Red-breasted Merganser

Red-breasted Merganser Mergus serrator

After “getting into” ducks a few years ago, the Red-breasted Merganser became an instant favorite with its spindly features, shaggy crest, and long thin bill. Somehow it seemed almost exotic; this is not a common bird to me. This image is from my first close encounter with a group of Red-breasted Mergansers from the edge of a pond under my gillie blanket. I was thrilled when I saw them heading my way in the golden hour light. I fired off as many shots as I could as they passed my position, and I struggled to keep track of them as they dove and emerged from the water. This was my favorite frame with great sharpness, eye contact, and another hen perfectly positioned to create a halo effect behind the subject’s head.

Tried and True Technique

Black-necked Stilt Himantopus mexicanus, Salt Lake County, Utah

My favorite avian images from the past three years have all been captured in the same way. I go to a place where I’ve seen birds before, a place where I know birds like to be; typically I set up at the edge of a pond where I’ve observed activity previously.

I plan on being in position an hour to an hour and a half before I want to take pictures. From my experience this is how long it takes waterfowl and wading birds to come around once I’ve intruded into their space. If I’m targeting the sunset hour, I want to take pictures in the light from one hour to thirty minutes before sunset, so I need to be in position at least an hour before that.

I’ll lay my closed cell foam pad down at the very edge of the pond, lie flat on my belly and pull a gillie blanket over me entirely, with just the barrel of my Nikon 500mm PF lens poking out. I just rest the camera and lens right on the ground; one reason I use a neoprene LensCoat.

Key to this set-up for me is a right angle finder. It allows me to stay in this position for hours without wrenching my neck to look through the lens. The more comfortable I am the less I squirm around which leads to more close approaches by my avian friends.

I’ll usually shoot wide open at f5.6 for velvety soft backgrounds. I set my shutter speed to 1/1000 of a second and my ISO to auto. This technique has yielded great results for me, it’s gotten birds to come much closer to me than I could ever approach them. This Black-necked Stilt came so close I could no longer fit its body in the frame, a few inches more and it’s beyond the close focus of my lens.

A Matter of Perspective

Brewer’s Blackbird Euphagus cyanocephalus, Salt Lake City, Utah

I wasn’t targeting Brewer’s Blackbirds when I made this image, but it quickly became a favorite because of that stare. Something about the pale iris of the male Brewer’s Blackbird that just makes their gaze intense. What really makes this image sing, what makes the isolation of that gaze possible is the perspective. Bird’s eye level perspective; no room for a tripod, camera and lens resting on the ground. Besides the obvious engagement with the bird, this perspective allows the plane of focus to be perpendicular to the ground, which means the background is distant and rendered extremely soft with a wide aperture.

Escalante Adventure 2021: Color Portfolio

Looking at these photos in December, I’m less disappointed with them than I was in April. As the intensity of the moment fades from my memory, from the tiny scorpion hanging out in the sand at the door of my tent, to the bite of a chill wind and even a few snowflakes, to the exhaustion of hours of cross-country travel, clamoring over slickrock ridges and across deep sand plains, to the dizzying ledges and walls that looked too steep to walk on, the images become better surrogates of the experience.

Escalante Adventure 2021: Monochrome Portfolio

I was blessed to spend a week in April backpacking in the Escalante wilderness with two of my favorite people in the world, in one of my favorite places in the world. The Canyons of the Escalante is a true wilderness; rugged and austere, seemingly impenetrable, vast and incomprehensible. I find it incredibly challenging to capture images that express the visceral and emotional intensity of being there.

Seems like it should be easy, point your camera in any direction, click, and presto you’ve got an instant classic. Everything looks amazing as you move through the landscape, your mind effortlessly removing the clutter, and your eyes simultaneously revealing detail in bright skies and shadowed canyon walls. I worked hard to put some of that beauty and grandeur I was seeing on my memory cards, but I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t disappointed with my efforts once I got home.

This portfolio is a response to that disappointment. In some cases an attempt to simplify and distill the graphics even more. In some cases a way to push the processing further; to pump up the contrast without moving the colors into the garish and unreal realm. I don’t think any of these images end up in my greatest hits, but I do like the cohesion of this portfolio. Like puzzle pieces, together these images start to tell the story of this singular place.

