Christmas

A few pictures taken over x-mas period:

Christmas coming

I ordered a christmas present for myself. It will not arrive in time for x-mas, but anyhow. My previous snowcamo-outfit has mysteriously disappeared somewhere in the past years. In fact, it might be even a good thing that it's gone, because it most likely had shrunk over the years, at least at the waist. So, now there is a new one coming in the mail. Nice to head out to our little trip in january when the gear is in order.

Pictures after a long break

We took a trip to visit relatives out west. I went along to watch a kids floorball tournament, managed to take a few pictures also:

Damn

My second shift after a long time off from work and I'm feeling that what Jon Lajoies video is all about is not such an bad idea after all:

Autumn

I could feel the silence this morning, the grayness of the fog muted the last sounds away. It felt good.
I took a few hours walk-about this morning. Took down the hide and brought it home to dry and wait for some minor adjustments.

Sunset cranes

I promised to post a couple of pictures from yesterdays swamp meet and write a few thoughts on cranes. Let's start with the pictures:
The first picture gives an idea on how hopeless our situation was for photography. With the cranes at such a distance from us there was not much hope of getting the type of pictures that I was aiming for. The picture was taken with a 400mm lens and has not been blown up at all.

The second one I feel is beautiful in its own way, with a purple shade of the sunset and a flock of cranes flying towards the camera. A sight like that causes a photographers mind to start racing and heart to pound with excitement. Will the cranes land close or just fly by? If they land, how will they be situated in relation to the hide, will the background give maximum effect to the pictures and so on. The list of thoughts racing thru a naturephotographers mind looking at a sight like that one is almost endless. Yesterday they flew right by us.

It has been interesting to notice how differently cranes act at the swamp compared to when they are at fields nearby. A flock of cranes on a field could not care less if I walk to the edge of the field to take pictures. At the swamp, the slightest sight of a photographer at the edge of the swamp causes the flock to move farther away and at the swamp the distances in question are much greater from the beginning. Cranes landing on a field do circle the area before they land, but very seldom change their decision to land, even if they do spot a human somewhere close to the field. At the swamp the birds will pull up immediately if they spot any movement at their intended landingsite, as was the case with our group yesterday. Once landed, a few birds will keep their head up at all times, monitoring the surroundings. If any movement is seen, the entire flock will know about it immediately, most often resulting in having all the birds look first at what is happening and then the entire flock rising to their wings. It would be rather easy to take note of which fields are used by cranes during the ongoing fall migration and then pick out a suitable ditch at the edge of the field and lay there under camonetting taking pictures. I just don't feel that it would be the same. Difficult and challenging way of getting it is what makes a good picture all the more valuable for me personally. Besides, my goal at the moment is to capture life in the swamps in pictures, so I can't really go take them in some field, can I?

Picnic

It went just as I feared it would, the cranes fooled us. Three photographers sitting around in the "west wing extension" of the hide and the cranes were nowhere to be seen. Or to be precise, we saw them. They flew right past us or then they were out in the distance. A small flock was approaching with intensions of landing close to the hide, but two birds at the edge of the flock caught a glimpse of us and right in the middle of their landing turn called out a warning. This resulted in the entire flock banking hard to the left and flying away. The cranes disappeared behind the small patch of forrest close to the hide.

As a desperate last ditch effort we decided to try and take a look at the other side of the patch of forrest, if the cranes would have landed close enough to the trees for a few pictures from behind the bushes. There were quite a few birds visible on the other side of the forrestpatch. The only problem was that they were resting at the far end of the swamp from us. Disappointed, we were heading back towards the hide and the gear we left behind, when we saw a much larger flock heading towards us. We took a quick sprint of about 60 meters in the swamp, trying to get under the cover of the trees. The cranes flew right past us and landed with the rest of their kind at the furthermost corner of the swamp. As the evening grew darker, we picked up our gear from the hide and headed back to the city.

I'll post a picture of two here tomorrow with a few more thoughts on cranes and photographing them.