In the Frame

It is one of the ironies of my life that as I get older my vision seems to be improving both literally and figuratively. I read without my glasses frequently, and my distance vision has improved a bit. My optometrist told me that just before cataracts form my vision will be sharper still, and the Eye Institute now advertises corrective cataract surgery where you are freed of glasses/contacts forever. All I have to do is to take those multivitamins to prevent macular degeneration (touch wood). So it's nice to know that the ocular equipment probably won't fail me just when I'm developing artistic vision for the first time in my life.

In photography, the guidelines for composition are limited and accessible.

Use the “golden mean” and put your subject off center by one third of the picture’s width and height.

Use interesting points of view: looking up at your subject,

looking down,
head on, or at a weird angle.

Find and use repetitive designs or geometric patterns.

The idea is that if you practice these principles, the picture will compose itself. Right.

Here’s where I fall into the chasm between theory and practice: trying to define the subject.

What is the subject here?

The marsh landscape? The early dawn light? the goldenrod? or the old stump?

And here-- is it the one of the herons? or the whole landscape?

If you are unsure in your mind what your picture is about, the confusion will be present in the composition of the photograph. It is surprisingly difficult to find a single subject, but I cling to the idea that good photography involves the art of graceful simplification. It helps to take several pictures of the same scene, but with different areas of focus.

Once you solve the problem of the subject, details can still bite you. It’s a funny thing. You can get the picture framed so the subject is in a “sweet spot”, with beautiful light, and take the shot with the perfect settings on the camera, and when you get home and look at your work more closely-- wham!--
you find a branch growing out of the egret’s head or a cormorant standing on top of a pelican. You could swear that you never saw the cormorant or branch before in your life.

The failure is neither my eyes nor my “inner vision”. The mental blinders we use - to simplify, to focus, to hone in- are necessary to any creative process. Unfortunately they can shut out those pesky extraneous branches, clouds, puffs, of smoke, weird signs, and bumper stickers that sabotage the best composition. The trick is to keep a general view as long as you can. Check the background, then the foreground and look for things blowing in the wind. Take a “history and physical” of the site: Are clouds likely to move across the sun? Should I move to get a better background? Should/can I move closer to the subject? Is the subject likely to move away from me? Photographers always experience some tension between what they feel should be in the picture and what really is. When the inner vision harmonizes with the external reality, the results can be breathtaking.

Blurring the Edge: On Ego

Wildlife photography is humbling. In the marsh you are a pariah; you have to learn to accept rejection. The longest lens, the sturdiest tripod, the fastest film or the most pixels cannot compete with the egret's easy flight up and away, far away. Humility is the first merit badge you earn from Banner.

Photographers frequently moan about the "missed shot". When I started out last year, I had no idea that about 90% of the pictures I wanted to shoot were going to be "the ones that got away". It was (and is) even worse than that. Of the wildlife pictures that I do manage to get, less than 5% are worth keeping. I have been carefully cataloging thousands of pictures on my hard drive this year, because somehow I hope that the folks at Adobe will create upgrades to Photoshop that might save them....

The fundamental problem is of course that skittish birds and animals are smart. In the wily world of predator/prey relationships, they have not been conned by hunters' decoys or eaten by the local coyote. To maintain my sanity I needed to find some strategies for getting closer to these clever animals. After perusing several "How to photograph wildlife" books and articles, I found the following suggestions:

1. Find tame animals in a zoo, park, or Florida rookeries. This may defeat the purpose of documenting wild places, but you can get splendid close-up portraits of animals. It feels like cheating. Biology laboratories with specimens may also be good. It still feels like cheating.

2. Use fantastic (read expensive) equipment. Even if my children would approve of me squandering $10,000 of their inheritance for an 800mm fast lens, I doubt that my husband would approve of me hiring Mr. Universe to carry it. Lloyd's of London might insure it at astronomical cost. ( Hmmm.. Note- check on cost of insuring the shutter release finger.)

3. Use bribery. This is what I call the bird feeder solution ( mentioned in my first post). Reducing animals to welfare recipients poses moral problems.

