2 Hours of Boredom, 30 seconds of Panic
Every so often I get asked how I was able to take a picture. Is it the gear? is there some secret others don’t know?
The answer, for better and worse, is pretty mundane. Gear may make getting that special shot easier — raise the chance you’ll be successful — but it won’t get you the shot.
Most of the time the answer is pretty simple: you need the patience to be there when the shot happens. Or as I like to call it: 2 hours of boredom followed by 30 seconds of panic. Case in point: I went over to Big Beef for the end of the low tide to see if anything was happening. I was late, and it was pretty slow: only ten Bald Eagles in sight. All of the birds were far out towards the water and mostly just sitting around. I took a bunch of shots, and when I came home and reviewed them, I threw them all out as basically a waste of my time.
Except for the six below, when one of the eagles made a single pass very close to where I was parked. These six shots were the only six I got of it as it went by, and the only six shots remotely worth keeping from the almost 90 minutes I spent there, and it was, of course, about ten minutes before I packed up and went home.
It wasn’t the gear that got the shot. It wasn’t any secret knowledge. I have spent some time mastering how to use the gear at crunch time, and I have spent some time researching bird behavior but those didn’t get me the shot, either, and those are things anyone can do. What all of this does is improve my chances.
But it still comes down to being there when the shot happens, and knowing what to do when you see it. And that means hauling out the camp chair, sitting down, watching and waiting.
You can raise the odds of a successful shot, but if you don’t put in the time to be there when the interesting stuff happens, none of the rest matters. And sometimes that means sitting there waiting and being ready when it does. And, of course, sometimes you sit there and it never does, because nature is fickle. But over time, you’ll get the shots you love — if you are there and ready when they happen in front of you.
They key diffference between these shots and “hey, you should have been there, those dots in the distance? those are eagles” is patience.
