Patience
Patience may be a virtue but, for many of us, it’s one that remains a work in progress. I’m not especially patient by nature, which can be useful in some situations, like trying to capture a photo in fast moving circumstances. But there are other aspects of photography that require patience along with a sense of what might happen in a particular scene or what might make it more interesting.
This can involve waiting for the light to do something or for someone to walk into the frame. The point is to make a conscious decision to slow down and observe, to engage fully with the moment.
Over time I’ve gotten better at this ‘learned’ patience. Sometimes there’s a sense of possibility guiding me. For example, the photo of the Great Blue Heron here came about from repeat observations that the bird preferred hanging out at certain times of day in this one particular patch of field. I knew herons typically preferred being near water where they could catch fish. After all, these birds are designed to be waders with their specialized long legs and beaks perfect for fishing.
This heron however, seemed to return to this one spot in a field near a path I walked. I would stop and quietly watch the bird, snapping a few pictures here and there, hoping that I might capture some interesting behavior. And one day, as I stood watching with the camera at my side, the bird stooped, its long neck curved like a plumbing trap under the sink. Something had its full attention and as I put the camera to my eye, the bird’s head shot downward out of frame and, in an instant later, it came up with a vole in its beak.
It stood there a moment as if showing me its catch, proud of the accomplishment. I got about three shots off before the SD card said it was full (my bad, using an older card…). I quickly started deleting images on the camera to free up a few frames, but it was too late. It had been little more than a few seconds but when I put the camera to my eye, the vole was gone.
Whether the bird had swallowed it or dropped it, I couldn’t be sure. The size of the vole and the diameter of the heron’s throat didn’t seem compatible and I didn’t see the outline of the rodent distort the bird’s throat anywhere. I half-expected it to take some time to move down the long neck toward the stomach, distending the neck like a python with a rabbit in its throat. But there was nothing like that and I wondered if the bird had first suffocated the rodent in its beak before tossing it down to rip up in smaller pieces. I’ll never know as it was late and my patience had thinned. Thankful for a few decent shots, I left the heron to enjoy its catch in peace.
