A GBH adopts the Wet Look

The weather is always a fac­tor in a good photo, the sun should be at your back or at least not behind the bird, the wind should not be so high as to blow the bird and you around. But this time the weather took over the shoot and turned what would have been a few good pic­tures into great ones.

Click on any photo to see a larger ver­sion, use your back but­ton to return.

No, you can’t order this fel­low from the Franklin Mint, though he does look a bit like a shiny sil­ver cast­ing painted with touches of blue and rufous (brick-red).

A few weeks ago, I was near the bridge at the east end of Rodeo Lagoon, a favorite place for Herons and Egrets, grous­ing about the thick fog patches that were hang­ing on in spite of the warm­ing sun. But the sun was break­ing through over my left shoul­der so I decided to wait a few moments to see what hap­pened. The thick wet fog felt good on my face – though I wor­ried about it get­ting on my lens.

Just then, another thick wet batch blew in from the sea. Nuts! I thought and started to get up from the portable stool I sit on when pho­tograph­ing birds when, from behind my right shoul­der in swept this GBH with a angry, warn­ing croak – he was much closer to me than he liked, plus he didn’t like the fog.

The fog rolled over him as he began to turn towards the sun.

Then out he came, his fog-laden feath­ers glis­ten­ing in the hazy sun­light, giv­ing him the appear­ance of a shiny lead toy sol­dier touched with brush strokes of bright blue and red­dish brown.

And then he was gone, leav­ing only these mem­o­ries etched in my cam­era and now on my blog.

I packed up my Swedish Walk-stool and my cam­era and went back to my P.T.Cruiser; any­thing I took after this would have been anti-climactic. Beside, who am I to push against the Photo-Gods who have just blessed me.

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