The Artful Engineer

A few weeks ago I revisited Cherry Creek State Park specifically to photograph the nesting great blue herons. I did this two years ago, too, which is covered in a previous post. I approached the rookery from a different direction this time, which allowed me to get much closer to the nests. Last time I was only close to herons that flew by, whereas this time I could get close shots of them perching in the trees. This allowed a lot more variety in my images. I find pictures of wildlife inherently interesting, but a more artistic composition—like the one above—really elevates them. The clean graphic shapes, the near-silhouetted heron with hairlike plumage, and its backlit, glowing beak work together to make this image a great one. It is one of my favorites.

This next image was a bit of a surprise: the way the heron’s neck makes a black circle around a bright point of light (from the sunlight hitting white feathers behind) is unexpected and grabs your attention. I cropped the image in a bit, mostly to make it a little easier to figure out what’s happening when viewed at this smaller size, but even with the full frame (about 50% larger) this point of light has so much contrast that your eye goes right to it. I’m second-guessing my decision to crop it now, though, and will probably put the uncropped version in the heron gallery I am planning. (The head and beak of another heron sitting in the nest is visible, too, if you didn’t notice.)

In this next image, you can see the advantage of going in early April: the trees are just starting to bud leaves. I am thinking of going again tomorrow, but these leaves have probably fully formed in the intervening three weeks and views of the herons might be hard to come by. (Although there should be a lot more mouths to feed, so there could be a lot of hunting going on.) There are so many branches that many of the views, like this one, can’t be called unobstructed, but you can often succeed in using the branches to frame the subject. I’m grateful that the two thin feathers behind its head don’t reach the branch, though. The fact that its head and beak are so bright against the deep blue sky give focus to what would otherwise probably be too cluttered to work.

Like the last time I visited, I was fortunate enough to find a great horned owl. (You can see that other owl here.) This time, however, it was late afternoon, not twilight, so there was plenty of light work with. I have a lot of different poses of this owl—I made about 500 images of it—but since its back was to the sun a lot of them had both eyes in shadow. I like the way its far wing is extended down behind it here. Since it is winking at me, there is no real harm done by that eye being in shade, either.

I think this next image is the best of this owl. I photographed it for about 12 minutes, and during that time the sun finally moved enough to shift a patch of light onto its head. When it turned around—the legendary neck flexibility of an owl coming in handy here—its eyes lit up.

A nice young lady, who stopped to see the owl my friend and I had found, told us about an owl nest nearby—so nearby that I am sure the owl above was one of the parents—so that was our next stop. There are three owls here, an adult and two owlets, but the adult is blocking the light from the little ones which makes them a little harder to discern. I chose this view because both of their beaks are visible in profile, which helps them not merge into one giant fluff-ball. The nest was pretty high up in tree, so getting much closer would have resulted in me photographing the bottom of the nest. And I was leery about getting much closer anyway because I didn’t want to spook them. In the end, this is a mediocre image, but it was still fun to find the nest and seemed worth sharing.

As I was photographing the owl nest, herons continued to fly by. This one caught the warm light of the setting sun nicely.

Since this last image is not a heron or an owl, I originally intended to put it on the home page as the image of week, but I wanted to write a little about it, so here it is, misfit or not. There are some similarities between this image and the one at the top of this post, so I had hopes that they would pair nicely next to each other, but the moods and color palettes clash. This image is somewhat brooding, almost ominous, with the monochromatic color palette and silhouetted bird and jumbled branches. It would work in a collection of Halloween images. The interesting thing to me, though, is how the somewhat busy bokeh in the background—especially on the left side—almost gives the effect of hurried brushstrokes. That bit of busyness gives it an unsettled, almost anxious, feeling that contributes to the mood. Usually that touch of busy background is undesirable, but not in this case. It is fortunate that the dark foreground branches are darker than the darkest parts of the background, though; it would be a weaker image if everything merged together in the lower part of the image. Even though this a red-winged blackbird, not a raven, I think Edgar Allan Poe would like it.

When I decided to include the blackbird image here, it displaced another nice heron picture; so I switched that one to be the image of the week on the home page. Take a look at it, too. (If it isn’t on the home page anymore—it only stays there for a week, after all—you can see it here.)

Thanks for visiting!