Sandhill Crane off Willow Deck

The vast majority of my images from Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge and the Festival of the Cranes were taken between 30 minutes before dawn and 90 minutes after. The early morning light at Bosque is, of course, spectacular, and I love it…but my timing is more a matter of circumstance than anything else. Bosque has always been a working trip for me. Come 8:30ish, and I have to be on duty at the ZEISS booth in the Expo Tent, and, most days, preparing for a workshop I am leading. This adds incentive on those mornings when I really do not feel like dragging myself past the breakfast at the hotel, eating granola bars in the car, and arriving somewhere on the Refuge before dawn. Not that I have ever regretted it. 🙂

Some of the best light is just at first light off Willow and Coyote Decks on the back side of Farm Loop. Early in the week these fields were dry and empty, but on Thursday they began to flood the fields to bring the birds in close for the weekend…something they do every year for the Festival of the Cranes…and by Saturday and Sunday the stretch of road between the decks was one of the best places on the Refuge to photograph Cranes and dabbling ducks…there was even a small raft of Snow Geese there both mornings. Because of the dramatic backdrop of the mountains to the west, and the angle of the light, it is also a great place to practice flight photography.

I have a sequence of shots of this Crane as it crossed my line of sight and then banked away toward the ponds on the Route 1. In this shot it is just beginning its turn.

Sony HX400V in Sports Mode. ISO 160 @ 1/400th @ f6.3. Processed and cropped for scale in Lightroom on my Windows tablet.