Posts in Category: New Mexico
Young Buck: Bosque del Apache
Though Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge is managed for Snow Geese and Cranes, and to a lesser extent ducks, Mule Deer are common on the refuge. And they are tame. The young deer in particular have little fear of man, as long as man stays inside man’s car.
After shooting the dawn show one morning I decided to take a loop of the tour road before reporting to the Vendor’s tent, and there was a group of five young Mule Deer feeding beside the road, right at the four way stop within sight of the entrance booth. I joined the six or seven cars that were stopped along one or the other of the roads, and pulled up within 25 feet of the deer. They were busy grazing and paid no attention to the attention they were getting.
This shot was taken out the window of the car at about 1100mm equivalent field of view. As you see, the deer was so close I had to back off on the full zoom. The light was not so great as the sun was still low and buried in clouds. f6.5 @ 1/125 @ ISO 800. However the soft light is just about right for a portrait.
Canon SX50HS. Program with auto iContrast and Shadow Fill. Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness.
Sandhills in Silhouette: Bosque del Apache
One of the reasons you get up before dawn and go stand in the cold by some patch of water at Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge…or at the other end of the day, stand in the same spot on feet that are way too tired, ignoring the urgent summons to supper your tummy is broadcasting…is the silhouettes of the Cranes against the early or late day sky. Cranes in flight at any time are a primal, almost a prehistoric site, and when reduced to their most basic and cast against a sky in various shades of sunrise or sunset, they speak directly to the layer of the mind that is under the civilized and the socialized. There is something attractively wild, primeval, in a Crane in silhouette. (Do click these first two images to see them as large as your monitor or screen will allow.)
This year, with my new Canon SX50HS, I was able to catch the best Bosque silhouettes of my photographic life so far…and even some semi-silhouettes that still hold detail in the cranes like the dawn shot above.
The first image is three shots of the same Crane as I panned with it in Sports Mode at 5 frames per second. After trying a triptych, which did not quite work, I used PhotoShop Element’s PhotoMerge tool in Panorama Mode to hand place and blend the images at the edges…and then evened the exposure even more using the dodge tool. The rest are just straight Sports Mode shots processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness. The next to last one is cropped at the left to eliminate a half bird.
Bosque Dawn 2: Happy Sunday!
On Saturday at the Festival of the Cranes I woke myself up early, grabbed a shower and a banana from the breakfast buffet at the hotel, and made the 25 mile drive out to Bosque Del Apache National Wildlife Refuge to be there well before dawn. When I made the dawn run on Thursday, I had been just slightly too late, and I had driven all the way in to the Flight Deck on the main pond at Bosque. I almost missed the rising of the Snow Geese who, that morning and in that place, were up and in the air a good ten minutes before the sun touched the horizon. I did not want to be late again…so I left earlier and I did not go so far into the Refuge.
I stopped at the newer ponds along NM 1, just inside the refuge. Good thing. The parking lots were already about full, and close to two hundred people lined the service road that boarders the ponds…many of them with their 600mm Canon lenses on big tripods, and at least one other camera body with a shorter lens for flight shots, but just as many with no camera at all…or with only a phone camera. I know why the big lens guys (and girls) are there, but I am always impressed that normal citizens, with no photographic imperative (or only so much as a phone camera indicates) will leave warm beds, bundle up, and drive out to shiver in the dawn to catch the rise of the geese and cranes.
I am impressed by the numbers, but I totally understand the motivation. Anyone who has ever seen the geese and cranes rise at dawn once will be indelibly marked with the desire to see it again. And anyone who has heard a friend or relative describe the experience…who has witnessed the glow in the eyes and the grin that cover the inadequate, stumbling words of the description (which often amounts to no more that “you just gotta see it!”)…will have reason for enough curiosity (if they are alive at all to nature) to want to see it for themselves. Some of these people have driven down from Albuquerque this Saturday morning, getting up at 3 am to arrive and stand beside me on this patch of dirt road beside the shallow flooded field ponds. Some of the big lens crowd have traveled (as I have) across the breath or depth of the USA to be there.
