LEMONADE

MAKING LEMONADE

We were crushed. All winter we had been anticipating a boat trip on a Florida lake to
photograph snail kites, limpkins and bald eagles, as well as the usual assortment of Florida
wading birds. A week before the trip, the Army Corps of Engineers drastically lowered
the water level of the lake, and virtually all of the birds left. Rather than cancel all of our
reservations and totally give up on the trip, we decided to go ahead with it and hope we
could find some substitute subjects.

A boat trip is what we really had in mind, so we chartered one on a different body of water
in the same general area, hoping it would make up for the one we had planned our trip
around. And there were indeed birds, but they were not very tolerant of photographers.
Birds that will casually stare into the barrel of a lens from a few feet away in places like
Ding Darling were too skittish here for anything but the most mediocre snapshots. It
was another disappointment. The captain however, told us about some cranes that could
be found in a wetland near a retirement community. "What kind of cranes?" I asked.
"Whooping cranes, I think," he replied.

Now our spirits were picking up a bit, even
though we weren’t sure the captain could
tell a whooping crane from a construction
crane. We located the retirement community
easy enough, and lo and behold there were
cranes...but they were sandhill cranes. Around
another corner though, there were indeed a pair
of whooping cranes. At first we were worried
about scaring them. Then they started foraging
in someone’s yard as the homeowner got out of
his car and walked past the cranes calling them
by name. The birds recognized their names
better than our cat does (all that means is that
the cranes looked up).

Although it was incredible to be so close
to these endangered birds, photographing
them in someone’s yard wasn’t an ideal
situation. We hardly had time to wish
"if only..." before the birds wandered over
to the wetland. Here the birds foraged,
preened and danced, sometimes so close
we couldn’t focus on them. I don’t want
to get into a debate regarding if it’s in the
birds’ best interest to be this tolerant of
humans. All I know is it was an incredible
experience being accepted as members of
the flock--ungainly, uncoordinated flock
members. And being able to spend some
time with these birds turned a day that
we had already written off as a disaster
into a wonderful experience.

There will always be trips that don’t go
exactly as planned. Either the species
that you want to photograph isn’t
cooperative, the weather you want to
photograph the species in never occurs,
or any one of a hundred other possible
scenarios could happen that force you
to either change your plans or return
home with lots of unshot film or unused
memory cards. If we had not been willing
to change our plans and expectations, we
would have had a very uneventful day.
Be open to alternatives, both locations and
species. There are a lot more things going
on in an area than most photographers,
especially visiting photographers, are
aware of.