When I make pictures at wildlife refuges I always try to fit in a few landscapes. Book and magazine publishers are always looking for pictures that give the reader/viewer a sense of place. I have had many landscapes of Horicon Marsh NWR in Wisconsin published. This one however is quite different from my usual cattail marsh scene, or sunrise/sunset shot. A morning picture of the Rock River shows another side of Horicon.

While a place like Horicon always has great photographic potential regardless of the season, there is nothing like being in a marsh when it is hot and humid. I love mood and atmosphere and it is rich at places like this in the middle of a hot summer’s day. I have slept (don’t tell anybody) in the marsh during the summer and the sounds make you feel as though you are on the Amazon.

Shooting down among the reeds and cattails in a marsh is a difficult but rewarding experience. I write a lot about clean a simple images but here that can be impossible much of the time. My goal is to keep as many out of focus plants as possible from coming between the viewer and the subject, especially their face. If one or two badly out of focus or obnoxious plants are left in front of the subject, I will digitally remove them. Any more than that and the photo is likely to be deleted. I like to have at least some of the foliage as sharp as the bird, and the rest can disappear softly into oblivion.

Female Red-winged Blackbird

Virginia Rail

Least Bittern

Double Crested Cormorants.

Little windows.  Storm over Lake Michigan at sunrise.  It always pays to wait for that little window of opportunity.

Indian ruins in New Mexico. The visual approach you take with your subject and the light that bathes it, can mean a lot. The Pecos ruins are great but visually stretching this building from up close with a wide-angle lens made for a more dramatic perspective. The warm light also helped although I actually prefer a black and white version of this image to this one.

Hopefully images like this will never go out of style. The head, face and bill sharp, with out of focus and motion blurred wings. Throw in an unusual pose/composition and it is an image worth keeping. Male Greater Scaup.

A season closes. For many of you, the finish of the insect season, especially dragonflies, is coming to a close.  I used a 300mm close-focus lens for this image.  300-400mm lenses make a really close approach unnecessary and that makes pictures like this fairly easy.

I appreciate your stopping by to visit,                                                                                             Wayne