Wherever we come from, we share the anticipation, the eager excitement, as we wait for dawn. Myself, I can not resist running out to the edge of the road on the other side of the parking lot to catch a few shots of the sky as the sun rises, though I know each time I do that I might have my back turned when the geese rise.
Or I turn to watch the color come into the southern sky over the mountains and the cars in the parking lot.
The geese are late this morning. Something in the air is holding them on the ponds well past the real dawn on the opposite horizon. We are getting cold now.
And then it happens, without any warning beyond a sudden increase in the volume of the constant chorus of geese honks and cackles, and prehistoric voices of the cranes…woosh…and the air of full of gyring bodies, beating wings, and ashudder with the cries of the geese and the alram of the cranes. Only the geese come up off the water. The cranes are made of sterner stuff, and besides, lack the ability to leap direct into the air…they need a runway to get airborne…but the geese are enough.
In the half-light of the dawn my camera strains to catch more than a blur in the mass of geese. They spiral up and out…not a normal panic this, where the geese will settle back in the same pond or field after something puts them up…but a mass movement of geese to their daytime feeding grounds. They circle overhead, the flock stretching out and branching off as they form into different curving lines and head for the horizons across the delicate tints of the dawn to find some farm field full of unharvested grain…or some newly flooded crop field on the refuge.
And by now the sun is up, though still hidden behind clouds, and the last tints are fading to gold in the east. Over there the air is still full of the birds that have come up off the Flight Deck Pond, to far away for more than silhouettes and a benediction on the last of dawn.
Happy Sunday!
Hey! Move along. No turkeys here!
Happy Thanksgiving!
This is just a somewhat random shot from Willow Deck on the tour loop on a dark morning at Bosque del Apache NWR…but I like the expression on that Snow Goose. I am not certain that he was talking about turkeys at all, in fact, but, by the look of it, he was certainly saying (or thinking) something pointed about what I was doing up on that deck. Considering the proximity of the holiday (and the well known solidarity of birdkind) it is not unreasonable to think he was warning me off, just in case I mistook those big birds behind him as the centerpiece of the holiday feast (or just in case I was so untraditional as to fancy goose as the main course, or even a side dish:)
No really. Happy Thanksgiving to you and yours. May your table be as laden as your heart, and may your heart be big enough to embrace all the blessings of the year. May you overflow with thanksgiving.
I know I am…overflowing that is…
And if you need independent testimony…well…I offer you this goose! He will vouch for me.
Canon SX50HS. Program with auto iContrast and Shadow Fill. –1/3 EV Exposure Compensation. 1800mm equivalent field of view. f6.5 @ 1/400th @ ISO 800. Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness.
The Fawn and The Crane: Bosque del Apache NWR
After we closed up the vendor tent at The Festival of the Cranes, I generally managed to get a bit of observation and photography done before the sun set. The light at Bosque del Apache is lovely at that time of day. On Sunday, in my final loop of the refuge on this visit, I drove up on three Mule Deer fawns (maybe two fawns and a yearling), feeding in the short grass at the edge of one of the “farm” fields at the north end of the tour loop. There was a group of Sandhill Cranes deeper in, among the green clover crop that had been planted for the Snow Geese, but a few had strayed out looking for bugs in the short grass with the deer.
I took lots of pics of the deer, but what I really wanted was at least one fawn and a crane in the same shot. Though the light was rapidly going, and I hade a few more spots I wanted to get to before full dark, I waited until the deer got far enough out in the field to frame the shot I was after. 🙂
Canon SX50HS. Program with auto iContrast and Shadow Fill. -1/3 EV exposure compensation. 1200mm equivalent field of view. f6.5 @ 1/800th @ ISO 800. Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness.
And a couple of bonus shots.
Early HDR: Bosque del Apache NWR
I woke up Sunday morning in Socorro to wet streets. It had evidently rained heavily during the night. The Rio Grande Valley and all of New Mexico certainly needs the rain. On the dive out to Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge, the landscape, still under massive clouds, looked fresh washed…all the colors sharpened and deepened. It was especially effective on the browns and oranges of late fall.
I could not resist stopping at one of the wildlife viewing areas along the road into the refuge and setting up my hyper-light weight travel tripod for some HDRs. I like the tones in this one, the sweep of the clouds, and the leading lines of the two roads. It is looking straight north up the Rio Grande Valley.
