The Region Wildlife and Topical Photography

I work as an IT Director, I help make complex technical choices for a largish company. I do that because not so long ago someone told me I needed to grow up, I was after all almost 30 years old. At the time, I was working at a zoo in Utica NY and surviving on peanuts (actually on Ramen, but I digress). In my mind I had already grown up and made a decision, I was going to do what I was passionate about and damn the consequences. A grown up would have considered the consequences of his choices and mapped out a path that included his passions in his life. Sigh…. I so mapped. No longer would I toil away caring for animals at minimal wages just so I could get the best photo opportunities.

Now as I work towards giving my passions a more central role in my life, I am starting to realize something. The same thing that caused me to neglect the consequences was also what fueled my passions. Yes, the joy of youth (Naivete, ignorance call it what you will) also helps to drive our passions. In desperately trying to grow up and satisfy this external pressure, I knocked the hell out of that passionate young man that once was me. I have started to realize that and am attempting to nurture him back to health, once in a while I encounter him in full force and I realize… I was really fond of the person I once was.

Alright, now that I have the backstory set up for you, I’d like to talk about going out to take pictures this last weekend. Normally, when I go out to take pictures I decide what I want to look for, where to find it and how I would like to shoot it. I try desperately to meet what is on that check list. This expedition was no different, I wanted a female cardinal, in a bush, near the pond outside my subdivision. I find that this level of organizations makes the grown up in me happy, sort of. I am just a wildlife photographer and the fact that I made a checklist stating that I need a female cardinal in a bush by a pond apparently holds no water with the big guy upstairs. This is the kind of thing that frustrates the grown up planner in me.

I took a few half hearted photos just to practice getting the exposure right with the snow. Oh yeah, did I mention the snow? I went for about a half hour and decided to start walking home, that is when I saw the first deer track. As a child I read Tom Brown books on tracking, I practiced it and loved it. As an adult I got to revisit that as an Airborne Infantryman in the US Army. I looked close at the track, it was covered with light snow. The last light snow was a couple hours earlier, so my mind had an idea who was where at that time and the kid in me said “Where did he go?!?”. I began to follow it down the nice wide path that humans had made. I found another set of tracks, this one went down to the grass in a couple spots, which meant a) it was more recent than the snowfall and b) the deer stood there long enough to melt the snow. This told me that this is an area they are comfortable at, so I followed this set instead and went into the tall weeds. Only a few minutes into it, I almost tripped on a deer lying down, then he and four others jumped up and bounded off!

I was exhilarated, the kid in me completely took over and I went back to trail. No longer was I scouring every bush for a lone cardinal, nope I was happily walking along eyes focused on nothing in particular, ears drinking in the rich sounds of the pond. The grown up me almost gave up due to no birds being out, this me heard them everywhere and caught pictures of Blue Jays, Downy Woodpeckers and several others. I found squirrel tracks leading to freshly unearthed cache items. I reveled in a type of joy I had not felt in years. Then, when finally I felt like going home I pointed my camera up at a nice tall tree and shot a picture of a female cardinal, just to make Mr. Tatgenhorst happy.

The female cardinal, a symbol of winter in the region

This entry was posted on Monday, December 21st, 2009 at 10:03 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.