Day: March 7, 2020

“Do your devotions make you happy?
Is your life a joyous song?”
Deng Ming-Dao

It’s an interesting thought for a creative photographer.  A simple fact really.  Do you enjoy it?

Does it make you happy? Sometimes, the pressures of conforming, the need to make images that meet certain standards, or the complexity of striving with a subject in the wrong light, the wrong place or the wrong time, means we struggle to make the photo with a feeling of joy.

Then for its own reasons, it can become a drudgery.

At other times, the light is right, the subject cooperative and a feeling of joy is replaced by celebration when you gaze at the LCD and there it is.  Just as you saw it.

A morning at Lake Lorne looking for Latham’s Snipe, could be just a drudgery, or it could be thrilling.

EE and I had made the trip out just after sunup, and had a chance to look through a number of areas where the birds might have been resting up.  Finding a Snipe is truly like finding the sixpence in the Christmas pud.   The trouble is finding them, and then getting close enough for a good shot.

I had been using the 500mm PF on the D500, but the speed of the little birds, the complexity of the background and the slowness of the operator, meant I was missing  many a shot. By mid-morn I changed back to the 300mm f/4.  Need to be closer, but the wider angle of view meant I could get the bird in frame quicker.

I saw the bird poke its head out of the thick grass, and had a fair idea of its location. Closer, pause, closer, pause.  No head poking out. Perhaps it scampered through the grass further away.
“Scrassrckh”
Airborne in front of me, raise camera press shutter, first one blurry, focus locks, nailed it.  Bird is away,  but its the closest I’ve been to one so far.
Time to sing a joyous song.