Canon SX50HS. HDR Mode. (The camera takes three shots at three different exposures and combines them in-camera for a single extended range image. Hence the need for tripod.) 24mm equivalent field of view. f4 @ 1/250th @ ISO 80. Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness using my new “soft-hyper” preset.
Sunset on the Flight Deck: Bosque del Apache. Happy Sunday!
For me Bosque del Apache has always been a very special place. I love the water and the mountains, the concentration of wildlife, the feeling of community among staff, the Friends of Bosque group, and the large group of full and part time volunteers. I like the small college town feel of Sucorro, which overlays the essential Hispanic cowboy and farming culture.
I like the fact that, year after year, the spectacle of the geese and cranes at dawn and sunset continues to attract crowds of people…not so much birders…as regular folk who make the drive down from Albuquerque and Santa Fe, or who include the Bosque in their vacation plans, just to stand to the edge of the road, the edge of a pond, or on the Flight Deck as the sun rises or sets and watch and listen. It is often cold, and people are bundled up, with hats and scarves and gloves…cold even in heavy winter coats…but they are there, waiting for the cranes to come in or the geese to rise.
And when it happens there is an energy that sweeps the crowd…a kind of glee…an obvious and overflowing delight. I love to watch the people coming off the Flight Deck…the uniformity and yet the vast variety of grins! You see the grin in the eyes of even those most muffled in scarves.
And that is just the spectacle of the birds. If you are at Bosque for a week in November (or almost any month) you are just about guaranteed one spectacular dawn and one spectacular sunset: the kind that touch the very deepest places of awe in us. The sun rises and the sun sets everyday…but there are sunrises and sunsets that are simply something to see! And you hear it in the crowd. “Now that is really something!” That is about as close as we can get to describing what such a sunrise or sunset does to us. Something. Something universal and powerful. Something that makes us glad to be alive. Something that fills us with thanksgiving. Something very close to the root of awe in us.
I finished at the vendor’s tent (I am, after all, at Bosque to work) just in time on Friday to get out to the Flight Deck for the sunset fly in of the geese. The Deck itself was already packed shoulder to shoulder with people and I had no intention of attempting to worm my way to a spot on the rail. I parked further down and planned to shoot the incoming geese and cranes from the edge of the pond. But then the sky happened, and the sunset bloomed. I took several shots from the road, out over the cars, but it really needed the reflecting water of the pond, and the only way to get that was get out on the Flight Deck. I found a spot at the rail on the boardwalk leading out to the deck that worked…that gave me the expanse of water and sky I had seen in my mind’s eye.
The Canon SX50HS has a hand-held night scene mode which I am experimenting with for sunrises and sunsets, and I used it here. It takes three very rapid shots and combines them in-camera. There is just enough exposure blending to extend the range of the image…to capture a realistic foreground as well as the drama of the sky. Just my normal processing in Lightroom produces among the most natural sunrise and sunset shots I have yet managed. Of course I had to try it here.
I took a lot of shots and worked hard to keep the Flight Deck itself out of the images, but actually, it this one where I intentionally included the end of the deck and the people on it as part of the composition that really captures the experience best for me.
And for the Sunday thought: for me awe is an essential element of faith…I don’t believe I could believe in, or put my faith in, a Creator who was not awesome in every way…who did not inspire a feeling of root awe in me in every encounter…in every aspect of the Creator’s person, presence and works…and in relationship to me. Wonder is required, and wonder is my most basic emotion. Followed closely by thankfulness. “I have seen the face of God and yet I live!” The most wonderful thing about the awe of God is that we can experience it, more that than, we can participate in it, in its full awesome glory and yet live to tell about it. The most wonderful thing is that we are made to tell about it…that telling about it is, at least in part, what we are created to do.
Wonder and thanksgiving are the compounded elements of love…and ultimately it is love I feel in a sunset like this one…and it is the Creator’s love I am inspired to tell about. I have been overwhelmed by beauty and splendor, and yet I live! That is love in its most essential form. Or that’s what I think.
