Geese Take Flight. © Copyright 2018 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Ross’s geese take flight into California winter sky

I have learned a lot from photographing birds — a lot about my own interests, a lot about the mechanics of photography, a lot about developing instincts, a lot about the birds, and a lot about what I/we can and cannot control in the making of photographs. The relative contributions of things including skill, persistence, equipment, vision, knowledge, and luck is a subject of much interest and something that I’m still working out. Clearly a photograph of a goose, filling the frame as it rises abruptly into the sky, does require some skill and some equipment. (I think vision is important, too, though it is hard to have a conscious vision in the fractions of a second during which such things occur.) Just as clearly, there are many things in such a photograph that the photographer cannot control, and plain old luck is very much an important elements. Over all of this is the need to be there a lot, since skill and vision and opportunity are all increased by practice.

I photograph this subject fairly often, traveling to areas where such subjects are found every winter. Sometimes nothing much happens — the light is poor, the birds are somewhere else, I’m looking in the wrong direction. But the more I’m in the field the more likely that I’ll encounter a situation that is special and the more likely I’ll be ready to do something useful with it. This was one of those lucky moments. In a place where the birds are all too often at a distance, I found them settled in nearby. I remained in my vehicle, with the camera on my lap, as I crept up very, very slowly. (At times I might have moved only a few inches in a minute.) Any time I sensed the birds going on alert I simply paused and waited. Eventually I was closer to them than I have ever gotten before in the wild, and they took less and less apparent notice of my presence. As always happens, eventually the flock took off, mere feet from my position, and I was able to make a few quick photographs of the event from a very close perspective.

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist. His book, “California’s Fall Color: A Photographer’s Guide to Autumn in the Sierra” is available from Heyday Books and Amazon.
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