Not as Wild as One May Think

You may get the mistaken impression from my blog that the Patuxent River is fairly remote and wild from seeing photos of birds day after day.  That isn't really true. There are some houses along the shore and activities that I mostly avoid capturing within the confines of a photo of a bird because they seem out of place and lessen the impact. Think of the Sandhill Crane I posted a few weeks back in front of a house and a boat.

Depending on what is going on, at times I will even photograph some of the activities of boaters, hunters, and skiers that pass by. One morning when the lighting was really nice and the water was completely flat, a boat with a water skier came through and, since there wasn't much going on with birds, I decided to capture a few images. 

Very seldom does activity like this impact on the birds. In fact, I have taken pictures of osprey catching fish only a few yards from a water skier sitting in the water waiting for the boat to come back and pick him up. Even the loud noises of bridge building they had to put up with one summer didn't seem to bother them.

This view of the river isn't typical of where I film. It is a lovely area to use as a background, but a bird in that spot would be so far away, it wouldn't be worth capturing. But, boats and humans are bigger so it turned out to be a really nice background. With the lightness of the boat and water against the darker surroundings, they turned out to be very striking images.

I very quickly realized the best time to take a picture was when the skier went through the white rooster tail he was throwing up so that he stood out against the background. He didn't quite make it into the rooster tail in this picture.

Now, they didn't know I was filming them and I was in a quandary about trying to get their attention because that would mean the skier would have to take a dunk. As it turned out, though, they just happened to stop straight across from where I was standing and I was able to call them over. After explaining that I had taken some photos, I offered to send them to them via email. The skier himself, really liked the photos and ended up purchasing a larger version of the opening photo for his home.