Bosque Sunrise
On every trip to Bosque del Apache for the Festival of the Cranes it is mandatory to get out at least one dawn to see the geese rise…and to experience the Bosque dawn itself. That means leaving your hotel in Socorro before 6am. But it is almost always worth it. You have to decide whether to stop at the ponds on the way into the refuge beside the road, where the geese rest for the night, and try to catch them when they rise. They are closer there than anywhere else on the refuge. Or, if you want the sunrise across the water, you continue on the the main tour loop and drive out to the Flight Deck Pond. It seems as though there will masses of people there already no matter which you choose or how early you get there…but there is always room for one more, if you are willing to park and walk.
These are shots from the Flight Deck Pond. As it turned out, most of the geese were else where this particular dawn…but the dawn itself was typical of one of the November cloudless days on the Bosque.
And the geese did rise. I wanted to catch them against the dawn sky, but most of the flocks came up further north. Still.
And of course once the geese are gone, you still have the Sandhill Cranes wading in the reflection of the sunrise in the water.
All shots Canon SX50HS. 1) and 3) are Sports Mode. 2) is Hand-held Night Shot Mode (the camera takes three very rapid exposures and combines them…I am finding that it comes as close to capturing the real visual range of a sunrise or sunset as I have yet been able to do.) 4) is just a long tel-shot with –1/3 EV exposure compensation.
Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness. 2) cropped as needed for composition.
Snow Geese Rising
One of the sights you do not want to miss is the Snow Geese at Bosque del Apache rising in a mass panic. If you stand and watch a field full of geese for long enough it will happen. There is a sudden increase in noise in the flock and then within seconds the whole flock rises into the air and the sound of wings and geese honking…and the sight of all those white and blacks wings flashing…the swirl of birds in intricate motion is enough to freeze the grin on your face! I can still vividly remember the first time it happened to me at Bosque, low these 25 years ago. And it is still as awesome every time it happens again. And that is the word: awesome!
Of course I have attempted to photograph it whenever it happened. As cameras have improved, so have my results. This, I can honestly say, is the best so far. I love the way every bird is sharp. I love the depth of the flock. And there is a lot to like beyond the technical in the image. The Cranes on the ground certainly add some perspective…and a few still points to emphasize the motion of the geese. You really should view it as large as you monitor allows by clicking the image.
Canon SX50HS in Sports Mode. 750mm equivalent field of view. f5.6 @ 1/1250th @ ISO 200. Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness.
Sandhills Landing at Sunset
One of the things you do at Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge during the Festival of the Cranes is to attend the sunset fly-in of the Cranes. The Sandhills spread themselves up and down the length of the refuge during the day, and beyond its boundaries to the fields of cooperative farmers who are paid to leave a certain percentage of grain in the fields after harvest to feed the Cranes, but just before and just after sunset the Cranes fly in to a few chosen ponds and fields on the refuge to spend the night. For the most part they stand in water all night, as protection from predators. The high desert light of the upper Rio Grande valley, and the surrounding mountains make the incoming flight of the Cranes into a spectacle that rarely fails to draw a crowd to the parking lots and overlooks provided by the refuge.
If you look up and down the levee, you can see a fair fraction of the Canon’s recent production of 600mm lenses 🙂 as well as everything from phone cameras to superzoom Point & Shoots. It seems that everyone is compelled to attempt to capture the vision of the cranes coming in in the pre-sunset light.
I try it every year, with mixed success, but this year my new Canon SX50HS made job much easier. Sports gives me almost instant focus on moving subjects, and 5 frames per second capture for up to 10 frames with focus between frames. It also pushes the ISO up to provide higher shutter speeds. It is brilliant for birds in flight and, as it happens, Cranes landing in the last pre-sunset light.
Canon SX50HS in Sports Mode. 1-3) 1200mm equivalent field of view. f6.5 @ 1/640-1/100th @ ISO 800. 4) 600mm equivalent. f5.6 @ 1/640th @ ISO 800. Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness. Except for 3), cropped top and bottom for effect.
I am not sure I am going to get back for another sunset on this trip to Bosque, but even if I don’t, I am really happy with these images! They are all linked to the full screen lightbox versions…and they look even better there. 🙂