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.
