Kauai Bird Portfolio
I posted a portfolio of some of my personal favorite images from our Kauai Adventure a few weeks back. Enjoy!
The Nēnē
I was kinda getting into desperate mode! It was shaping up to be another trip looking for certain species and because they are simply disappearing, vanished, gone from the planet, I was too late, again! The last couple of years I’ve been trying to photograph species that when I first started out in the 70’s I couldn’t because I didn’t have the means let alone the skill to go get the photograph. The last couple of years, I feel I’m getting more and more desperate as I make the journey only to find all too often, I’m too late! So it was on Kauai a few weeks back when I was laser beam focused on photographing the few remaining endangered bird species left on the island. By day three, we’d struck out and I was feeling pretty low. Our destruction of our wild heritage has been pretty thorough in the last forty years! After a frustrating morning at the top of Waimea Canyon looking a couple of endemic, endangered forest bird species with really no luck, I decided on a hail marry and head to a pond that looks like a bomb had gone off in the worst of light. There, we finally found a couple of endangered Hawiaan Stilts. Also, there was a State Wildlife office, a really nice guy. He told us to come back at sunset as many birds fly in to roost. We went on to successfully and safely photograph the Stilt (great group putting up with my hypersensitive nature with endangered critters) in that hard light and then went off to dinner. At dinner, I decided to return to the ponds to see the “fly-in.”
We arrived back at the pond with just a Stilt or two in sight, nothing else. With my luck that week and in the past year, I didn’t really hold out much hope. So as we waited out the setting sun for better light, we stood by the van waiting. Then as the light started to get nice we ventured out along the dike to see if we could as a group get close to the foraging Stilt. You gotta remember that my motto has been as always will be, No Photograph is Worth Sacrificing the Welfare of the Subject. And with all the grievous things I’d seen in the past month by photographers in the name of getting a photo, there was no way we were going to be part of that problem (which is freakin huge!). So we slowly ever so slowly walked out towards the Stilt. I choose that one subject because of a couple of factors. The first and most overriding which will make no sense is my “gut” feeling. Something told me to head that way. At the same time, if there was to be a fly-in, the birds would be landing INTO the wind. With the direction of the wind and the sun being on our backs heading to that one Stilt, all that added up to head in that direction. It took at least fifteen minutes to walk those fifty some yards but when we arrived where I wanted to be, the Stilt was still there feeding. Then its mate called from another pond and up it flew and the two of them went off together to a pond quite a ways from us to take care of their young. There we stood with glass on nothing! In my mind, all I could say was, “Not again!” We were left with no subject.
We heard them call at first so we scanned the sky and there was a small flock of a half dozen endangered Nēnē (Hawaiian Goose) flying by. Flying by! Then we watched as the small flock made a big turn and started to dump air from their wings. They were coming in for a landing! At first, they looked like they were going to land in an adjacent pond, not at the one we were standing at. I told everyone to freeze, lenses, hands, feet, freeze! We were after all five shooters with big glass standing out in the middle of nowhere in a pond with no cover. It’s not like we were hiding by any means. The Nēnē made a slight flight adjustment and within seconds made a splashdown so close to us that at first, I couldn’t focus on them! The last light of the day was fading so the ISO was cranked up to ISO400 (only way to freeze the motion) and exp comp set to -1. I was shooting with the D5 / 800mm and they were so large in the viewfinder I thought I had my 1.4x attached so went to take it off only to find, it wasn’t attached. Then for twenty minutes, we stood there photographing what to all of us turned out to be a very emotionally and photographically rewarding time with, geese. They were on the most perfect spot with those tiny white flowers, the light just kissing their killer colors of their plumage with a perfect background. And the Nēnē went on as if we weren’t even there! Perfect! Then it got too dark to shoot so we walked out as slowly and carefully as we entered so not disturbing the Nēnē. We were guests in THEIR home! To this day, every one of us in that group talks very fondly of that time with the Nēnē, Javier coming away with the best photo telling the story of our special time with this critter. But that’s really not what is important to me. What is that they all came away with a deeper appreciation of their own skills, photographs and most importantly of their wild heritage, especially the Nēnē.
Lion Point Fire
On 1 June, a lightning strike hit Lion Point in the Ansel Adams Wilderness. It was discovered on the 11th and by 18th was a slow, smoldering wildfire trying to burn its way through the thick pine needle carpet. There is just enough fire to create the thick smoke blanketing our area. With the strike helicopters flying over the house constantly, we decided to head up to the crest to look at it for ourselves since it’s only 9 miles from the house (town and home safe at this time).
Being me, I, of course, went up with the D5 / 180-400VR with my thought being I’d photograph the helos going overhead. As it turned out, the smoke as the sun went down intrigued me more. Here’s what we saw.
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As of now, the fire has grown to over 2400 acres, it was just 10 acres when I took these photos.
Blue Mountain’s Spring
It’s simply the most beautiful forest I’ve ever walked! We averaged about five miles a day in our hunt for Great Gray Owls walking the forest. Our walks the entire time were through the most gorgeous, sweeping landscape of Ponderosa Pines with spring grasses and wildflowers at their feet. While we never found the Great Grays, we were enveloped by over thirty species of wildflowers. Their color and smell amongst the pines and grasses were intoxicating and with all the birds singing made for a near heaven experience. Seriously, we all said we’d move there in a heartbeat, it was just that magnificent!