My Pandemic Project

I guess this could be called my 2020 project, but I like the alliteration; and the pandemic did play a part in this project. All of these images were created between February and December of 2020 at three Northern Utah locations; The Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge in Box Elder County, Farmington Bay Waterfowl Management Area in Davis County, and Lee Kay Ponds managed by the Utah Division of Wildlife Resources in Salt Lake County.

Initially, it was the combination of a newly procured 500mm lens, and the pandemic keeping me away from all my favorite trails in the Wasatch, that had me spending a lot of time in the marshes on the east side of the Great Salt Lake. These locations did prove to be good for social distancing.

Ultimately, it was an intensified interest in birds and bird photography, and a personal discovery of ducks and grebes in particular that captivated me, and kept bringing me back. I had some incredibly enjoyable photo sessions last year. I discovered that lying under a gillie blanket at the edge of a duck pond, surveying the less than three degree angle of view through the lens, along the surface of the pond, waiting for ducks to swim into frame, is powerful meditation.

Pied-billed Grebe Podilymbus podiceps: Farmington Bay Waterfowl Management Area, Utah

Western Grebes Aechmophorus occidentalis: Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge, Utah

Neotropic Cormorant Phalacrocorax brasilianus: Farmington Bay Waterfowl Management Area, Utah

Great Blue Heron Ardea herodias: Farmington Bay Waterfowl Management Area, Utah

Snowy Egrets Egretta thula: Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge, Utah

Black-crowned Night-Heron Nycticorax nycticorax: Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge, Utah

Mallard hybrid ♂: Lee Kay Ponds, Utah

Northern Pintail Anas acuta ♂: Farmington Bay Waterfowl Management Area, Utah

Gadwall Anas strepera ♂: Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge, Utah

Northern Shovelers Anas clypeata: Farmington Bay Waterfowl Management Area, Utah

Cinnamon Teal Anas cyanoptera ♂: Lee Kay Ponds, Utah

Greater Scaup Aythya marila ♀: Farmington Bay Waterfowl Management Area, Utah

Common Goldeneye Bucephala clangula ♀: Lee Kay Ponds, Utah

Common Merganser Mergus merganser: Lee Kay Ponds, Utah

Ruddy Duck Oxyura jamaicensis ♀: Farmington Bay Waterfowl Management Area, Utah

Hooded Merganser Lophodytes cucullatus ♂: Lee Kay Ponds, Utah

Hooded Mergansers Lophodytes cucullatus ♀: Lee Kay Ponds, Utah

Killdeer Charadrius vociferus: Farmington Bay Waterfowl Management Area, Utah

American Avocets Recurvirostra americana: Farmington Bay Waterfowl Management Area, Utah

Greater Yellowlegs Tringa melanoleuca: Farmington Bay Waterfowl Management Area, Utah

Infinite Inspiration

Purplish Copper (Lycaena helloides)

Wow. I can’t believe I managed to go an entire year without posting a single blog entry. In my mind I posted many. I may have had (have) some form of writers block, but it isn’t from a lack of inspiration to photograph the natural world. I may not have any blog posts to my credit in 2019, but I did make a number of memorable images. More importantly, I went deeper into some of my new favorite subjects: birds, butterflies, and dragonflies.

Spotted Sandpiper (Actitis macularia)

2019 was the first year I saw the difference between an eight spotted skimmer and a twelve spotted skimmer. It was actually the first year I positively identified any species of dragonfly. It was also the first year I realized there was this adorable little sandpiper high in Utah’s mountains in summer, working the edges of subalpine streams and ponds. It was also the first year I spotted the snaky orange line on the hindwing of the Purplish Copper.

Striped Meadowhawk (Sympetrum pallipes)

In order to identify the creatures I’ve captured digitally, I’ve found a few websites to be invaluable. Utah Birds is a great website with tons of photos and info on the birds of Utah and the best birding locations in the state. Butterflies and Moths of North America is my go to site for identifying butterflies, and Odonata Central has helped me overcome my trepidation trying to differentiate species of dragonfly.

One of my favorite features of all of these sites is the ability to generate a checklist at the county level. It blew me away to learn the checklists for Salt Lake County include 346 species of birds, 122 species of butterflies, and 49 distinct species of damselflies and dragonflies.

Photographing all the species from any one of those lists would be an immense challenge. The numbers made me think, the variety of subjects right in my backyard could easily provide a lifetime of photographic inspiration. I’ll try harder this year to share some of those inspirations. Thanks for visiting jeffbeckphoto.com.