about one second. It was like trying to photograph bullets. I noticed the plant had about 10 blooms, so I focused on just one of area. In theory, if that area was in focus so should the bat when he flew through it. I had to use a tripod to hold the camera steady to focus on the small spot. The next problem was that in the dark, I could barely tell when a bat approached and having to photograph with a flash allowed me just one image at a time as the flash needed to recycle. If this were done in good light, I could have shot in the cluster mode and got 7 images per second. I spent several hours over a couple of evenings at the location and took hundreds of images. Luckily a few were taken at just right moment. 1/60 sec., f/3.8, 24 mm, ISO 320, Nikon D7200, Manfrotto tripod with a Gimbal-style head.