Those who know me know that no matter how gorgeous the wildflowers, I simply don’t put my butt in the air to photograph them. So you might be very surprised to see a blog post with wildflowers. Well, that’s because I didn’t have to bend over to take them! Shooting with the D850 / 8-15Fish, I simply folded out the monitor and shot! The 8-15Fish is so cool because it focuses closer than the 16Fish so all I had to do was move the rig close to the blossom, wait for the wind to settle down (the past I hate) and go click. I shot on CH and with the D850‘s Silent Shutter, blasted away letting “luck” capture the sharp image. The top image was shot at 8mm and the bottom at 15mm and I made that decision based on the blossoms. It was simply, spectacular!
Is It a Photograph?
The Spouting Horn on Kauai is just one of those locations that in the late afternoon, you can’t but take a deep breath and relax! The view is spectacular so much so that even the evening rain shower makes you smile just that much more. Then there is the natural beauty of the coastline enhanced by the “breathing rock” that is the Spouting Horn. Even at low tides, you can hear it take a breath and let it out even if there is no spray. The warm, ocean air, the floating clouds, the gorgeous light, it’s just about as romantic a spot as you’re going to find. Then we interrupt this all by putting a camera to our eye. I say this because there is no emotion setting in the camera, romance slider in post. Argh!
What do I mean by that? When we put the cold-hearted bastard to our eye, we take all those emotional responses to Spouting Horn and make them mechanical. We have all the best of intentions wanting to preserve and share the moment, but we often fall short. For your consideration, I offer up these two photographs from my recent time at Spouting Horn. The top shot is looking west at Spouting Horn, the bottom photograph is looking south right at Spouting Horn. Which photo says, “I was here” and which says, “You SHOULD be here?” I know the answer for myself, but do you when you experience such a moment and put the cold-hearted bastard up to your eye? You might be saying, “The bottom photo has a rainbow, I want that photo.” But does the rainbow really make the photograph, a photograph? For me, the vertical photo has two halves, a top half with the rainbow and the bottom half, Spouting Horn. There is nothing visually tying the two together. So while both are photographs taken with the D850 / 24-70VR (shooting on CS to capture the burst of water), one is simply, I was here and one is, you should be here. So for me, it has to grab heartstrings for it to be a photograph.
What Inspired Me
I’m often asked which photographers have inspired me. Those who know me know I can’t remember a person’s name seconds after being told it. I can name all the critters of North America, but someone I just meet, their name is lost to me. And while I don’t recall names worth a hoot, I can remember all the photographs I’ve seen over the decades. One of the photos I saw when I first got into photography decades ago was of a Red-tailed Tropicbird. The way the light came through the wings, the crazy long, red tail and the “floating in air” look of its flight simply caught my imagination. It’s a photograph I’ve always wanted, a species I’ve wanted to experience. And forty years later, I meet my inspiration!
The photograph I saw all those years ago is pretty much the top photo you see here. It was simply a tropicbird floating by. Getting that shot way back when would have been quite a feat with manual advance camera bodies and manual focus (and just 36 exposures!). Today, it’s actually a slam dunk! I simply put the D5 / 300PF up to my eye, panned and shot. Seriously, with the D5 set to Auto Area AF, Exp Comp 0 and on CH with the speed of the 300PF autofocus and extreme light-weight and sharpness, the only thing to worry about was the sunburn (I got toasted!)! So then getting “the” shot that made me go experience the Red-tailed Tropicbird was a easy peezy. But coming back with more was truly my goal.
Once you’re on Kauai, finding either the White-tailed or Red-tailed Tropicbird is pretty simple. Getting close, really close to these species there is only one place to go, the Kīlauea Point NWR. This is flying bird Shang-gra-la! The tropicbirds nest here (they lay only 1 egg) which instantly means you’ll easily find them. With that challenge met, it’s then the challenge of capturing their story. Being a pelagic species which means they spend their life at sea on the wing making them great fliers. They eat fish specializing in eating flying fish. Then in telling their story, you can see that flight is a big part of that story.
Watching them is what I did at first. Seeing patterns, watching routines and guessing at their meaning was a little time-consuming but important for being in the right place and the right time. For example, a group of 5 or 7 would launch into the sky, fly up and then fly backwards in what appeared to be an aerial courtship display of some sort. They would do this over and over and over again. Then they seemed to pair up and do flights together. All of this would happen in spurts of great activity and then none, craziness and then, snore. They would start their activity below the cliff out of sight and then would skyrocket with the wind up into site and above our heads to perform. It was great fun and a challenge to bring this story home.
Then there was simply capturing their elegance of flight. I can’t emphasize enough the ease the D5 / 300PF brought to this especially when shooting directly overhead or when they screamed past us down the bluff. It was truly rewarding, romantic, fun, bird photography that we did for hours on end. The biggie for me though was to finally, after decades, bring back an image the inspired me so long ago to be a wildlife photographer. That leaves me now with just a few hundred images of others to chase because it is others images that inspire me!
