Wings

There is something about a bird spreading it’s wings, that is visually stimulating to me.  I’m not talking about a bird in flight. Maybe they are stretching or preening. It might be just a form of exercise.  It could be that they are balancing themselves in the wind. Sometimes it is part of a courtship dance. Some birds dry their wings this way. Just maybe they are posing for pictures.

When I decided to put together this little portfolio of “wings”, I had no idea how many such images are in my files.  I used zero film images, and I did not investigate a single one of my plug-in hard drives, I merely checked the folders sitting on this computer and I only went through half of those folders.  There are at least two dozen more shots streaming through my brain right now.

I truly have a preference for images where the wings are not sharp, but I am probably in the minority on that. Those shots seem to fulfill my artistic visions a little more than the others.

If you know me, you have come to realize that my pictures of wildlife don’t necessarily have to be from the front.  Such is the case with our first three images.

American White Pelican

Sharp-tailed Grouse

Snowy Owl

Greater Scaup

Northern Shoveler

Female Bufflehead

Male Red-breasted Merganser

Ruddy Turnstone

Wilson’s Phalarope….breeding female

Brown Pelican

Osprey

Rough-legged Hawk

Double-crested Cormorant

Young American Coot

Black Tern

Young Great-blue Herons

Eastern Meadowlark

I know that I have included no technical or compositional information on today’s  images.  I will get back to that at some point when I show fewer than 18 photos.

Passion

I cannot imagine life without passion.  There has always been at least one thing that I have been passionate about, during every phase of my life.  Most of all I am grateful for my passion for photography.

Over the years I have had many interests, and several that deserve the title…..passion. Because photography was my lead passion, I was always able to be a part of those other things that I love, instead of just being a spectator.  Of all of them, nature is my queen.

I am passionate about photography and I love the natural world.  Those two subjects are the perfect mates. I do not simply observe nature.  I do more than walk through nature. I am a participant.  We are partners. For all of these years I have been able to share the beauty and wonder that my partner possesses, and do so using my own personal interpretation.  When I am successful, I owe that success to my partner.  Eventually photographing nature became (for me), a way to interpret and share all of God’s Creation.

It is always difficult for people who don’t share your passion for a particular subject, to understand your seeming fanaticism.  It is difficult to explain why you are always thinking (or talking) in terms of your passion (photography?). You can never just say look isn’t that flower pretty.  You speak of it in it’s relationship to pictures you have made.  When you know what kind of flower it is, and when and where it should be found, you include the fact that you learned this because of your photography.  You talk constantly about how you have never photographed that one, but you have photographed that other one.

Half of finding a passion is having an open mind and being able to see the wonder of things.  That is why nature photography is so likely to become a passion. Your world of subjects will just keep expanding. When you are 100 years old and on your death bed, you will still be thinking “I would sure like to get a flight shot of one of those hawks”.

No matter where your life’s journey takes you, be open to becoming passionate about something.  Don’t go through life as a spectator, and don’t accept everyone else’s vision of things. Make it personal.

God bless,  Wayne