Old Friends, New Times, Great Blue Herons 8 April, 2012
I took my first trip of awareness through a Great Blue Heron rookery in 1982, a rookery along a Mississippi backwater, the location of which was handed to us by a Prairie du Chien fishing guide following a bit of inquiry. I still remember my Dad and the bait shop owner talking over the map. Funny how things go, my first trip was really my third. Memory and understanding got in the way. The first visit to a rookery occurred by canoe along the Sauk River, but I was too young to fathom the significance. It did plant a seed. The second visit was just out of reach along the Kickapoo River, and it was the Prairie du Chien trip that gave meaning to the odd, duck-like cackling we heard during much of the Kickapoo float. I was a kid then, and I didn’t know much at all about one of my favorite birds. I did learn quickly that the canoe is the best way to travel and that sweat, mud, and mosquitoes are a pre-requisite to most things worthwhile.
The Great Blue Heron, an old friend, pointed my bow in the direction of conservation, stewardship, and all things “bird.” Herons were my inspiration for nature photography with their dramatic lines and bold colors. My dedicated following of a single species of bird for so long quickly taught me lessons about human perceptions in conservation, and my sense of innocence about the world grew into Aldo Leopold’s “penalty for an ecological education,” the sense of being “alone” in a world of human-inflicted “wounds.” These wounds upon the delicate patterns and relationships I had grown to love felt as wounds to my own body and soul. I had become an environmentalist and a conservation biologist in the making.
As a photographer, I have returned frequently to the herons of my youth. For three years running, Bruce Leventhal (another old friend) and I have strived to capture the impossible sum of all lines, motions, colors, and meanings found in a single event, the Great Blue Herons’ Springtime quest to assemble a worthy stick nest. We have spent more than a dozen hours of “go time,” perched behind our lenses, floating amid the rookeries in spectacular light of early morning. We have pursued our ever-changing artistic vision, allowing the light, the flight, and the environment to transform what it is we seek.
Each visit is different. There is biology in this art form. This year, with the early spring and early arrivals by herons, with drought thirsting the river levels, the action was less urgent. Herons were able to find sticks within a few meters of favored nesting trees, and the window of opportunity, the birds’ own growing season, was clearly extended by two weeks. While the birds’ numbers were strong, their behaviors were fewer and farther between. We stayed focused and began to see new images taking wing.
Great Blue Herons are normally intolerant of human intrusion in Wisconsin and Minnesota. This location, one of my “secret spots,” has been frequented by bass fishermen for years. The birds seem to be fully aware that we are harmless primates with soft hands and no weapons. If only they knew the greater truth. As it is, I am glad for their naïve and nonchalant stance. It makes our visit unimposing and the opportunities to make images simply spectacular!
These images were made from a canoe with a Canon 40D and 300mm lens, hand-held with Image Stabilizer on and set to panning mode (#2). I shot with Aperture Priority and often compensated by opening up 1/3 stop. Shooting at ISO 200 allowed for high-speed shooting. The image of the heron picking up a stick from the forest floor was overexposed by nearly a stop and corrected in Canon Digital Pro editing software. As I have learned from Bruce, it is better to overexpose a digital image than to underexpose. If you don’t burn any areas out in the image, you can always pull it back to the right exposure. Underexposure, by contrast, leads to digital noise on the image, a subtle cross-hatching that looks like a cheap matt print from the late 1980s. We paddled gently, and we paid careful attention to the herons’ behaviors at each nest. If a heron looked nervous or seemed ready to bail out, we retreated or halted our approach. Respect for the photo subject is job number one.
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