4. Use Zen. Basically, become one with environment, blend in, hold still. This is the hardest strategy, but the most satisfying. If you can remain motionless for up to 30 minutes, the critters do start to read you as part of the environment, and they come back. It is a good solution for warmer weather; when the temperature drops you might need to resort to thermal underwear. Anything hunters do to remain invisible may be applied here: camo clothing, tents, scent. (A thermos of coffee is useful, and a good book. )

Kidding aside, though, wonderful things happen when you simply watch and wait. The animals do reenter the picture. But more importantly, you find yourself entering their world. You hear more, see more, release yourself from the worries of the day job or the housework. The egocentric concerns that fret us ( "will it be a great picture?" ) just don't matter as much; what matters is being a part of that morning on that day in Banner Marsh.

Great Blue Herons

Great Blue Heron bowing like a tree.

Great Blue Heron stick imitation

Heron biting off more than he can chew.....

Edgeworld: A Photographic Journey

At Grande Prairie shopping center: A Great Blue Heron swallows a fish. (May 2005)

When I started taking photographs in '04, I thought Great Blue Herons were rare. Of course, once I started looking for "the great" heron picture, I discovered it was hard NOT to find them -- go to anyplace with fish or frogs and you can find a great blue. This made me feel a bit silly, but I think I am one of the majority; so many of us in city/suburban life miss a lot of what goes on around us in the natural world.


In the Peoria area, you can see herons behind Grand Prairie Shopping Mall, from Dave's BBQ on the river, at the marina in Lacon, Il., in the pond by the Methodist church on highway 24 in Washington, at Eureka Park lake and at Banner Marsh. We fail to note them because when they are most visible, we are most inattentive. Birds in general, and water birds in particular, are active at the edges of the day, when night fades into the subtle light of dawn, or when the sun beds down for the night in mist, times when the working world is focused on the day's coming activities or on the evening news during the ride home.

And as in human society, activity in the natural world seems heightened at crossroads where one ecosystem meets another. In a physical sense the marsh is an edgeworld , where upland field and forest merge with the river, providing a rich array of cross habitats and creatures for every niche. If you can divert your attention from your normal concerns one morning and walk the edgeworld, you will meet neighbors you never knew you had.

Edgeworld: December

December at Banner Marsh.


This is the quiet season, a time for reflection and rest, for me anyway. I would like to think that the critters at Banner are hunkering down to successfully wait out the winter, but for a lot of them there is great uncertainty about survival. Food supplies run low in winter. Temperatures can drop fatally, especially for those who didn't migrate in time, lulled by an unseasonably warm fall. I'll use this quiet time to describe my explorations at the marsh, but my reflections will have an edginess born of the tension between my comfort and the life/death issues of those animals I observe facing winter in the wild.

It is easy for me to talk about the birds coming to the feeder in the back yard. Juncos, finches, cardinals, and even the occasional downy or flicker perch within a few feet of me, and I can observe what they eat, how they signal each other, their disputes, and their seed cracking techniques. I invade their privacy in comfort, behind the window, and they get free food. It seems to be a fair trade.

Watching animals at Banner is morally trickier. If you get lucky and see some real action, you can bring home a trophy picture, but what do the animals get in return? I feel a bit like a journalist must feel reporting a disaster. Do the requirements of journalistic objectivity prohibit helping the victims? What kind of help can you provide? I owe something to the marsh wildlife, source of so much joy for me. But inappropriate help (feeding etc.) might make them welfare dependents, as my feeder birds are at home.

The best I can come up with is to become an apologist for our local wild animals. Winter is a severe test for the animals that live in Banner year round, but it is nothing compared to the stresses of human activity on the natural world. This is not news. But it still surprises me to talk to neighbors who are unaware of the eagles on the river, the foxes in the neighborhood, the deer everywhere. So I propose to share the special adventures I have had at our local wetland as a kind of payment. Everyone who learns a little more about the wild magic on our doorstep could become an ally in preserving it.