Making Use...

Lillie

Last month I photographed my beautiful cousin, Lillie, at the barn where she works and boards her horse, Red.  It was a stunning afternoon, with big clouds rolling across the sky in western Albemarle County.    

I want to say that it's hard to believe that Lillie will graduate from high school in the spring... On the other hand, her natural confidence in front of the camera showed me a quiet maturity that makes perfect sense given where she is in her life.

Thanks, Lillie, for letting me hang out with you at the barn (and break in the new Contax 645)!

Whale Watching in the Gulf of Maine

Ellie said we should go whale watching.  A classic Maine excursion.

So today we met on the dock in Bar Harbor, joining a crowd of mostly adults who were clad in Nikes and sweatshirts, binoculars and zoom lenses swinging from their necks.  I carried my D3 in my bag.  When I pulled it out to start photographing, the grey-haired man beside me said, "What kind of little lens are you using?"

"It's a 35mm," I replied. 

"We'll have to dangle you over the edge of the boat for you to get any whales with that," he laughed, shifting his own mid-level telephoto from one hand to the other.

I smiled. "I'm more interested in the humanistic side of this experience.  I'm happy to just look at the whales."  

But even looking at whales is not always easy to do.  Our tour was the first of the season and the Captain and crew seemed cautiously optimistic about our chances.  We stopped by Petit Manan Island, first, for the birders aboard to admire the puffins and terns that summer there.  I'm no birder, but I have a couple of serious ornithologist-types in my life, which means I'd actually been puffin watching once before.  It goes like this:

"There's a puffin off the bow at 1 o'clock!  Oh, there it goes, it's moving fast towards 7 o'clock!  Look, we have another puffin in the water at 9 o'clock--oh, it's in the air, now, crossing the stern towards 4 o'clock!"

A lot of head turning and spinning around on the deck.  

Whale watching is a similar experience, though the whales move under water which means you spot them, you chase them, they disappear, then you wait, scanning the 360 degree horizon to see where on the ocean clock they will reappear.  

Today we saw Fin Whales, which, at 40-80 feet, are the second largest mammal after Blue Whales.  Fin Whales surface, blow spray straight into the air for 5 or 8 puffs, do a "terminal dive" deep under water and maybe do or maybe don't resurface in the same place from which they disappeared.

Our four-hour tour went something like this: The guide would announce the sighting of blow hundreds of yards from where the boat sat.  We'd aim towards 3 o'clock, or wherever, and plow through the water towards the sixth or seventh blow.  Bobbing in beside the slick, grey back of a Fin Whale, the boat would arrive just in time to hear the guide announce, "And that was the terminal dive!"  With that exclamation the whale would disappear under the dark surface and we'd be left wanting more.  It happened so many times (the blow, the chase, the terminal dive) that Ellie and I started to laugh at the whole spectacle.  Sure, we saw the long backs and the requisite fin.  But these sightings were fleeting--teasing, even.

Near the end of our tour, the guide said once again, "There's the terminal dive!"

And then, suddenly, over the loudspeaker, "DAMMIT!"  

We looked at each other, surprised.  Did he really just say that?  Expressing what we were thinking?

"A GANNET!" he exclaimed again, "flying right off the bow!"

You never know what kind of excitement you'll see out there...

(Pointing at nothing.  But still having fun!)

A Different Kind of Commission

On Wednesday I was asked to make some Mother's Day portraits.  

Of a horse named Jumanji and her 3-day old foal.  

When I got to the farm and met the stable manager she asked if I photographed horses a lot.

"Um, no," I replied with a smile, keeping to myself the fact that most of my wildlife photography experience involves dead animals.

The only time we could coordinate this shoot was right smack in the middle of hot, sunny Thursday.  Not ideal light.  But we went for it.  

The little foal might have lent himself better to video, as his two favorite activities were nursing and bouncing around his mother on awkward, knobby legs.  He was hilarious to watch in action, but grabbing the fleeting moments when his face was anywhere near hers proved challenging.  

I didn't see much tender nuzzling during the shoot, but the foal showed all his joyful newness.  Adorable.  And Jumanji, an older first-time mother, stayed right by his side the whole time, protectively circling around her long-legged off-spring, never leading him too far afield.